Is the water permit system a panacea or a bed of inefficiency? The case of South Africa

Tewari, Devi Datt; Oumar, Saidou Baba

doi:10.2166/wp.2013.021

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Many actors in the development sector are still looking for governance or management models that can serve as panaceas and solve all issues related to water access independent of the context. In this paper, we point at the limitations of such conceptions, which is in line withthe growing body of literature that questions the usefulness of decontextualized concepts such as irrigation management transfer [23], permit systems [24], pre-paid water meters [25] and mainstreamed participation [26] as solutions for rural water access. While we reject the idea of self-supply as a panacea, we emphasize the potential benefits of focusing on forms of collective action.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Rooted Water Collectives in a Modernist and Neoliberal Imaginary: Threats and Perspectives for Rural Water Commons

Hofstetter,

Bolding,

Boelens

2023

Water

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Water schemes that rely on user (co-) ownership and collective action have been described in the irrigation sector for a long time. Still, interest in such forms of (co-) investment in the domestic/multiple use sector is more recent. To address the persisting issue of rural water service, (what has been coined) self-supply is proclaimed to be a (supposedly) low-cost, sustainable manner to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). User (co-) investments are to be promoted and realized through the creation of an enabling policy environment and development of, and training on, low-cost technologies through government and NGO support and private sector-steered access to such technologies. In this article, we apply the Rooted Water Collectives (RWC) framework to describe two such schemes, one in South Africa and one in Switzerland. The data collection followed an action research methodology, with the main author being involved in interventions in all three schemes. We show here that these collectives create positions of purpose within societies and that what motivates people is to help themselves and contribute to the greater good of the community. This article shows that interventions to foster and sustain such collective actions that follow a neoliberal/modernist imaginary negatively affect their viability since these collectives, through their other-than-capitalist interactions, form part of and depend on an alternative imaginary. We conclude that interventions aiming to strengthen forms of collective action can only succeed if they recognize contextuality, unequal power relationships, and grass-rooted forms of interdependence and collaboration, and actively build on and work toward such alternative, more convivial imaginaries.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Rooted Water Collectives in a Modernist and Neoliberal Imaginary: Threats and Perspectives for Rural Water Commons

Hofstetter,

Bolding,

Boelens

2023

Water

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“…These contemporary processes find expression in new arrangements of private and public actors, including water markets and banks, rescaled water governance and regulation, and transboundary water compacts (cf. Bakker, ; Mollinga, ; Mustafa, ; Swyngedouw, ; Tewari & Oumar, ). By contrast, in Cambodia, the CPK captured total control over all natural resources.…”

Section: The Hydrosocial Cycle and Hydro‐subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The hydro‐logic of genocide: Remaking land, water, and bodies in democratic Kampuchea, 1975–1979

Rice

Tyner

Munro‐Stasiuk

et al. 2019

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Recent scholarship in hydropolitics and the hydrosocial cycle has emphasised the ways that water and society are co-constitutive, acknowledging the productive entanglement of hydraulic and social actors and processes. In this paper, we apply a hydrosocial framework to understand an infamous waterscape of mass violence.Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge planned and partially implemented an extensive irrigation system to increase rice production in the Cambodian countryside. The programmes of rationing, forced labour, and execution imposed by the government during construction killed up to two million people. We find that these infrastructural projects helped the Khmer Rouge remake water into a technology of capital accumulation and social control. The production of these systems enrolled water as an active agent into new relations of power, providing the state with classification and control over not only water but also the physical bodies of Cambodian men, women, and children. Furthermore, we find the Khmer Rouge's infrastructural violence was predicated on the production of new subjectivitiesones that emerged from a narrow imagination of idealised rice plants and labouring bodies. This case illustrates how a pervasive materialist logic, combined with the imperative of capital accumulation, may evolve into justification for mass murder. K E Y W O R D Shydrosocial, infrastructure, irrigation, materiality, violence, water

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“…As such it represents an example of atomism and fits well in the imaginary of neoliberal development towards a modern utopia (Achterhuis et al, 2010;Duarte-Abadía, 2023) all issues related to water access independent of the context. In this paper, I point at the limitations of such conceptions, which is in line with a growing body of literature that questions the usefulness of decontextualised concepts such as irrigation management transfer (Meinzen-Dick, 1997), permit systems (Tewari and Oumar, 2013), pre-paid water meters (Komakech et al, 2020) and main-streamed participation (Winters, 2010) as solutions for rural water access. While I reject the idea of self-supply as a panacea, I emphasize the potential benefits of focusing on forms of collective action.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 57%

Community, markets, and conviviality: a political ecology of rural water supply

Hofstetter

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Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 "Look at the world through watery eyes" 1.2 Research questions 1.3 Conceptualisation 1.4 Positionality and the tale of my research odyssey 1.5 Research methodology 1.6 The regional context of the case studies 1.7 Scientific output 1.8 Outline of the dissertation Chapter 2 The emergence of collectively owned self-supply water supply systems in rural South Africa -what can we learn from the Tshakhuma case in Limpopo? 2.1 Introduction: South Africa's water services challenge 2.2 Background: The international interest in self-supply 2.3 Self-supply and the role of communities in water service delivery in South Africa 2.4 Conceptual notes 2.5 Methods 2.6 Results 2.7 Discussion and conclusionChapter 3 Addressing failed water infrastructure delivery through increased accountability and end-user agency: the case of the sekhukhune district, South Africa 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Conceptual take on failed service delivery 3.3 Methodology 3.4 Scrutinising four phases of service delivery to identify mechanisms that cause failure 3.5 Transformative servicing -the pilot project in ga-moela 3.6 Discussion: counter-mechanisms increasing accountability and improving service delivery 3.7 Conclusion Chapter 4 Conviviality under pressure of market-modernist expertocracy: the case of water commons in rural Switzerland 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Conviviality and the commons 4.3 The historical development of community owned water schemes 4.4 The four phases of a project establishing water access 4.5 The unification of three schemes 4.6 Conclusion: conviviality and the threats of market-modernist forces Chapter 5 Rooted water collectives in a modernist and neoliberal imaginary: threats and perspectives for rural water commons 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Analytical and conceptual framework 5.3 Methodology 5.4 Context of the three case study areas 5.5 Results: the three rooted water collectives 5.6 Discussion 5.7 Conclusion Chapter 6 Discussion and conclusion 6.1 A critical look at my conceptual journey 6.2 Reflection on rural water supply collectives 6.3 Future research 6.4 Reflection on positionality 6.5 Conclusion Chapter 7 Summary Chapter 8 Acknowledgments Chapter 9 Bibliography Chapter 10 NotesLocal context: Entlebuch the case is situated in a rural municipality located in the mountainous region of Entlebuch, within the Kanton of Luzern. Outside the urbanised zone of the village, there are six independent and user owned water schemes that abstract water from natural springs and deliver it to connected households. While the yield of these springs is not directly subject to temporary changes in weather, many are sensitive to longer dry spells as occurred in 2018 and 2020. The rainfall, despite climate change, is predicted to remain at around 1400mm (Kanton Luzern, 2022), but summer droughts and heavy rainfall events are expected to become more frequent (Regierungsrat des Kantons Luzern, 2021). The high protection status of the remaining natural springs means that collectives aiming to improve their water supply in most cases h...

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Is the water permit system a panacea or a bed of inefficiency? The case of South Africa

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

Rooted Water Collectives in a Modernist and Neoliberal Imaginary: Threats and Perspectives for Rural Water Commons

Rooted Water Collectives in a Modernist and Neoliberal Imaginary: Threats and Perspectives for Rural Water Commons

The hydro‐logic of genocide: Remaking land, water, and bodies in democratic Kampuchea, 1975–1979

Community, markets, and conviviality: a political ecology of rural water supply

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