Mobilization of bias: learning from drought and flood crises in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Jakarta

Quintslr, Suyá; Puga, Bruno Peregrina; Octavianti, Thanti

doi:10.1080/02508060.2021.1970375

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Actors can portray an issue in a certain way to advocate a given course of action, thereby limiting options to be considered. Through politics, actors can use their framing power to select which aspects of the problem to focus on and which should be set aside (Morrison et al, 2017;Quintslr et al, 2021). Thus, how each problem is defined, framed, and represented, is inherently linked to the different WoKs of actors involved in decision-making and can significantly affect policy outcomes.…”

Section: Ways Of Knowing Adaptive Management and Solving Crisesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cities dependent on water released from the Cantareira system suffered significantly more than those relying on water from smaller tributaries or their own water storage infrastructure. Moreover, the participatory river basin committees in the PCJ were powerless to stop the São Paulo State government from invoking emergency measures that re-centralized decisionmaking and rationed water at high social costs in a process widely recognized as lacking transparency, participation, and legitimacy (Empinotti et al, 2019;Quintslr et al, 2021). These extraordinary measures were a painful reversal of a decades-long process of decentralization started in the 1990s with the Brazilian water reform.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Who Governs at What Price? Technocratic Dominance, Ways of Knowing, and Long-Term Resilience of Brazil's Water System

2021

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Technocratic decision making has been long criticized for dampening participation and limiting the range of adaptive choices through its overreliance on infrastructure-based solutions. There has been growing attention to how technocratic approaches shape long-term resilience of water systems, especially under the threat of climatic change impacts. In Brazil, even under its highly decentralized and participatory water management system, technical expertise and science-based decisions have been often promoted as a desirable mechanism to insulate governance outcomes from the country's prevailing clientelistic and rent-seeking politics. Yet, Brazilian river basins continue to struggle with long-standing problems (such as universal access to sanitation) and increasing challenges for guaranteeing water provision under recurrent drought. In this study, we examine how technocratic insulation, different ways of knowing (WoKs), and participatory governance shape long-term resilience in one of Brazil's most important river basins, the Piracicaba-Capivari-Jundiaí (PCJ). By taking an in-depth look at how the PCJ River Basin's governance system responded to the 2014 Brazilian water crisis, we seek to understand how planning decisions in the aftermath of the crisis were influenced by different actors, and how the outcomes of those decisions are likely to shape long term resilience. Based on 27 in-depth interviews with members of the PCJ River Basin Committees, we show how a distinct preference for infrastructure-based solutions to deal with on-going and upcoming challenges may be unsustainable under climate change as the basin's traditional technocratic approach failed both to insulate its decisions from politics and to explore adaptive water management solutions that might be key to shape long-term resilience.

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Section: Ways Of Knowing Adaptive Management and Solving Crisesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Governs at What Price? Technocratic Dominance, Ways of Knowing, and Long-Term Resilience of Brazil's Water System

2021

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São Paulo, Brazil

Chang,

Ross

2024

Climate Change, Urbanization, and Water Resources

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Navigating power imbalances in landscape governance: a network and influence analysis in southern Zambia

et al. 2023

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Actors engaging in integrated landscape approaches to reconciling conservation and development represent multiple sectors and scales and actors with different powers, resource access, and influence on decision-making. Despite growing acknowledgement, limited evidence exists on the implications of power relations for landscape governance. Therefore, this paper asks why and how different forms of power unfold and affect the functioning of multi-stakeholder platforms in southern Zambia. Social network analysis and a power influence assessment reveal that all actors exercise some form of visible, hidden, or invisible power in different social spaces to influence decision-making or negotiate a new social order. The intersection of customary and state governance reveals that power imbalances are the product of actors’ social belongingness, situatedness, and settlement histories. We conclude that integrated landscape approaches are potentially suited to balance power by triggering new dynamic social spaces for different power holders to engage in landscape decision-making. However, a power analysis before implementing a landscape approach helps better recognise power differentials and create a basis for marginalised actors to participate in decision-making equally. The paper bears relevance beyond the case, as the methods used to unravel power dynamics in contested landscapes are applicable across the tropics where mixed statutory and customary governance arrangements prevail.

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Mobilization of bias: learning from drought and flood crises in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Jakarta

Cited by 6 publications

References 49 publications

Who Governs at What Price? Technocratic Dominance, Ways of Knowing, and Long-Term Resilience of Brazil's Water System

Who Governs at What Price? Technocratic Dominance, Ways of Knowing, and Long-Term Resilience of Brazil's Water System

São Paulo, Brazil

Navigating power imbalances in landscape governance: a network and influence analysis in southern Zambia

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