Search

Wastewater reuse is identified as strategic to help ameliorate scarcity in water-stressed regions around the world. However, to develop it, there is a need to better understand the social, institutional and technological contexts in which it takes place. This article develops a novel socio-technical framework to inform such an analysis and applies it to current wastewater reuse in Egypt. Our analysis highlights the different actors, management activities and practices that shape wastewater collection, transfer, treatment, discharge and/or reuse in different social, technological and environmental contexts in Egypt. It points out bottlenecks of current wastewater reuse policies and programmes.

This article explores how irrigation management transfer policies were implemented in Mali, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. In Mali and Mozambique, where the irrigation bureaucracy controlled one large irrigation system, state agencies retained control over irrigation management despite reduced state funding. In Malawi and Zimbabwe, where the state irrigation systems and the irrigation bureaucracy were smaller, users have taken over irrigation management, but are having trouble sustaining irrigated agriculture. We show how irrigation management transfer policies were shaped by the interplay between international donors, macro-economic dynamics, national politics and the interactions with (and the nature of) irrigation infrastructure, bureaucracies and organized users.

Ecuadorian state policies and institutional reforms have territorialized water since the 1960s. Peasant and indigenous communities have challenged this ordering locally since the 1990s by creating multi-scalar federations and networks. These enable marginalized water users to defend their water, autonomy and voice at broader scales. Analysis of these processes shows that water governance takes shape in contexts of territorial pluralism centred on the interplay of divergent interests in defining, constructing and representing hydrosocial territory. Here, state and nonstate hydro-social territories refer to interlinked scales that contest and recreate each other and through which actors advance their water control interests.

Around the world it has proven very difficult to develop policies and interventions that ensure socio-environmentally sustainable groundwater use and exploitation. In the state of Guanajuato, Central Mexico, both the national government and the decentralized state government have pursued to regulate groundwater use through direct state control, groundwater markets, energy pricing, and user self-regulation. We present and analyze these regulatory mechanisms and their outcomes in the field. We argue that the close interdependencies of these regulatory mechanisms have pre-empted the effectiveness of these policy instruments as well as that of other measures aimed at reducing groundwater use in order to advance towards sustainable exploitation levels.

In Ecuador neo-liberal reforms in the 1990s transformed the water and irrigation sector at different scales. We analyze how these neoliberal reforms were implemented from the top-down by the World Bank and the national government, as well as how from the grassroots water users negotiated these policies and their implementation at local and national level. We show that these sectoral reforms were politically contested as it changed roles, responsibilities, and authority at different scales of governance. This is evidenced by the fact that locally the relationships between water users, differently scaled state agencies, and broader networks greatly determined how water users associations negotiated the irrigation management transfer program as well as the development of new water policies. Our analysis highlights how the alliances that differently positioned actors create to navigate water policy implementation shape the scalar and the political dimensions of sectoral reforms. It shows that actors need multi-scalar networks of support to develop political leverage, overcome opposition, and materialize projects in the water governance domain.

In the Andean region, the growing water demand of expanding cities, extractive industries, and local and transnational agribusiness puts increasing pressure on the land and water resources of peasa...

In this article, I explore how new water user organizations have developed in formerly state managed irrigation systems in the Ecuadorian highlands since the 1990s. The article is based on an in-depth case study of the Pillaro irrigation system and illustrations of other cases. These water user organizations have become responsible for irrigation system management and maintenance, which has been carried out based on the mobilization of collective action. I argue that the support of external agents was important in their formation by facilitating internal looking social capital through the development of a shared normative framework and by fostering outward-looking social capital through the creation of networks and networking skills for the defense of collective rights and interests.

Collective groundwater management by water users—self-regulation—is increasingly advocated as a complement to state regulation. This article analyzes the attempts by the Guanajuato State Water Commission (CEAG) in central Mexico to promote user self-regulation through the establishment and development of 14 Consejos Tecnicos de Aguas (COTAS; Technical Water Councils). Based on a joint assessment by a former senior CEAG policy-maker and two researchers, Guanajuato’s groundwater-management policy is reviewed to understand why user self-regulation was less successful than expected. It concludes that increasing awareness and improving the knowledge base on groundwater is not enough to trigger self-regulation by groundwater users. A wider delegation of responsibilities to the COTAS is necessary, combined with: (1) functioning mechanisms for enforcing groundwater legislation, especially concerning well permits and pumped volumes, and (2) mechanisms that ensure the legitimacy and accountability of users’ representatives to both users and state agencies.

Groundwater forms the basis for millions of rural and urban livelihoods around the world. Building on insights from the theory of access, in this article we present how groundwater development has brought much well-fare in many parts of the world; and how resulting intensive groundwater use is leading to ill-fare through aquifer overexploitation and processes of water accumulation and dispossession. We show the difficulty of state regulation and the modest achievements of other governance approaches that aim to solve existing groundwater problems. To study these processes we propose a framework of analysis that is based on the study of hydrosocial-networks, the political economy of groundwater and the domains and discourses that define groundwater access. Such analysis highlights the challenges of devising policies and modes of governance that contribute to social and environmental sustainability in intensively used aquifers. These we argue should build on an analysis of equity that scrutinizes the discourses, actors, powers and procedures that define groundwater access. By inciting debates on equity a first and fundamental step can be made toward advancing more inclusive groundwater governance that crucially engages the marginalized and addresses their groundwater problems, concerns and needs.

"This paper analyzes conflict and collaboration and their relation to normative structures based on a case study of the history and external interventions of the Píllaro North Canal Irrigation System in the Ecuadorian Highlands. It does so by using Ostrom’s framework for analyzing the sustainability of socio-ecological systems together with an analysis of the normative structures that define the governance systems through which the interactions in irrigation systems are mediated. I argue that the external interventions by the state and NGOs imposed a new governance system that undermined the existing normative structures and related organizations, leading to internal conflicts. The case study suggests that a reformulation of irrigation policies and state intervention methodologies in user managed supra-community irrigation systems in the Andes could lead to higher levels of cooperation."

Making water management more democratic through the participation of water users, while crucially including the poor, has often proven elusive in practice. Through an in-depth case study, this article analyzes how the provincial water users federation Interjuntas-Chimborazo was consolidated in the Ecuadorian Andes. The case illustrates the critical role external actors can play in the consolidation of federative organizations through methodological design, facilitation, and financial and logistical support to local societal actors. In turn, such federations can effectively promote social democracy. As a new societal actor, the federation Interjuntas-Chimborazo now struggles for voice, representation, and inclusion of the marginalized water users. They participate in formal state-dominated institutional arrangements of stakeholder participation. Yet, more importantly, they also push their claims by tilting established power relations through other means such as protests, mobilizations, lobbying, and negotiations. The development of this federation brings to the fore important lessons on federative organizations, the role of external actors, and participation in water governance.

Evidence of groundwater management by aquifer users emerging under Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) initiatives is presented, by analyzing the Consejos Técnicos de Aguas (COTAS; Technical Water Councils or Aquifer Management Councils) in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, established between 1998 and 2000 by the Guanajuato State Water Commission (CEAG). Two contrasting models influenced this attempt to promote user self-regulation of groundwater extractions: locally autonomous aquifer organizations with powers to regulate groundwater extractions versus aquifer organizations with advisory powers only. The COTAS were conceived as locally autonomous IWRM organizations consisting of all aquifer users that would work together to reduce groundwater over-extraction and stabilize aquifer levels, at a later stage. CEAG followed an expedient IWRM approach to develop the COTAS, setting achievable targets for their development and explicitly focusing on active stakeholder participation. The article shows that, due to struggles between the state and federal levels, the COTAS have become advisory bodies that have not led to reductions in groundwater extractions. It concludes that achieving user self-regulation of groundwater extractions requires a fuller delegation of responsibilities to the COTAS which would not be possible without addressing the institutional struggles over water governance at the state and federal levels.

NGOs have taken up an increasing number of roles and responsibilities in Latin American societies. Based on a study of the multi-stakeholder platform, the Water Resources Forum in Ecuador, this paper shows how through the creation of a broad network of NGOs, academics, grassroots water users organizations and governmental actors; this platform has been able to contribute to the democratization of water governance. This paper analyses the international and national socio-political context in which this platform developed and traces the history and strategies that marked its development. Based on this, it argues that NGOs can play an important role in the development of more democratic and inclusive public policy making in water governance, but that the capacity of NGOs to bring about change greatly depends on the socio-political context and on the networks they are able to forge with grassroots organizations, state agencies, funders and other third sector actors.