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Introduction : pour une Political Ecology des débits environnementaux Le nouveau « modèle mondial de gestion de l’eau » et ses trois piliers (la Gestion Intégrée des Ressources en Eau, les partenariats public-privé et la marchandisation de l’eau), qui émergent à l’échelle internationale à partir des années 1970, ont fait l’objet d’une importante littérature critique en sciences sociales (Bakker, 2010 ; Goldman, 2007 ; Trottier, 2012). Cependant cette attention portée aux nouveaux paradigmes, ...

En 2019, près de 60 % de la population de l’Afrique subsaharienne n’a pas un accès minimal à l’eau, soit près de 800 millions de personnes. Même dans les pays les plus riches, comme l’a montré la crise de l’eau dans la ville du Cap en 2018, la situation est précaire et marquée par de fortes inégalités. Naturalisation — le manque d’eau serait dû à la sécheresse — et fatalisme — la pénurie serait structurelle en Afrique — dominent les discours. Il y a plus de 25 ans, la conférence internationale sur l’eau et l’environnement de Dublin de 1992, avait proposé un « modèle » mondial de gestion de l’eau, fondé sur la gestion intégrée des ressources en eau, les partenariats public-privé et la marchandisation de la ressource en eau. Mais ces politiques ont prouvé leurs limites en Afrique lorsqu’elles ont été appliquées dans des territoires où les configurations hydro-sociales étaient très différentes de celles des pays du Nord où elles avaient été pensées. Les douze chapitres de ce livre, regroupés autour de trois thèmes (compétitions, conflits et coopérations autour de l’accès et des usages de l’eau ; échelles et modalités de la gestion de l’eau ; justices et injustices) montrent, au contraire, l’émergence de nouvelles conditions diversifiées d’accès à la ressource, qui reposent sur des formes de solidarités anciennes ou émergentes, et qui intègrent les configurations hydro-sociales locales. L’objectif de cet ouvrage est d’explorer, à partir de situations concrètes fondées sur des données empiriques récentes, ces formes nouvelles d’organisation, et de voir dans quelle mesure elles pourraient apporter des solutions alternatives aux nombreux problèmes actuels liées à l’accès inégal à l’eau en Afrique.

At the end of Apartheid, South Africa has been pioneering the recognition of a right to water. This right is now enshrined in the democratic Constitution of the country (1996). South Africa is also perceived as a world leader with one of the most ambitious water Act, granting " water for the environment " (or an " ecological reserve ") alongside a human reserve (minimum water for daily human needs). This kind of environmental flow requirement has been experimented elsewhere too, in France amongst other countries. Yet, comparing environmental flows across countries can prove tricky as environmental flow indicators describe a reality that can differ greatly depending on the socio-historical context. In this paper, we put into perspective, in both countries, the implementation of environmental flows undertaken by water agencies in France and by their equivalent in South Africa, catchment management agencies. Despite enjoying different prerogatives, both organisations share the task of performing functions at the periphery of State regulatory action, which implies most often than not to master a more accommodating governing style. Indeed, in South Africa, if environmental flow requirements were initially determined by hydro-ecology experts commissioned by the department of Water Affairs, soon they were re-conceptualised by water managers who had to operationalise environmental flows when dealing with water allocation demands by different users. Environmental flows thus shifted from a hydro-ecology science towards more socio-hydrology knowledge taking into consideration various economic uses and mitigating ecological requirements with socio-economic goals for each river. It eventually led to a more adaptive management approach applied to environmental flows. In France, and more specifically in the southwest, designing and implementing minimum flows indicators can be understood as a dynamic process of co-production between specific knowledge about -and representation of- rivers on the one hand, and water sharing mechanisms between users on the other hand. Such indicators and the regulatory science that inform them, are instruments deployed by the Adour-Garonne Water Agency for the last 50 years. Their goal is to negotiate water flows that have been significantly framed, temporally and spatially, by electricity producers and by irrigators. These indicators are quite regularly contested within diverse local arenas. This, however, never leads to broadening the debate on the logics and legitimacy of the productive activities such indicators support. It has also often contributed to disarm environmental concerns. Such paradox can be explained because, in both countries, environmental flows not only produce knowledge about rivers but simultaneously they tend to sanction specific allocations of water amongst users-–although in a more concealed and discreet way-. Eventually we reflect on how environmental flow indicators rests on a type of knowledge allowing more space for trade-offs and negotiations among water users.

International audience; Despite causing harmful impacts on coastal communities and biodiversity for a few decades, eutrophication of marine systems has only recently gained public visibility. Representing a major land-based pollution, eutrophication is now considered the most striking symptom of intractable disruption of biogeochemical nutrient cycles at a global scale. The objective of this article is to analyze multi-scale dynamics of the problematization and regulation of ocean overfertilization. To do so, we build on a comprehensive literature review of previously published works that address the sociopolitical dimension of eutrophication issues and whose visibility we analyze with a critical perspective. We identify three stages that characterize the social history of marine eutrophication and how it was handled by public authorities. Although social mobilizations focus on emblematic sites, conflicts directly related to eutrophication symptoms spread in diverse hydro-social configurations. We conclude with a typology of four configurations associated with enduring nutrient pollution: noisy, overwhelming, silenced, and disturbing eutrophication.

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Changes to the global agro-food-energy system (e.g. changing consumption patterns in the North (SNF, 2012), Europe's Climate and biofuel policies, etc.) over the past few years have led to a renewed interest in agriculture and a rush to acquire land (Cotula, 2012; Anseeuw et al, 2013). The impacts of this rush on sustainability are not always evident as its assessments focus on the short-term and generally remain at a case study level, without considering the broader agrarian and socio-economic transformations it entails (Borras et al. 2012). If a consensus emerges regarding the necessity of additional investment into agriculture (FAO, 2010), it is less evident whether large-scale agricultural investments (LAI) are a vector for broader agrarian and socio-economic transformations in a sustainable manner (Borras et al. 2012, Deininger and Byerlee 2011; Collier and Dercon 2014). Despite a growing literature (World Bank, 2010; White et al., 2012, Cotula 2014 etc.), most assessments of LAI impacts tend to remain local, in the form of specific case-studies, and are often short term without broader contextualization (Fairhead et al., 2012). Efforts to overcome these limitations through different types of meta-analyis have been undertaken (Oberlack et al., 2015, Schoneveld 2014, Schoneveld 2017, Dell'Angelo et al. (2017). However, a more empirical understanding of the diverse changes and impacts at various levels is necessary for reflecting on visions for the planetary land system. Against this backdrop, this paper presents the results of a study aiming, on one hand, at assessing the changes and impacts of LAIs at various (individual, household, regional) levels within target regions, and on the other hand, at a nuanced account of how and why LAIs subsequently induce diverse regional development trajectories in these regions. We focus on LAIs in Kenya, Madagascar and Mozambique. Specifically, this study provides a cross-national comparative analysis of business models, land-use changes, governance dynamics of LAIs and their socio-economic, food security, and environmental impacts in Kenya, Madagascar and Mozambique. It brings together the individual results on these aspects, which were generated in the Afgroland project (www.afgroland.net). The following research question guides this analysis: How do contextual and institutional nuances of large-scale agricultural investments impact on land-use changes, the organization of production and investment processes, socio-economic outcomes, food security, and the environment in LAI target regions in Kenya, Madagascar and Mozambique? Methodologically, this study utilizes a set-theoretic methodology for a case-based comparative analysis. It responds to calls for the use of robust empirical methodologies to provide reliable evidence on the impacts of LAIs and to expand the use of comparative methods to attribute LAI impacts to causal factors. Data were collected in six study areas in the three countries by means of household surveys with more than 1500 households, more than 200 key-informant and in-depth interviews with business managers, policymakers, households, development agencies, and NGOs; remotely sensed data between 2016 and 2018, and complemented with document analysis. Data analysis involved mixed qualitative and quantitative techniques. A first set of tentative results, more conceptual in nature, show that LAIs induce regional development trajectories with sustainability impact patterns that can be characterized as conflictual sustainability trade-offs; employment vs. land access and environment trade-offs; widespread hostility; or moderate impacts. The set-theoretic analysis shows that the operational farm size, labour intensity, experience in local agriculture or domestic origin of investors, and prior land uses have the most significant impact on land-use changes, evolution of business models and adaptation of governance systems:. These transformation patterns are described in detail in the paper. A second set of results shows how the same international drivers can have divergent impacts, with local-level outcomes which can differ significantly in terms of land use change, ecological impacts, food security, and livelihoods. These divergences are determined by national politics and policy frameworks, land tenure rights, business models, land and water resource endowments, and path-dependencies regarding investment and business practices. As such, in Kenya, and more particularly in the Nanyuki region characterised by longstanding LAIs, an agrarian normalisation process has established, based on labour intense production systems mainly in the flower and horticultural sectors. Better established labour rights, technology transfer and an agrarian sector that has developed over time leads presently to a relatively dynamic local economy with subsequent livelihood opportunities. In Mozambique, these regional dynamics are minimal however, albeit indirect through basic infrastructural and service development. On contrary, through land loss and increased land pressures, labour extensive crops and production models, and not well developed labour rights, major fractions of the local populations tend to be affected negatively. Lastly, in Madagascar, for the few investments that are still operational, they tend to function on an enclave model, with very little – if any – interactions and impacts on the regional economy and local populations. The paper concludes by repositioning these results in the broader framework of interactions among sustainable development goals (SDGs), representing a critical, but mostly overlooked aspect in the debate on LAIs. In policy debates, LAIs are frequently justified with the argument that LAIs would create new flows of investments to capital-poor regions; create new employment; enhance agricultural productivity. In other words, this narratives relates LAIs positively to SDG10.B and SDG17.3 (investment flows), SDG8.5 (employment), and SDG2.3 (agricultural productivity), among others. By contrast, a recent review finds that LAIs can affect 14 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in adverse ways. The results of this study and the analyses in terms of diverging development trajectories induced by LAIs allows to assess how LAIs shapes the interaction between multiple SDGs. These interactions among SDGs in the framework of LAIs can take the forms of trade-offs, co-benefits, and co-damage.

National audience; Depuis les années 1980-1990, de nombreux pays, au Sud comme au Nord, intègrent dans des dispositifs d'action publique (réglementaire ou autre) un nouvel objectif de gestion des cours d'eau aux prétentions proprement environnementales : la notion de « débit environnemental » ou encore de « besoin en eau des écosystèmes aquatiques ». Ces notions sont présentées comme incarnant une rupture avec les modes de gestion passés, prenant en compte les préoccupations environnementales de plus en plus visibles dans l'espace public. Cette notion autoriserait une gestion plus inclusive de l'eau en ajoutant la dimension écologique aux dimensions socio-économiques déjà présentes. Néanmoins, il reste à interroger empiriquement la façon dont elles sont intégrées aux dispositifs de gestion de l'eau et redéfinissent alors l'accès à l'eau. De quelles nouvelles formes d'inclusion et d'exclusion s'accompagnent-elles ? Comment redistribuent-elles les vulnérabilités et créent-elles de nouvelles solidarités, et ce, entre catégories d'usagers mais aussi dans leurs relations avec des « non-humains » des milieux aquatiques (poissons, invertébrés, etc.) ? Pour contribuer à répondre à ces questions, nous proposons de mettre en perspective deux expériences de mise à l'agenda et de mise en oeuvre de cette notion, en Afrique du Sud et en France, afin d'en dégager les similarités et les différences. Dans les deux cas, nous proposons de faire une généalogie de ces notions depuis les années 1970, en soulignant en particulier le poids de certains enjeux socio-politico-économiques mais aussi de certains savoirs dans leur conception et leur trajectoire. L'analyse croisée entre l'Afrique du Sud et la France qui semblait au départ mettre en lumière une sorte de convergence des politiques publiques révèle alors des processus de mise en oeuvre différenciée qui permettent de réinterroger la notion de « débit environnemental » et ses effets sur le partage du pouvoir pour l'accès à l'eau.

International audience

For many years, South Africa had represented a typical example of a hydrocracy. Following the democratic transition in South Africa, however, new policy paradigms emerged, supported by new political elites from the ANC. A reform of the water policy was one of the priorities of the new Government, but with little experience in water management, they largely relied on 'international best practices' in the water sector, although some of these international principles did not perfectly fit the South African water sector landscape. In parallel, a reform called 'transformation' took place across all public organisations with the aim of allowing public administrations to better reflect the racial components in South African society. As a result, civil engineers lost most of their power within the Department of Water Affairs and Sanitation (DWS). However, despite these changes, demand-side management has had difficulties in materializing on the ground. The paper aims at discussing the resilience of supply-side management within the Ministry, despite its new policy orientation. Using a policy network concept, the paper shows that the supply-side approach still prevails today, due to the outsourcing of most DWS tasks to consulting firms with whom DWS engineers have nourished a privileged relationship since the 1980s. The article uses the decision-making process around the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) Phase 2 as an emblematic case study to illustrate such developments. This policy network, which has enjoyed so much influence over DWS policies and daily activities, is now being contested. As a consequence, we argue that the fate of the LHWP Phase 2 is ultimately linked to a competition between this policy network and a political one.

Expertise réalisée à la demande des ministères en charge de l’environnement et de l’agriculture, avec le soutien financier de l’AFB (Agence Française pour la Biodiversité); L’eutrophisation touche de nombreux lacs, réservoirs, rivières et zones côtières, en France et dans le monde. Elle génère des perturbations majeures pour les écosystèmes aquatiques et a des impacts sur les biens et les services associés, sur la santé humaine et sur les activités économiques. Dans certains espaces, elle est devenue une question socialement vive. Les débats sur l’identification des facteurs et des niveaux de risque d’eutrophisation, permettant d’orienter les politiques publiques, ont conduit les ministères en charge de l’environnement et de l’agriculture à confier au CNRS, à l’Ifremer, à l’INRA et à Irstea la réalisation d’une Expertise scientifique collective (ESCo) sur le sujet. Cette ESCo établit un état des lieux critique sur les connaissances scientifiques disponibles au plan international sur les causes, les mécanismes, les conséquences et la prédictibilité des phénomènes d’eutrophisation. Elle identifie les notions considérées comme certaines et celles encore entachées d’incertitudes, les lacunes, les questions faisant l’objet de controverses scientifiques, ainsi que les leviers d’action existants pour endiguer l’eutrophisation.

Bridging the water infrastructure gap has become a major policy concern. In rural areas of Africa, access to water is as much constrained by territorial coverage as it is by the poor conditions of water points due to the difficulty in mobilizing communities for repairs. This paper examines the equity considerations of a rural water and sanitation programme in a district of Mozambique, and their impacts on the achievement of the programme's objectives. Our analysis underlines the contradictions in the conceptualization of equity in the design, planning and implementation of the programme. Even an explicitly pro-poor strategy can fall short of delivering equity. Our findings stress the fact that overlooking local perception of equity can have a direct impact on the ability of a community to ensure the maintenance of their water points. They call for a careful definition of equity in the design of water programmes, as well as closer attention to this criterion as a precondition to achieving the long-term objective of the programme.

L’eutrophisation touche de nombreux lacs, réservoirs, rivières et zones côtières, en France et dans le monde. Elle génère des perturbations majeures pour les écosystèmes aquatiques et a des impacts sur les biens et les services associés, sur la santé humaine et sur les activités économiques. Dans certains espaces, elle est devenue une question socialement vive. Les débats sur l’identification des facteurs et des niveaux de risque d’eutrophisation, permettant d’orienter les politiques publiques, ont conduit les ministères en charge de l’environnement et de l’agriculture à confier au CNRS, à l’Ifremer, à l’INRA et à Irstea la réalisation d’une Expertise scientifique collective (ESCo) sur le sujet. Cette ESCo établit un état des lieux critique sur les connaissances scientifiques disponibles au plan international sur les causes, les mécanismes, les conséquences et la prédictibilité des phénomènes d’eutrophisation. Elle identifie les notions considérées comme certaines et celles encore entachées d’incertitudes, les lacunes, les questions faisant l’objet de controverses scientifiques, ainsi que les leviers d’action existants pour endiguer l’eutrophisation.

International audience

International audience

In both Morocco and South Africa, since at least the mid-20th century, water has been entrusted to powerful state bureaucracies embracing a 'hydraulic mission', what some authors have dubbed 'hydrocracies' (Molle, Mollinga and Worster, 2009). In Morocco, the emergence of a powerful hydrocracy can be traced back to the French Protectorate in the 1920s, under the Resident General Steeg (Pritchard, 2012). Since the late 19th Century, South Africa has started building a strong water administration and soon developed a world recognized expertise especially in massive inter-basin transfers (Blanchon, 2012). Its civil engineers have managed to export their know-how on the African continent (and even to the rest of the world) and take an active part in the water epistemic community at the international level, especially through the ICOLD (International Commission on Large Dams). However, both countries also went through a neoliberal State restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s, a process that was susceptible to challenge this bureaucratic dominance. This paper seeks to explore the ways by which these hydrocracies have reacted and adapted to these challenges. Based on semi-structured interviews, this paper argues that powerful hydrocracies still exist in Morocco and South Africa, but that they have been considerably reshaped over the last two to three decades. In Morocco, the Public Work administration reacted to these challenges by pre-emptively seizing the IWRM discourse and taking the initiative to draft a new water law in 1995. The law was conspicuously inspired by the new global norm but was in fact carefully and ambiguously worded. Subsequent regulations were drafted in close cooperation with the Agriculture administration, and put less and less emphasis on demand management, and more and more on renewed supply-side solutions. It is therefore unsurprising that the number of dams increased from 110 in 2004 to 139 in 2015, the national strategy for water now intending to push this number to 170 by 2030. At the same time, the palace significantly increased pay and working conditions for top public engineers (Vermeren, 2003) while middle-tier public water engineers faced less favorable changes. Within the public works administration, and private consultancy firms now carry out more and more studies. As for agriculture, the Offices régionaux de mise en valeur agricole have seen their number of staff curtailed and a number of services of technical assistance have been privatized or outsourced. Under the neoliberal agenda (privatization of expertise, transfer of irrigation management to users, individualization of farmers' water strategy), the Moroccan hydrocacy has therefore been dualized: top civil servants managed to reassert their authority, while middle-tier public water engineers have faced more precarious conditions and have been increasingly forced to negotiate with a number of newly-empowered actors. In South Africa, new political elites from the ANC have held a key role in reforming the water sector in the mid-1990s. They drafted a new National Water Act (NWA, 1998) whose objective was to bring about more equity and ensure proper access to water for the Black population especially. While busy revising their water policy, policymakers were also very much influenced by international concept such as IWRM and its emphasis on water demand management for instance. The democratic transition in 1994 also triggered a new policy of “transformation”, i.e. a restructuring of the State apparatus in a bid to reflect more the South African society's racial composition. As a result of this combined transformation process, the institutional identity of DWA changed, especially as the new recruits had seldom had any civil engineering educational backg round. Yet, up until recently, DWA former white elite has managed to maintain a supply-driven approach of water resources management for the country, in particular thanks to its long-lasting relationship with private engineering consulting firms. In that respect, both case studies show an increased reliance on the private sector and question the capacity of top -tier bureaucrats to coordinate the sector. In South Africa specifically, over the past 5 years, the hydro -bureaucracy seems to be experiencing the most change, with a competing global network of water experts coming to the fore and promoting alternative water resources management approaches and policy solutions around green technologies (waste water reuse, desalination, leakage reduction from distribution networks, increasing water use efficiency in agriculture, etc.).

[Departement_IRSTEA]Eaux [TR1_IRSTEA]GEUSI; International audience; Cet article propose un modèle visant à expliquer la diversité et l'évolution des principes qui structurent la gestion des services d'eau potable et d'assainissement à travers le monde. Il questionne un modèle purement évolutionniste, reconstitué à partir de travaux existants.Ce dernier suggère un sens dans l'évolution des modèles structurant la gestion sur les plans technique, financier et de gouvernance. L'analyse de trajectoires française, colombienne, sud africaine et ougandaise montre l'intérêt de compléter ce modèle par les travaux de Kingdon (1984) et Jabko (2009). Sans contester « le sens de l'histoire », le cadre proposé explique la persistance de combinaisons de principes de gestion diverses et parfois sous-optimales. En outre, ce travail met en évidence des mécanismes de changement fondés sur l'émergence de crises et le jeu de coalitions d'acteurs, au sein desquels l'ambiguïté joue un rôle fondamental.Ce cadre d'analyse explique enfin les limites de la transposition transnationale de modèles de gestion et peut donc être applicable à d'autres secteurs de l'action publique.