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International audience; ""This article covers all types of participation in water policy processes in the city of Duque de Caxias in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Even though open opposition to the government is legally permitted since Brazil's democratization process, barriers remain for activist leaders to formulate and signify their preferences toward the government. The current literature on direct participation practices in policy processes tends to leave out political regime variables. This case study aims to show that, in fact, political regime variables are crucial. The article reintroduces participation practices in power dynamics in local water policymaking, building a model based on competitive oligarchy, multilevel policy coalitions, and political capacity literature. It argues that the political regime matters in understanding participation practices and that, despite legal democratization that opened rights to organize opposition and participation in Brazil in 2007, local activist leaders are restrained by a particular kind of oligarchy—an oligarchic technical–political–productivist policy coalition that “owns” policy through direct participation in the political process. This case study shows that four decades after the policy shift in the 1980s, in some territories and sectors Brazilian democracy may be on the pathway of competitive oligarchy—very open to opposition rights, but still closed to the participation of this opposition in policy and decision-making processes."

International audience; This article provides a theoretical introduction to the Special Issue and briefly presents the various contributions. It starts with a general plea for inserting the analysis of groundwater and its gradual depletion into a broader critical analysis of 'development'; it does so in order to trace how particular forms of groundwater use and management are intrinsic to distinct-gendered and racialised-processes of differentiation and exploitation such as settler colonialism and capitalism. We go on to argue, however, that too much insistence on explaining empirical realities in terms of such structural processes has its limitations. It risks strengthening their overwhelming power and reconfirming the oppression and marginalisation that they create. We therefore suggest that methodological and ethnographic attention to practices may help identify less predictable and sometimes surprising trajectories of change. Our foregrounding of practices implies treating terms such as transformation and sustainability as fluid, the discussion of which needs to be anchored in the situated and always-specific practical work of using, accessing, caring for, sharing and knowing groundwater. Theoretical insights about how the world is patterned or structured then serve not as the framework in which to insert empirical findings, but as entry points for further analysis, reflection and conversation, fuelling forms of experimentation and joint learning about how to think and do transformations to groundwater sustainability.

The governance of several cross-cutting challenges, such as food security, climate change, and sustainable development, calls for integrative policy approaches. However, efforts to better theorize the drivers of integration beyond listing explanatory factors remain weak. Viewing integration as a process of policy change for dealing with complex problems, this study argues that policy integration analysis can benefit from an advocacy coalition approach (ACF) to address this theoretical gap. It illustrates the analytical framework by empirically investigating the drivers of policy (dis)integration in Brazil's subnational water policy introduced in the 2010s. The level of conflict between coalitions, adjustment of policy beliefs, coordination within and across coalitions, and existence of venues for interaction and policy-oriented learning were presented as factors that can foster or hinder the integration of public policies. Moreover, the study discusses the potential to acknowledge in ACF the mechanisms for coordinating policy actors and instruments, which would facilitate the analysis of the policy processes of cooperation. It also demonstrates that recent droughts in Northeast Brazil have been increasingly related to the local impacts of climate change, contributing to reframing water management as a cross-sectoral climate and water governance issue. The analysis was based on a literature review, semi-structured interviews, and social network analysis.

Les eaux souterraines sont devenues indispensables pour l’agriculture dans les pays semi-arides et dont les ressources en eau sont sous forte pression. À de rares exceptions près, elles sont longtemps restées invisibles. Leur mise en visibilité – sur les plans physique, social, économique, territorial, et institutionnel – résulte d’un processus de construction historique dont nous décortiquons les multiples facettes. Dans le cas du Maroc, cette mise en visibilité des eaux souterraines est directement liée au développement de l’irrigation, encouragée par les pouvoirs publics. Dans ce contexte, un problème de surexploitation des eaux souterraines est désormais défini et mis en avant par l’État. Malgré des discours prônant la préservation des ressources, les solutions retenues reflètent en réalité les objectifs historiques des politiques hydrauliques et agricoles. Ce problème de surexploitation des eaux souterraines est finalement redéfini en un problème de manque de ressources en eau permettant de justifier des politiques d’aménagement hydraulique destinées à augmenter l’offre globale de ressource en eau. Groundwater has become indispensable for agriculture in semi-arid countries and water resources are intensively exploited. Invisible for a long time, the increased physical, social, economic, territorial, and institutional visibility of groundwater is the result of a historical construction which we examine in this paper. In the case of Morocco, its visibility is linked to the strong irrigation development, fostered by the State. In connection with this, a problem of overexploitation of groundwater is now defined and put forward by the State. Despite discourses promoting the preservation of these resources, the adopted solutions reflect the historical objectives of hydraulic and agricultural policies. The current situation of groundwater overexploitation is currently redefined as a problem of a lack of water resources, justifying the implementation of new infrastructure aimed at increasing the global supply of water resources.

International audience; This article examines the role that the production of knowledge on the ecological state of aquatic ecosystems plays in the implementation of policies for protecting these environments, used for water supply. Based on interdisciplinary research carried out in two sub-Saharan countries (Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal) by a team of sociologists and ecologists, the article shows how expert knowledge of environmental quality assessment interacts with the local actors, existing management structures and with local representations of these environments. Through this interdisciplinary approach, we question the difficulties of integrating a diversity of points of view on water resources. We highlight the obstacles, uncertainties and controversies linked with the production of expertise and its integration into existing management systems. More specifically, we describe the main challenges for institutionalizing long-term monitoring of the water resources (Aquatic Ecosystems Observatories). We also discuss the possibilities and the interest for integrating expert and local knowledge for co-constructing a shared diagnosis.; Cet article questionne le rôle de la production des savoirs sur l’état écologique des milieux dans la gestion et la mise en oeuvre de politiques de surveillance et de protection des ressources en eau utilisées pour la production d’eau potable en Afrique subsaharienne. Sur la base d’une recherche interdisciplinaire réalisée en Côte d’Ivoire et au Sénégal par une équipe comprenant des sociologues et des écologues, l’article montre comment des savoirs experts d’évaluation de la qualité des milieux interagissent avec les jeux d’acteurs, les structures de gestion existantes et les représentations locales de ces mêmes milieux. Nous interrogeons à travers cette approche interdisciplinaire les difficultés d’articulation de la diversité de points de vue sur les ressources en eau, ainsi que les freins, les incertitudes et controverses autour de la production de savoirs et de leur intégration dans des dispositifs de gestion. Nous analysons plus particulièrement les principaux défis pour la mise en place des suivis de l’état écologique des milieux aquatiques, ainsi que les possibles contributions des savoirs experts et locaux à la co-construction d’un diagnostic partagé.

International audience; In ever larger areas of the world, climate change is increasing water demand while shrinking water supplies. As a result, many efforts are underway to define whether any given water project decreases or further increases water users' vulnerability to climate change, especially in the agricultural sector. A number of challenges in making these assessments have been routinely discussed, including a lack of yardsticks, varying local circumstances, and the role of subjective judgment. However, their common assumption is that maladaptation constitutes, at least in theory, a phenomenon that can ultimately be fully objectified and agreed upon through scientific data. By contrast, our qualitative comparative analysis advances a non-positivist conception of maladaptation. By comparing three water projects aiming at climate change adaptation in South Africa (Western Cape), Spain (Andalusia) and France (Occitanie), we argue that qualifying (mal)adaptation is an inescapably political process as much as a scientific endeavour. As a consequence, we advocate for putting more scholarly emphasis on the governance of adaptation projects, especially the capacity of governance arrangements to produce legitimate compromises between multiple policy domains and actors; to enhance higher level conflict management when necessary; and to ensure regular policy evaluation with an effective bearing on subsequent policy decisions.

L’autosuffisance en riz poursuivie par l’État du Sénégal depuis l’Indépendance a motivé des investissements colossaux dans le Delta du fleuve Sénégal, au nord du pays. Cet article évalue la contribution du Projet de promotion du partenariat rizicole dans le Delta (3PRD) aux dynamiques organisationnelles et techniques. L’importance de ce projet repose sur le partenariat public-privé, un paradigme récent dans le monde du développement de l’agriculture irriguée. Notre démarche est basée sur un travail de synthèse bibliographique, des visites de terrain, des entretiens avec les responsables du projet et des enquêtes auprès des agriculteurs. Les résultats suggèrent deux progrès majeurs réalisés par le 3PRD : l’autonomisation des producteurs privés dans un grand aménagement collectif impliquant la participation de la société de développement SAED et l’introduction d’un nouveau matériel pour l’irrigation, l’électropompe. Ils montrent aussi que des efforts restent à réaliser en matière d’intensité culturale et de rendement agricole pour permettre aux producteurs de mieux rentabiliser les investissements qu’ils ont réalisés dans leurs périmètres.

Groundwater resources are being increasingly exploited around the world and patterns of overexploitation are widely observed. Long seen as the remit of hydrologists, groundwater is now understood as a key and politically disputed resource that supports domestic use, livelihoods, and high‐value commercial farming, as well as many wetlands and other groundwater‐dependant ecosystems. The governance of groundwater is complex due to its invisible and elusive nature, its fluctuating exchanges with surface water bodies, the diffuse nature of abstraction points, and the lack of state control over the individual initiatives that often arise in response to water shortages. Governance based on community-, state-, or market-centered arrangements has tended to perform poorly. Comanagement shows some potential but is so far limited to specific physical‐cum‐political environments.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, water allocation policies became central in Europe and France to reach Water Framework Directive goals. Improvements in irrigation efficiency is one of the main policy measure aiming to save billions of cubic meters at the European level. However, water savings environmental benefits have been debated in scientific literature and public organisms that sustain such measures. Indeed, improvements in irrigation efficiency redistribute water flows between users and the environment at the river basin scale. Multiple factors influence the outcomes, such as increasing irrigated lands and yields, caps on water abstraction, farmers’ behavior, etc. The technical aspects of this question have been widely debated, but its political dimensions far less, in particular concerning environmental water reallocation. In the southeast of France, the Durance River Basin represents an ideal case study because saved water reallocations are made visible by large water infrastructure and canals. Water officials have implemented water savings policies for about 50 years and created specific policy instruments for environmental reallocation. Anchored in political science and political ecology approaches, we analyze water savings and environmental water reallocation policies paradigms, instruments and territorialization. Rather than a technical « no regret » measure, we show that improvements in irrigation efficiency rely on multiple negotiations and compromises allowing the arrangement of worldviews, norms of action, interdependent water uses and discourses of diverse hydro-social territories, whereas environmental benefits remain uncertain. Consensus building is constrained by historical interests and institutions legacy, and rely on both translation processes from national or hydrographic scales to the local level, and bottom-up forces from territories for policy instrument adaptations. We show the critical role of ambiguities in institutional change, and how policy instruments such as quantification procedures participate in naturalizing socially constructed realities and political arbitrages. Overall, this thesis contributes to debates over humans and non-humans water allocations, based on an interdisciplinary framework that shows the multiple interactions between water and money flows, power relations and resources allocations, hydro social territories and public action construction.; Depuis le début des années 2000, la gestion quantitative de l’eau est devenue centrale dans les politiques européennes et françaises pour répondre aux objectifs environnementaux fixés dans la Directive Cadre sur l’Eau. L’augmentation de l’efficience des réseaux d’irrigation correspond à l’une des principales mesures mises en avant, estimant que plusieurs dizaines de milliards de mètres cubes pourraient être économisés au niveau européen. Toutefois, l’efficacité environnementale de la modernisation des périmètres irrigués fait débat aussi bien dans la littérature scientifique qu’au sein d’organismes publics qui l’encouragent. En effet, « l’économie d’eau » correspond à une redistribution des flux entre de multiples usagers et l’environnement, à l’échelle du bassin versant, et les impacts de la modernisation dépendent donc de nombreux facteurs (possibilité d’augmenter les surfaces irriguées et les rendements, réglementation des autorisations à prélever, modification des chemins de l’eau, etc.). Si les aspects techniques du problème sont relativement bien connus, les enjeux politiques liés à la modernisation des canaux d’irrigation ont été plus rarement explorés, en particulier dans le cas de la réallocation d’eau vers l’environnement. Le bassin de la Durance, dans le Sud-Est de la France, représente un cas d’étude idéal car les nombreuses infrastructures rendent particulièrement visible la redistribution des flux liée aux économies d’eau. Cela a donné lieu à la création d’instruments de politique publique spécifiques, et s’intègre dans une trajectoire de plus de 50 ans. Grâce à un cadrage ancré dans les sciences politiques et la political ecology, nous analysons les paradigmes, les instruments et les territorialisations des politiques d’économie et réallocation d’eau dans le temps long. Plutôt qu’une mesure « sans regret » indiscutable, nous montrons que la modernisation des techniques d’irrigation repose sur de multiples négociations et compromis permettant l’agencement de visions du monde et normes d’action, d’usages de l’eau interdépendants, et de pratiques et discours de divers territoires hydro-sociaux, alors que l’impact environnemental des économies d’eau reste incertain. La construction du consensus se fait dans un cadre fortement contraint par les intérêts historiques et institutions hérités du passé, et passe à la fois par des processus de traduction depuis les échelles nationale ou de bassin hydrographique jusqu’au niveau local, et par des dynamiques ascendantes de réappropriation des outils dans les territoires. Nous mettons en évidence le rôle clé des incertitudes et ambiguïtés dans l’adoption de nouveaux arrangements institutionnels, ainsi que l’effet de naturalisation des compromis politiques dans les réglages et le fonctionnement des instruments de politique publique. Finalement, la thèse participe à renouveler les débats sur la redistribution de l’eau entre humains et non humains, en s’appuyant sur une approche interdisciplinaire qui montre les interactions multiples entre flux d’eau et d’argent, relations de pouvoir et allocations des ressources, constructions des territoires de l’eau et de l’action publique.

Resume La competence GEMAPI, effective au 1er janvier 2018, a fait l’objet de nombreux debats parlementaires et senatoriaux et d’une production intense d’ecrits. En s’appuyant sur les comptes rendus des debats politiques et sur des entretiens semi-directifs realises aupres d’acteurs de la gestion de l’eau, cet article donne a voir le jeu des negociations entre les porte-paroles de l’action publique territoriale et nationale qui a contribue a redefinir les contours, le contenu, l’organisation et le financement de la GEMAPI.

Au Maroc, les ressources en eau se font de plus en plus rares. De plus, celles-ci subissent plusieurs pressions notamment l’augmentation de leur demande ainsi que les effets negatifs du changement climatique. Devant cette situation, le gouvernement marocain a multiplie les efforts en termes d’intervention et de politique, que ce soit au niveau technique, juridique et/ou institutionnel. Adopte en 2009, le dernier programme national d’economie d’eau et d’irrigation envisage de reconvertir des systemes d’irrigations traditionnels vers l’irrigation localisee. Ce travail vise l’evaluation des impacts economiques et sur les ressources en eau ce programme dans le sous basin de Tadla-Azilal. L’application d’un modele de gestion integree montre qu’apres reconversion, la marge brute agricole totale dans la zone augmenterait de 2%. Des changements s’effectueront aux niveaux des assolements, notamment le remplacement de certaines cultures par d’autres, devenues beaucoup plus rentables. L’application des volumes d’eau precis aux moments des pics de demande des plantes se traduira par une augmentation des rendements de toutes les cultures. Quant aux consommations en eau, celles-ci baisseront significativement au niveau de toutes les unites etudiees et les nappes souterraines seront moins sollicitees qu’avant. In Morocco, water resources are becoming increasingly scarce. In addition, they are facing several pressures, including increased demand and the negative effects of climate change. In response to this situation, the Moroccan government has increased its efforts in terms of intervention and policy, whether at the technical, legal and/or institutional level. Adopted in 2009, the latest national water saving and irrigation program envisages the conversion of traditional irrigation systems to localized irrigation. This work aims at evaluating the economic and water resources impacts of this program in the Tadla-Azilal sub-basin. The application of an integrated management model shows that after reconversion, the total agricultural gross margin in the area would increase by 2%. Changes will be made in crop rotation, including the replacement of certain crops by others that have become much more profitable. The application of specific water volumes at times of peak plant demand will result in increased yields of all crops. Finally, water consumption will be significantly reduced in all the studied units and groundwater will be less solicited than before.

La gestion de l'eau en Nouvelle-Calédonie est problématisée différemment selon le foncier sur lequel se trouve la ressource : hors ou sur terres coutumières. Aujourd'hui, la répartition inégale de la ressource en eau sur ce territoire insulaire influe également sur son partage et sa préservation. Comment peut se construire une politique de l'eau partagée dans ce contexte de pluralisme culturel et juridique complexe ? Quels sont les leviers à considérer pour nourrir les débats contemporains relatifs à la gestion de l'eau en terres coutumières ? Pour apporter quelques éléments de réponse à ces questions, nous avons interrogé les représentations, les savoirs et les pratiques liés à l'eau sur terres coutumières ainsi que les arrangements sociaux, techniques et institutionnels à l'oeuvre dans certaines communes et tribus. Il s'agit d'examiner comment et pourquoi des modes de gestion, porteurs de représentations et d'organisations sociales différentes, se rencontrent et s'articulent, parfois en générant des tensions ou des incompréhensions. À travers cet examen, cet article donne des pistes de réflexions pour faciliter la prise en compte de la diversité des pratiques et des représentations dans la fabrication et la mise en oeuvre d'une politique et gouvernance partagée de la ressource en eau.

Le gouvernement de Nouvelle-Calédonie a approuvé en mars 2019 le schéma d'orientation de la première politique de l'eau du Pays. Cette politique, appelée " Politique de l'eau partagée " (PEP), est le fruit d'une large concertation ayant impliquée environ un Calédonien sur six cents. Cet article présente une rétrospective du dispositif de concertation mis en place pour le montage de cette politique. Il se focalise particulièrement sur le déroulement du processus et sur les outils d'appui à la planification qui ont été utilisés, en partie inspiré du dispositif de co-planification, appelé COOPLAN (Co-construction et co-planification de plan d'action pour la gestion de l'eau).

International audience; "In rural areas in developing countries, the origin and persistence of prevailing narratives of failed collective action have often been explained by the existence of relations of domination. This article focuses on a case in which power relations alone cannot explain the persistence of a prevailing narrative. In a large-scale irrigation scheme in Morocco, farmers and staff from the regional agricultural development authority share the view that farmers lack the capacity to undertake successful collective action. This narrative influences public policies as well as the farmers’ self-esteem. It prevails despite rare communication between the farmers and the staff of the development authority and despite several successful examples of informal collective action at local scale. An analysis of the different actors’ discourses and of the farmers’ practices revealed the different underlying root causes of the narrative: (i) farmers and development authority staff overlook contextual factors, (ii) they confuse collective action with formal farmers’ organisations, (iii) the resistance of words where the actors describe a changed situation using the same words, and (iv) the nostalgia of the older generation for a strong state-managed scheme. As a consequence, actors consider that the failure of past collective action is the farmers’ fault, irrespective of the unfavourable context and the legacy of the past. Studies of prevailing narratives that are not simply linked to power relationships, should go beyond discourse analysis and focus on actors’ practices and on the origin of the narratives. Understanding the roots of prevailing narratives can also help challenging them." (source éditeur)

In the last 40 years in sub-Saharan Africa, huge investments have been made in inland valley (IV) development for agricultural production. Understanding the agricultural and socioeconomic impacts of IV development may help develop strategies for modernization and optimization of irrigation systems. A farmers’ perception approach was used to analyze the impacts of IV development on agricultural and hydraulic performances and on farmers’ socioeconomic conditions in the circle of Sikasso, Mali. Data were collected through focus group discussions, field visits and participatory observations in 37 inland valleys of which 17 were developed. The two main water control systems observed in developed inland valleys were (1) controlled submersion with bunded plots dedicated to rice and (2) spate irrigation regulated by weirs and cofferdams. Compared to undeveloped inland valleys, controlled submersion and spate irrigation expanded the cultivated area in the rainy season. In the dry season, crop extension was observed only in spate irrigation schemes. Higher crop productivity was observed in inland valleys located close to an urban market and in valleys cultivated during the off-season. Spate irrigation is widespread in bigger inland valleys with more water resources and is often associated with the cultivation of higher value off-season crops. Consequently, we observed farmers had individual and collective investment capacity in spate irrigation schemes than in controlled submersion and undeveloped inland valleys. The study highlighted the importance of re-thinking the design of water control facilities to enable crop diversification to improve the livelihoods of inland valley-dependent communities.

The development of smallholder irrigation is a policy priority in Ethiopia, yet little consideration has been given to the role state interventions play in enabling or constraining effective self-governance in farmer-managed schemes. To address this gap in evidence, research was conducted in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, in two irrigation sites. Focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with key informants were the primary means of collecting data on local institutional arrangements, government interventions and management challenges. An opinion poll provided additional insights. Our case studies indicate that effective self-governance cannot easily be crafted by external actors. The introduction of modern irrigation technologies and formalized management arrangements has fostered dependency on external support and increased state influence in key decision-making processes, whilst traditional water user associations remain largely autonomous but have little access to financial resources. State interventions have also been poorly tailored to local context with negative consequences for performance, although there have been some successes where traditional arrangements for water management have been integrated into new institutions. The incorporation of farmer perspectives into performance assessments could facilitate more responsive interventions, and remains an important area of irrigation research and practice. (Resume d'auteur)