Navigating diverse visions of water justice within unlikely alliances

The notion of water justice is increasingly invoked by both scholars and activists working to address issues of inequity in water governance. However, water justice means different things to different people, which can present challenges when building alliances among diverse actors. In this paper, we examine these dynamics in the context of unlikely alliances formed among environmental, ranching, and Indigenous actors in response to ruralto-urban water transfer projects in the arid Great Basin region of the western United States. Through more than 60 interviews across two cases in eastern California and eastern Nevada, we find that though these actors aligned in their opposition to projects they viewed as unjust, they had different views of what justice would look like. We discuss their diverse visions of water justice in relation to notions of distributive, procedural, restorative, and transformative justice. While many of these visions overlapped and complemented each other, others were more starkly divided by their orientation towards the current state of water governance, with some seeking to protect it and others seeking to transform it. Building alliances thus required some to strategically focus on the common ground around protecting existing water allocations and systems of accountability, while separately pursuing broader visions of repairing past harms and transforming underlying systems. This research demonstrates that understandings of water justice are diverse and dynamic and that they shape and are shaped by alliance-building. It underscores the methodological value of asking people to articulate not only how they ally against injustices but also what they would consider a just outcome and how they approach collaboration when there are different visions of water justice.