Connected and disrupted hydrosocial territories: the making of modern socionatures through inter-basin water transfers

Abstract

Actual and projected water scarcity has accelerated the scale of hydrological infrastructure and the number of Inter-Basin Water Transfers (IBWTs), which move freshwater from one geographically distinct river catchment or basin to another. IBWTs are supply-side programs that pose distinct water governance challenges. If all projected IBWTs are completed by 2050, the volume of water transferred would be 48% of global water withdrawals. This article examines IBWTs from a socionatural perspective. Building on the political ecology scholarship of hydrosocial territories, I probe how IWBTs co-constitute and reconfigure socionatural relations, and how these are experienced by communities and ecologies in unequal ways. I discuss how IBWTs bring about changes, what features of hydrosocial territories they influence, and what conflicts emerge. For 29 IBWTs I define their multiple socionatural dimensions – biophysical, socioeconomic and governance – and the interrelations between them. IBWTs generally degrade biophysical and socioeconomic conditions for communities in water-sending "donor" basins, and condition future territorial reconfigurations. Water governance institutions are ill-equipped to take on the challenge that IBWTs bring in governing across multiple basins, indicated by the conflicts they generate. These concern defense of territory and ways of life, as well as allocation disputes. Political conflicts emerge because worlds shift irrevocably when IBWTs become fixtures of hydrosocial territories.

Fabricating Irrigators: Contested Hydrosocial Territories and Subject-Making in Spain’s Tagus–Segura Interbasin Transfer Arena

“…Above all, large-scale hydraulic infrastructure such as the TSA has impacts beyond water redistribution. It creates conditions, new subjects, and new relationships that governing institutions at multiple scales may not be able to react to quickly enough or have existing powers entrenched in [9,[99][100][101][102][103][104]. Likewise, the spread of on-plot irrigation modernization has become a silver bullet in policy, but different subjects react to it in very different ways, producing not only varied imaginaries but, with them, different territories.…”

“…Interbasin water transfers (IBWTs) such as the TSA problematize water resource governance by piercing across water basins, these being discrete water governance units as encapsulated in the integrated water resource management paradigm [9,44,45]. Of continuing interest here is how the TSA as a conduit and infrastructural artifact mediates and constructs regante and river subjects on either side of the TSA.…”

“…The history and role of regantes in rural development has likewise shifted and changed, with current trends in Spanish rural depopulation [8] making their position even more important. Technological and infrastructural advancements have also multiplied water sources (from surface and groundwater to deeper groundwater, wastewater, and sea water), their geographical reach through intra and inter-basin transfers [9], the capital and technical knowledge needed to realize these, and with them, growing complexity and interscalar socionatural relations between regantes, water, and territory [10][11][12].…”