Creating a hydrosocial territory: water and agriculture in the Liwa Oasis

Abstract

This article presents the Liwa Oasis as a hydrosocial territory. It is defined by its natural resource, social, economic, and political context and we show how these manifest in policy and practice. The article identifies these components through analysis of the political economy of water management and agricultural production systems. Two distinct hydrosocial periods are defined: from independence in 1971 to the formation of agencies with water sustainability remits in 2006, and then from 2010 to the present, when subsidy regimes incentivized changes to cropping in existing agricultural production systems. The changes between these periods reflect alterations in the hydrosocial cycle stemming from natural resource degradation and from how agricultural policy responded to it, while still meeting social stability and food security objectives. In Liwa, water management and agricultural production regimes reflect the distributive nature of the state, in that agricultural subsidies and payments are a significant source of supplementary income for UAE citizens. The current hydrosocial cycle leads to major groundwater resource degradation, which is beginning to pose a major challenge. This disruption is at the heart of the hydrosocial dialectic playing out now in Liwa: resource degradation and depletion will ultimately require new patterns of resource utilization. Arriving at new practices will require new laws, policies and modes of governance, which will alter the political, social, and economic context.

Beyond rules and norms: Heterogeneity, ubiquity, and visibility of groundwaters

“…Complicated markets for groundwater emerged, but no physical, social, cultural, or institutional limits to extraction were inherited from the step wells. The oases of northern Africa and the middle east provide many examples of how deep well technology has created the opportunity for some individuals to evade limits that maintain those traditional systems (Fragaszy et al, 2021; Ghazouani, Marleti, et al, 2012).…”

“…Small-scale irrigation systems are also built on springs. Oases, where water springs up in otherwise arid conditions, are notable agricultural centers throughout north Africa, the middle east and central Asia (Fragaszy et al, 2021). The oases of southern Tunisia, for example, were made productive using an ingenious social organization that is said to have been established by the scientist Ibn Chabat in the 13th century (Ghazouani, Marleti, et al, 2012).…”

Post-crisis risk management: water, community, and adaptation in a South Australian irrigation district

“…This complexity provides justification for attempts to manage systems holistically, through whole-of-basin plans and strategies that seek to allocate water resources, identify and manage risks, and mitigate potential crises. Through this governance process, localized water management tends to become nested within ever-larger jurisdictional spheres and territorial configurations, from local catchments, through regional, basinwide, and national institutions, to sometimes supranational governance arrangements (Boelens et al 2016, Götz and Middleton 2020, Fragaszy et al 2021. Individual water users such as farmers drawing from a creek or bore for irrigation become responsible not only to their immediate neighbors and local community, but to others, often hundreds of kilometers away.…”