Institutional arrangements for water governance

Hassenforder, Émeline; Barone, Sylvain

doi:10.1080/07900627.2018.1431526

Cited by 36 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 86 publications

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“…The rest of the papers in this issue include a state-of-the-art review of institutional arrangements for water governance (Hassenforder & Barone, 2018), a cost-benefit analysis of river restoration in Israel (Becker, Greenfeld, & Shamir, 2018), a study of the effectiveness of investments in irrigation modernization in Madhya Pradesh (Sinha, Gilmont, Hope, & Dadson, 2018) and several excellent analyses on groundwater: competing uses and stakeholder rights to groundwater in the Fuencaliente Aquifer (Berbel, Expósito, & Borrego-Marín, 2018); groundwater modelling of the Mancha Oriental Aquifer (Sanz et al, 2018); and an assessment of groundwater rejuvenation in Gujarat (Kumar & Perry, 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

Water crisis and water wars: myths and realities

Biswas

Tortajada

2019

International Journal of Water Resources Development

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In recent decades, 'water crisis' and 'water wars' have become increasing concerns of water professionals, political scientists and the media. Both start with the simplistic and erroneous assumption that the quantity of water available in the world for human use is limited. This, coupled with the fact that population, urbanization and industrial activities are all steadily increasing, is used to predict that the world is facing a water crisis of unprecedented proportion, which may even result in wars between countries over water. Projections in recent years by major international organizations have been consistently dire. For example, in 2009, the 2030 Water Resources Group projected that the world would face 40% water deficit under a business-as-usual climate scenario. In 2016, UNEP claimed that by 2030 almost 'half of the world's population will suffer from severe water stress'. In 2017, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon proclaimed that by 2030 the 'world may face 40% shortfall in water'. The World Bank has claimed that by 2050, about 1.8 billion people will be living under acute water scarcity. In 2018, the World Bank and the UN claimed that 36% of the global population lives in water-scarce areas. The World Resources Institute (WRI) claimed that 33 countries will face 'extremely high water stress'. According to the WRI analysis, seven countries will jointly rank as number one in terms of the most water-stressed countries of the world. All of them are in the Middle East, except for Singapore. These are frightening statistics that have been repeated ad nauseam by academics, water professionals, political figures and international organizations without any serious scrutiny of the validity of their underlying assumptions, the methodology of their estimates, or the national and international data-sets available and their quality. The fundamental question that arises is, are such frightening forecasts correct, or should they be taken with a very big pinch of salt? Probabilities are, it is likely to be the latter. First, as every school kid knows, water is a renewable resource. It is not like oil, natural gas or coal, which after being used break down into different components and cannot be used again. Water, by contrast, can be used, and the wastewater generated can be treated and reused. Properly managed, this process can continue indefinitely. Thus, how much renewable water a country has is not a meaningful metric. When the World Commission on Water started its work, one of the first decisions it made was that no attempt would be made to estimate how much water a country, or the world, had that could be used, because it is not a meaningful number. How much water is available for use will depend primarily on how well this resource is managed. Yet most international and national institutions have decided that if a country has less than 1700 m 3 per person of renewable freshwater, it is suffering from water stress. If this figure falls below 1000 m 3 per person, it is facing scarcity.

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confidence: 99%

Water crisis and water wars: myths and realities

Biswas

Tortajada

2019

International Journal of Water Resources Development

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“…make it difficult to modify, as do the natural constraints (climate, topography, etc. ), and planning and finance cycles that typically take place on decadal or multi-decennial scales [12]. There are similar observations from other infrastructure-heavy sectors like urban transport, where physical spaces themselves can become embedded in processes of inertia due to existing infrastructure networks and policy [18].…”

Section: Mechanisms Of Path Dependency In Water Governance Literaturementioning

confidence: 77%

“…Historical institutionalism focuses on the creation, persistence, and change of institutions over time. In this discipline, actors and organizations act within institutional arrangements whose structure and functioning can only be fully-or at least better-understood when embedded in a historical perspective [12,13]. Studies from historical institutionalism typically offer a detailed investigation of carefully chosen, comparatively informed case studies for uncovering sources of stability and change [14].…”

Section: Identifying and Explaining A Case Of Path Dependencymentioning

confidence: 99%

From Power to Legitimacy—Explaining Historical and Contemporary Water Conflict at Yesa Reservoir (Spain) and Gross Reservoir (USA) Using Path Dependency

Turley

2021

Sustainability

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Conflict over new dams and reservoirs is well-studied, but less is known about controversies over the reoperation of existing water infrastructure. This paper presents two cases of reoperation that have been embroiled in conflict: the Gross Reservoir Expansion Project in Colorado, United States, and the Yesa Reservoir Regrowth project in Aragon and Navarra, Spain. A historical analysis of each of the cases relies on process tracing, reaching back to their construction in the 1950s up to present day, and a cross-case comparison distills findings on the causes of historical and contemporary conflict. The paper adds empirical evidence to the phenomenon of path dependency, and argues that a transition of the dominant mechanism of institutional reproduction occurs in the cases—from power to legitimacy—which in turn informs us about the historical and present-day conflicts. We find that through the contemporary reoperation, water service providers are experiencing a legitimacy crisis related to the quickly-evolving values of water users, and their access to competing sources of knowledge and expertise.

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“…While various insights into interactive arrangements between science and management organizations are available-especially in long-term observatories where local institutional arrangements facilitate collaborative practices-the coordination mechanisms between public institutions is still poorly documented [42]. Only a few evolutional perspective have been found in the literature [9,43,44], but original methodological developments are increasingly needed to better connect knowledge to action [41] and to gain clarity about roles and responsibilities among institutions [43]. This paper intends to fill this gap by proposing a framework for transdisciplinary capitalization studies, analyzing temporal evolution of environmental conservation projects in a specific place.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Collaborative Process in Environmental Projects, a Place-Based Coevolution Perspective

et al. 2021

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Environmental research and management organizations are mutually dependent when it comes to produce and use knowledge in favor of responsible action in an increasingly uncertain world. Still, science and practice interfacing remains a challenge when it comes to implementing and sustaining a collaborative process. In this paper, we develop a descriptive framework to study the coevolution of scientific and planning activities embedded in a territorial system. Scientists and managers dynamically interact through institutional arrangements, operationalization of knowledge and information and communication tools. We propose an approach to systematically document transdisciplinary pathways and characterize the bounding process between organizations on a typical case-study, the coastal Thau territoire (Mediterranean Sea, France). By tracing, illustrating and analyzing coupled trajectories of environmental sciences and planning for the last decades, the Systemic Timeline Multistep methodology tackles cross-fertilization mechanisms. The relational analysis draws on the elaboration of a synchronic timeline to question co-evolution and grasp causal mechanisms of research projects interactions with management pathways. Its application on the Thau territoire shows that scientific activities and public actions shaped each other in a continuous process of interaction. It also gives insights into the contributive roles of long-term place-based research and intermediate organizations for the emergence of new sociotechnical arrangements.

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Institutional arrangements for water governance

Cited by 36 publications

References 86 publications

Water crisis and water wars: myths and realities

Water crisis and water wars: myths and realities

From Power to Legitimacy—Explaining Historical and Contemporary Water Conflict at Yesa Reservoir (Spain) and Gross Reservoir (USA) Using Path Dependency

The Collaborative Process in Environmental Projects, a Place-Based Coevolution Perspective

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