The political construction and fixing of water overabundance: rural–urban flood-risk politics in coastal Ecuador

Hidalgo-Bastidas, Juan Pablo; Boelens, Rutgerd

doi:10.1080/02508060.2019.1573560

Cited by 16 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 41 publications

(45 reference statements)

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“…(See Patricio Silva for a discussion of the differences between technicians, technocrats, politicians, and bureaucrats [52]. For their empirical manifestation in Ecuadorian water and natural resource governance, see [53][54][55][56], and for their relationship with divergent Ecuadorian water user groups and the politics of national water governance, see [12,13,27,35,[57][58][59][60][61][62][63]). In policy practice this entails under-estimating the negative socio-environmental impacts and over-valuing the benefits that such water development projects and mega-constructions will bring [21,56,64,65].…”

Section: Anti-dam Social Movement: An Approach From the Politics Of Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hydraulic Order and the Politics of the Governed: The Baba Dam in Coastal Ecuador

Hidalgo-Bastidas

Boelens

2019

Water

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Mega-dams are commonly designed, constructed, and implemented under governors’ rule and technocrats’ knowledge. Such hydraulic infrastructures are characteristically presented as if based on monolithic technical consensus and unidirectional engineering. However, those who are affected by these water interventions, and eventually governed by the changes brought by them, often dispute the forms of knowledge, norms, morals, and operation and use rules embedded in mega-hydraulic engineers’ designs. Protests may also deeply influence the design and development of the technological artifacts. By using approaches related to the Social Construction of Technology and Partha Chatterjee’s politics of the governed, this article shows (i) how protests against the Baba dam in coastal Ecuador greatly influenced the dam’s designs, protecting communities’ lands from being flooded; and (ii) how, at the same time, techno-political decision-makers deployed hydraulic design as a dividing rule, turning potentially affected communities against each other. We conclude that megadam designs are shaped by the power interplay among governors and governed, with the latter being internally differentiated. By critically analyzing the role of technology development—materializing changing ‘political context and relationships’—we show how contested and adapted dam design may favor some stakeholders while simultaneously affecting others and weakening united dam-resistance movements.

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Section: Anti-dam Social Movement: An Approach From the Politics Of Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hydraulic Order and the Politics of the Governed: The Baba Dam in Coastal Ecuador

Hidalgo-Bastidas

Boelens

2019

Water

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“…The paper contributes to the interpretative literature on flood risk management. This literature often focuses on analysing the different discursive positions within the debate on flood risk management (Hidalgo-Bastidas & Boelens, 2019;Hurlbert & Gupta, 2016;Kaufmann & Wiering, 2017;Kuhlicke et al, 2016;Merz et al, 2014;Moon et al, 2017;Rashid, 2011;Solman & Henderson, 2019;Wesselink & Warner, 2010), or explains changes in dominant policy discourses and how that correlates to changes in flood risk management strategies (Van der Brugge et al, 2005;Butler & Pidgeon, 2011;Van Buuren et al, 2016;Garrelts & Lange, 2011;Gralepois et al, 2016;Haque et al, 2019;Immink, 2007;Kaufmann, Lewandowski, et al, 2016). However, only a few explain how these emerging discourses were influenced by institutional factors (Van Buuren et al, 2016;Garrelts & Lange, 2011;Harries & Penning-Rowsell, 2011;Kaufmann, 2017a;Wiering & Arts, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of discourses in understanding institutional stability and change – an analysis of Dutch flood risk governance

Kaufmann

Wiering

2021

Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning

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Societies are faced with aggravating environmental challenge. To respond to these challenges with desired institutional changes, we need to understand the processes of institutional stability and change. This paper adds to the literature on institutional dynamics by focusing particularly on the various roles of discourses. It examines the interaction of emerging discourses and pre-existing governance arrangements and their outcomes; not by zooming in on a specific policy concept but by scrutinising the long-term development of a policy domain, namely flood risk governance (FRG) in the Netherlands. Based on an abductive analysis, we created a typology that shows the influence of emerging discourses on stability or change of pre-existing governance arrangements. At the one end of the idealtypical continuum, the pre-existing arrangement remains relatively unchanged or is even strengthened. At the other end of the continuum, little remains of the preexisting arrangement, i.e. emerging discourses are institutionalised, substituting existing institutions with new rules or organisations. Between these two extremes, several hybrid types can be identified (e.g. absorbing, merging, layering, weakening). Although there is clear evidence of incremental changes and adjustments in the Dutch FRG, fundamental changes are missing due to the path dependency of the strong hydro-engineering governance arrangement.

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“…Securitizing cities under climate change also entails landscape-scale efforts to ensure that cities have enough water, electricity, and flood protection. Cities are extractive and dependent on “rural hinterlands” for basic resources—water, energy, food, and natural resources that supply commodities (Cronon 1992 ; Duarte-Abadía and Boelens 2019 ; Hidalgo-Bastidas and Boelens 2019 ; Kaika and Swyngedouw 2011 ; Silver 2015 ). The impacts of climate change on both rural and urban areas inject new volatility into what historian William Cronon calls the “elaborate urban-rural hierarchy” (Cronon 1992 : 378).…”

Section: Territorial (Urban-rural) Dynamics Of Extractive Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

The New Climate Urbanism: Old Capitalism with Climate Characteristics

Shi

2020

Climate Urbanism

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This chapter argues that emerging urban responses to climate change are not necessarily new or urban, but instead recapitulate capitalist processes reproducing spatial, social, and ecological inequality. Drawing on examples from US and Asian metropolises, this chapter shows that climate resilience is becoming a new arena where cities compete for economic development and extract resources from rural or other less powerful jurisdictions in aid of their own security under climate change. Climate urbanism’s competitive and extractive dynamics indicate not a transformative movement towards just and sustainable development, but a Freudian death-drive capitalism with climate characteristics. The chapter concludes with reflections on issues of scale and sources of inspiration that can reshape the growing industry behind global climate urbanism.

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The political construction and fixing of water overabundance: rural–urban flood-risk politics in coastal Ecuador

Cited by 16 publications

References 41 publications

Hydraulic Order and the Politics of the Governed: The Baba Dam in Coastal Ecuador

Hydraulic Order and the Politics of the Governed: The Baba Dam in Coastal Ecuador

The role of discourses in understanding institutional stability and change – an analysis of Dutch flood risk governance

The New Climate Urbanism: Old Capitalism with Climate Characteristics

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