- The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- The Political Dimensions of Water
- Water and Poverty: Pathways of Escape and Descent
- Knowing Equity When We See It: Water Equity in Contemporary Global Contexts
- Gender and Water
- Monitoring the Progressive Realization of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation: Frontier Analysis as a Basis to Enhance Human Rights Accountability
- Indigenous Peoples and Water Justice in a Globalizing World
- Re-Imagined Communities: The Transformational Potential of Interspecies Ethnography in Water Policy Development
- The Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Arid Regions: The Politics of Problemsheds
- The Nexus of Energy and Water Quality
- What Is Food-water and Why Do We not Account for It?
- Unintended Water Allocation: Gaining Share from Indirect Action and Inaction
- Why Scale Matters: Borderless Water and Bordered Thinking
- Local Water Politics
- Rethinking Urban Water (In)formality
- Innovation and Trends in Water Law
- Economics of Water
- The Political Economy of Water Markets: 40 Years of Debates, Experiments and Lessons Learned
- The Business of Water
- China’s Water Pricing Policies
- Managing Transboundary Rivers to Avert Conflict and Facilitate Cooperation
- Transboundary Unbound: Redefining Water Conflict and Cooperation for Contemporary Challenges that Extend beyond Watersheds, Regions, and Water
- “Something Has to Yield”: Climate Change Transforming Transboundary Water Governance (as We Know It)
- River Basin Organizations and the Governance of Transboundary Watercourses
- The Absence of Water Conflicts in the Developing World: Evidence from Africa
- Integrated Water Resources Management
- Transfer, Diffusion, Adaptation, and Translation of Water Policy Models
- Climate Information and Water Management: Building Adaptive Capacity or Business as Usual?
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter argues for a greater commitment to water equity and a transformation of water governance. Marrying contradictory principles flawed the global water governance paradigm that emerged in the 1990s. Efficiency and equity are often incompatible, and unequal power relations are embedded in many longstanding water institutions and concepts. The chapter suggests that the epistemology of water and the vocabulary and fundamental concepts used to understand water, including its socio-nature and close relation with politics, must be transformed. It introduces five “directional principles” to guide thinking about a transformational governance. It also reviews these principles in light of four real-world cases. Decades of water scholarship provide a critical lens to search for equity, but recognizing equity when it occurs in specific contexts, such as the Colorado River Delta or the city of Detroit, where new networks have emerged to challenge existing rules and power relations, is also vital.
Keywords: socio-nature, transformational governance, networks, global water governance, water equity
Margaret Wilder is Associate Professor in the School of Geography and Development and Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona.
Helen Ingram is a Research Fellow at the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Irvine.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- The Political Dimensions of Water
- Water and Poverty: Pathways of Escape and Descent
- Knowing Equity When We See It: Water Equity in Contemporary Global Contexts
- Gender and Water
- Monitoring the Progressive Realization of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation: Frontier Analysis as a Basis to Enhance Human Rights Accountability
- Indigenous Peoples and Water Justice in a Globalizing World
- Re-Imagined Communities: The Transformational Potential of Interspecies Ethnography in Water Policy Development
- The Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Arid Regions: The Politics of Problemsheds
- The Nexus of Energy and Water Quality
- What Is Food-water and Why Do We not Account for It?
- Unintended Water Allocation: Gaining Share from Indirect Action and Inaction
- Why Scale Matters: Borderless Water and Bordered Thinking
- Local Water Politics
- Rethinking Urban Water (In)formality
- Innovation and Trends in Water Law
- Economics of Water
- The Political Economy of Water Markets: 40 Years of Debates, Experiments and Lessons Learned
- The Business of Water
- China’s Water Pricing Policies
- Managing Transboundary Rivers to Avert Conflict and Facilitate Cooperation
- Transboundary Unbound: Redefining Water Conflict and Cooperation for Contemporary Challenges that Extend beyond Watersheds, Regions, and Water
- “Something Has to Yield”: Climate Change Transforming Transboundary Water Governance (as We Know It)
- River Basin Organizations and the Governance of Transboundary Watercourses
- The Absence of Water Conflicts in the Developing World: Evidence from Africa
- Integrated Water Resources Management
- Transfer, Diffusion, Adaptation, and Translation of Water Policy Models
- Climate Information and Water Management: Building Adaptive Capacity or Business as Usual?
- Author Index
- Subject Index
