Water injustice Paper

OK.

So this is lecture

four in week one.

It's about understanding

struggles for water justice.

If you've watched

lectures one to three,

the video of the Al

Jazeera discussion,

read [INAUDIBLE]

idea of justice,

and the Santa Cruz

Declaration, and at least

skimmed through

the third reading,

then you've learned

a lot already.

In this lecture, I want to

consolidate some of the lessons

from this week, and

particularly to talk you

through some key ideas

from the third reading

by Marguerite Zwarteen

and Rutgerd Boelens.

At the end of this lecture, I

will describe your assignment

for this week, the

first portfolio essay.

What Zwarteen and Boelens

say in the abstract is this--

this article

provides a framework

for understanding water

problems as problems of justice,

drawing on wider environmental

justice approaches informed

by interdisciplinary

ontologies that

define water as

simultaneously natural

or material, and social.

And based on an

explicit acceptance

that water problems

are always contested.

Yes.

I too have trouble with

the idea of ontologies.

I have to look it up frequently.

It is a set of

concepts and categories

in a subject area or domain

that shows their properties

and the relations between them.

I think you can replace

ontology in this case

with a set of ideas.

In this paper,

Zwarteen and Boelens

are doing at least two things.

First, they give us a

set of useful ideas--

a framework-- that

helps us understand

struggles for water justice.

This is the part I

find most useful.

Then they challenge

mainstream ideas

about the governance

of water resources,

such as the integrated

water resources management,

or IWRM approach,

that has become spread

across the world in the

last several decades.

They argue that

IWRM may facilitate

processes that are neither

democratic nor participatory

in practice.

We will be talking more

about this issue next week.

I want to focus in this lecture

on two ideas in the paper

that I think

particularly useful.

The first is the idea

of situating knowledges.

Then second, their idea

that water contestation

plays out at four different

social levels or echelons.

The idea of situating

knowledges comes

from a call for a reflexive

understanding made

in the work of Donna Haraway,

a professor at UC-Santa Cruz.

Zwarteen and Boelens use

this perspective to suggest

determining what is

unfair, inaccurate,

or incomplete cannot be done

from an outside position,

but always implies engagements

and identifications with those

whose lives and worlds are

the objects of inquiry.

Researchers studying

water justice, they argue,

should draw less on

the realities observed

from outside, but recognize

that knowledges and injustices

are situated.

That is, they are

arising and experienced

in a particular social context.

Injustices are internal

to the power establishing

a particular order--

a particular water order, sorry.

We can get a glimpse of this

idea in this short section

of an interview with Betty

[INAUDIBLE], an activist

and lawyer I

interviewed in Kenya.

We will come back to see

more of this interview later

in the course.

Here she describes

how she is working

on the ground with

informal groups

to understand women's issues on

gender, economic empowerment,

rights, and the roles women

play in conflict situations.

For example, she is

working with youth

to build economic

opportunities and with children

to understand prevalent

myths around AIDS/HIV.

[INAUDIBLE] is using

the situated knowledges

of different groups in

informal settlements

rather than abstract

ideas of justice.

Would water justice be

different in rural areas

compared to cities?

Certainly, because

the largest population

that never ever are able

to enjoy the right to water

are the poor communities, those

in the informal settlements.

But we also realize

that when you

talk about people in the

informal settlements,

we're also talking about issues

around poverty, the challenges

that they have to be able

to survive every single day.

Once we state that

water is a right,

we must be able to recognize

that not everybody is equal.

And so the sort of

communities, the populations

that you find within

the informal settlement,

or in the rural

areas, is certainly

different with those

you find in [INAUDIBLE].

Economically, socially

very, very different.

And therefore, it becomes

important for institutions

and states to be

able to acclimate

that difference, particularly

economically and socially.

Because then the right follows

the sort of differences

that people have.

So that when you start

looking at it in terms

of those differences,

then one of the things

you have to ask

yourself is, how do I

ensure that this

right is to enjoy it

without putting in place

a number of barriers

that will stop them?

Then contestations.

I find really

useful, illuminating

Zwarteen and

Boelens' description

of four levels at which water

and water justice is contested.

This [INAUDIBLE] a powerful

sociological illumination

on the breadth and complexity

of struggles over water justice.

Contestation, they argue, takes

place on at least four levels

or echelons.

First, there is contest over the

distribution of physical water.

Who has access to water, to

hydraulic infrastructure,

to the material and financial

means to use and manage

water resources?

Second, there are contests

over laws and institutions,

waged over how to

define the rules, norms,

and laws that determine water

distribution and allocation.

Then third, water

rights are also

contested through

struggles over authority.

Who decides about questions

of water distribution?

Who is entitled to participate

in water law and policy making?

Whose opinions and norms are

listened to and accommodated?

Last, their fourth level

of contestation, discourses

of water problems and

solutions are also

shared by contestation.

That is, the very framing

of problems themselves

are shaped by

struggles of power.

You will be able to see ideas

of distributive justice,

particularly in the

first of these contests.

Then the remaining three levels

or echelons of contestation

expand our idea of

procedural justice

and how that is conceived and

subject to power relations.

I want to illustrate

some of these insights

by looking at a decades-old

long contestation

or struggle over a canal

irrigation project in India.

Over the last two decades,

tens of thousands of people

have been mobilized in a

water struggle movement led

by the Landless Laborers and

Toiling Peasants Organization,

SKSS in southern

Maharashtra, India.

Amongst several

achievements, the movement

has influenced the

state government

to redesign and reassign

water distribution

from the large Tebmhu

lift irrigation scheme

so that a much larger number

of poor households in three

districts can receive water.

So this movement is about

distributive justice.

Who gets water for irrigation?

But it is also about the

three levels of contestation

of procedural justice--

the rules and institutions

of the project,

who has authority to

design the project,

the technical, apolitical

discourses of engineers

reflected in the design.

I have learned

about this struggle

from the writing of

several journalists

and committed

public intellectuals

working with the movement.

KJ [INAUDIBLE] and Sima Kulkarni

are activist intellectuals

I have met.

They have worked in this

area for several decades

and they have helped me

understand this struggle.

I have drawn some crude

figures or diagrams

to simplify some of what

was happening in this water

struggle movement.

This first figure

illustrates a situation

of farming without irrigation.

Agriculture is rain-fed.

But even then, households in

the countryside are not equal.

Some farmers-- they are

often called rich peasants

because they have the resources

to expand their production

and accumulate resources--

they have more land

and money, if you like.

And can employ others

to work on their farms.

The people they employ are

small and middle peasants.

They farm small plots of land.

But it is insufficient for

their households to survive.

They also need to work

for the rich peasants

to get money to buy stuff.

This figure describes some of

the effects of the introduction

of irrigation.

Water carried in canals

is made available

through the operation

of large lift pumps.

And it is the rich

peasants who are best

able to use this water.

They have better connections

to get water delivered to them,

money to hire labor, to

divert water to the crops,

and more land to use the water.

Government officials tend

to understand their needs.

It's their discourse

in thinking about it.

Their farm output is

increased substantially

by irrigation water.

They sell more and their

income is increased.

The greater sale of crops also

creates some extra employment

in mills for

processing the grain

and shops for selling

irrigation equipment and others.

So in this case,

before the movement,

the rich peasants have

preferential access to water.

Quietly, they have

won the contest

over the distribution of water.

How do they do this?

Research suggests that they have

close contact with local water

department officials that

enables them to influence

local allocation rules.

At a higher level, the

ideas behind the design

of the irrigation

scheme, the discourse

of the legislators

and engineers,

is about efficient use of

water to increase production.

This sort of discourse

is unlikely to give

serious attention to

questions of justice--

the needs of landless

laborers and toiling peasants.

In the next slide, I

show how their movement

changes some bits of

the irrigation scheme.

This figure illustrates

what happens

as a result of the

movement putting pressure

on the state government.

A wide range of protests

by the Landless Laborers

and Toiling Peasants

Organization over many years

influenced the state government

to redesign and reassign

water distribution from

the irrigation scheme

so that a much larger number

of poor households in three

districts can receive water.

You have met Peter

Mollinga earlier.

His study of the Tungabhadra

Canal irrigation system

is pertinent to this

struggle and the influence

of rich peasants.

Mollinga's research describes

how the Tungabhadra Canal

irrigation project was designed

to provide water for all.

It was called a protective

irrigation scheme,

because it would provide

water for all, helping

to protect against famine.

Larger farmers or rich

peasants, he found,

were able to influence local

elections in their favor

and to influence the

operation of the system.

Mollinga describes

the rise of a class

of powerful, large farmers

colluding with irrigation

managers and

legislators to enable

intensive production of

water intensive crops

instead of providing

water for all.

What happened in the

case of the agitation

around the Timbhu lift

irrigation scheme?

The SKSS, or organization of

toiling peasants and landless

laborers, spearheaded

an agitation

for equitable

sharing of the water

with a vision of equitable

and sustainable prosperity.

They were able, through a

series of confrontations

and negotiations, to

get the water department

to agree to the

principle and feasibility

of equitable sharing in one area

of the canal irrigation scheme.

That area is treated

as a pilot project

in a small area of the

whole scheme with the idea

that sometime,

restructuring the scheme

along equitable and sustainable

lines would be possible.

So it is a limited

victory for justice

after a long, hard

fought struggle.

Did anyone say getting

social justice was easy?

This type of sustained agitation

around irrigation water

does not happen often.

The SKSS was backed by a

group of committed public

intellectuals from that state.

These are people

like KJ [INAUDIBLE]

and his colleague,

Sima Kulkarni.

They were experts in both

the social power and farming

methods of that countryside,

and in the technologies

of canal systems.

That's what led to the situation

I depict in figure three.

Contestation on many levels

using situated knowledges

and expertise to shift

the language and framing

of the water problem.

You may want to read more

of the Zwarteen and Boelens

paper at this stage.

It may take more

than one effort--

first a skim read then a more

detailed reading of the parts

that look interesting.

In truth, I have read

this paper many times.

And I get more out

of it each time.

I attempted to edit and simplify

this paper before publication.

Still, I find it

something of a bear.

There's a lot in it.

But these ideas will

get clearer as you

work through upcoming weeks.

I want to talk now

about your assignment,

your first portfolio essay.

As I mentioned in the second

lecture for this week,

your writing assignment is to

find a news article or media

report on a case

of water injustice

or a movement around

water questions.

Then you need to describe

the case in all its facets

and bring out the

issues of justice.

What water uses are involved?

Where is it happening?

What social groups

are involved--

the more powerful and

the less powerful?

You can use ideas

from the readings

and lectures this week.

So from this last reading

by Zwarteen and Boelens,

you could use the idea of

four levels of contestation

about water.

Can you see indications

of tension or contest

at one or more of these levels?

Can you identify differences

between the discourse

of the government and the

influential, on the one hand,

and the situated knowledge of

those who are less powerful

and may be marginalized

on the other?

Are there arguments about

scarcity and justice?

Then you need to

write a short essay

on this case of water injustice

and post it to Canvas.

There will be a description

of this assignment on Canvas,

and you post your essay there.

So I end the lectures

for week one here.

And you will have a different

instructor, Kirsten Rudestam,

taking up issues next week.