Preface

A familiar adage of our time is that water is to the twenty-first century what oil was to the twentieth – a contested resource for which the fate of entire nations hangs in the balance. Strategic and other comparisons between oil and water are somewhat problematic, however. While disputes over water are growing due to climate change, demands for food and energy that are increasing, and with the advent of mega-cities, nations rarely resort to violence to resolve water conflicts. Moreover, unlike petroleum, which can be exhausted, there is no upper bound to available fresh water if we manage it well.

In many regions of the world such as the Indus, Mekong, or Colorado basins, the need to share over-stressed supplies and to cooperatively manage water infrastructure often leads to collaboration, however precariously. In fact, there are long-standing approaches to conjoint management of water arising out of needs for food, hydropower, and domestic supply (Harrington 2014).

This book analyzes the processes that determine how water issues get the attention of decision-makers, and how disputes over water arise within and between countries. We also examine how varied sources of power: economic, legal, and expert, determine its governance – how we allocate, use, and protect it. Finally, we consider the purposes that direct decisions over cost, availability, and access to water. In this wide-ranging analysis, we also provide timely examples from every continent.

Most of all, we consider appropriate arrangements to equitably address water problems. By “governance arrangements,” we mean combinations of public agencies and civil society entities that cooperate to manage water problems. Among these problems are the challenge of water pollution, one of the world’s gravest health and environmental threats, and that is aggravated by poverty, rapid industrialization, efforts to produce more food, and by newer “contaminants of concern” that are often beyond the reach of law and regulation.

Special agreements to govern water, such as river basin compacts and confidence building efforts to resolve trans-boundary disputes, are also assessed. And, attention is paid to controversies surrounding desalination, wastewater reuse, rainwater harvesting and other nonconventional supply alternatives. Finally, we examine growing threats to established governance arrangements posed by drought and flood.

Chapter 1 introduces a framework for understanding water politics: anchored by process (the interaction of agencies and groups), power (the ability to influence decisions), and purpose (the goals of participants). These are the major factors that determine how water politics is conducted, by whom, and toward what ends.

Chapter 2 discusses the political challenges of water supply. We begin with this issue because it is arguably the basis for all other aspects of water politics. Finding, acquiring, and delivering water is of paramount urgency, especially in the world’s burgeoning mega-cities where a plurality of the planet’s population now resides. These cities are grappling with the means to provide ample, safe drinking water supplies through leveraging resources to improve infrastructure on one hand, while facing the resistance of city residents who are asked to pay for these improvements on the other. It is also an urgent priority for feeding growing populations, especially in developing nations. To comprehend these issues, in urban and rural areas alike, requires that we first understand debates over control, ownership, and marketing of water for all needs.

As important as water supply is, degradation of that supply can undermine efforts to make it readily available. Thus, chapter 3 examines why, despite some 40 years of progress, water quality remains one of the world’s most serious environmental challenges. Following a discussion of quantity with one on quality also makes logical sense, we feel, especially since pollution is a ubiquitous global issue. Cases from the US, France, Russia, and China, as well as recent efforts to remove “microbeads” from the water environment, utilize natural means of pollution attenuation, and trade pollution rights, are also discussed. In the past half-century, nations have extended water quality protection beyond human health to encompass the environment itself.

Chapter 4 discusses the so-called water, food, and energy nexus. Some of the most important debates over water politics revolve around making energy and food more plentiful and affordable, and balancing these goals against the desire to protect water quality; achieve integrated management of these resources; and use hydraulic techniques for energy extraction or “fracking.” This nexus amplifies many of the political controversies first discussed under water supply and quality.

Climate change and variability is taken up in chapter 5. We discuss flood abatement, drought alleviation, and recent efforts to manage climate extremes. A growing political challenge is the effort to span local and expert knowledge in managing water and climate. Illustrations from Latin America, the US, and Australia illuminate the effectiveness of this effort. As we will see, it has been complicated by ideologically motivated debate over climate change that impedes long-term collaboration.

Chapter 6 focuses on water law as an evolving set of practices and institutions. Fresh water has long been managed through codified or common law – it is the oldest form of water governance. Law may also take the form of river basin compacts that divide water between provinces or states. Moreover, these arrangements are generally quite durable, even if parties periodically engage in contentious negotiations over how to re-allocate drought-stricken flows.

Chapter 7 examines international collaboration to manage shared waters. Because water is irreplaceable by any other substance, countries must share it. Attempts to monopolize it would generate wars fought to suicidal desperation. This is why chronic water shortages among states sharing watersheds, especially in arid regions, lead to some form of cooperation. By establishing rules over permissible withdrawals and diversions, as in the Tigris-Euphrates basin, or over water infrastructure as between Israel and Palestine, violence can be averted.

Whereas chapter 7 focuses on avenues for transnational collaboration, chapter 8 examines intractable sources of disputes – within and between countries. Debates over hydropower generation; protests over permitting of beverage plants that draw down local ground-water; relocation of populations to make room for large dams or diversion projects; and continued degradation of water bodies – such as the Aral Sea in central Asia, Ojos Negros Valley in Mexico, or Han River in China – are among the most serious of such conflicts. And, these disputes engage many levels of governance.

In Chapter 9, we examine the impacts and implications of alternative sources of water supply, as well as innovative ways to temper or reduce demands. These are topics infrequently discussed in water politics texts, despite the fact that these unconventional methods to augment supply – including wastewater reuse, rainwater harvesting, desalination, and demand management – are growing in significance across the globe. While there has been much discussion about their technical feasibility for quenching the world’s growing thirst, far too little attention has been paid to their public acceptability, perceived risk, and professed fairness (i.e., who pays for, and benefits from, them?). These political factors affect long-term prospects for their implementation.

Finally, chapter 10 considers the future of water governance and prospects for better democratizing water politics in order to amicably resolve disputes. We also weigh the likelihood of sharing power among diverse groups, and of broadening purpose to better encompass issues of inclusiveness and public engagement – especially at the local community level.

This text also explores other issues not commonly addressed elsewhere. One example is debate over water as a commodity. In addition to the advantages and disadvantages of privatization, there is growing interest in the impacts of so-called “virtual” water trades – the buying and selling of products whose manufacture depends on water. These trades raise nagging questions regarding the capacity of developing countries to engage in import substitution and industrialization. They also prompt us to inquire whether the dependence of water-short countries on others for water-intensive products retards their development, denies them equal access to resources, encourages the building of large water projects, and is unfair (Hoekstra & Chapagain 2007).

Water wars – as implied earlier – are rare. Nevertheless, an issue of growing concern in global water politics is the fact that, should war erupt for other reasons, water infrastructure may become a prime military objective. Germany’s Ruhr dams were effectively targeted during World War II, for example, while attacks on water supply and treatment facilities have occurred in parts of the Middle East since 1948 (Oren 2003; Holland 2012). More recently, Islamic State has “weapon-ized” water as a means of securing control over contested territory, and internecine wars in Iraq and Syria have led protagonists to do the same.

The arenas where water politics play out...