Water governance

We develop approaches and tools to understand water governance as a question of justice. Water science has long been dominated by concerns of efficiency and productivity, with a focus on approaches to measure, value and manage water. To think of water governance in terms of justice means creating awareness of, and systematically documenting, how ways of sharing water often are inequitable. This is often the result of uneven development that tend to reproduce intersecting societal differences such as those based on factors including class, gender, race and ethnicity. Understanding water governance as a question of justice also entails understanding how water-related risks are distributed, and scrutinizing water decision-making in terms of how representation and authority are defined and organized.

In contexts of river basins and agriculture, work related to this theme focuses on understanding and engaging with the institutional and infrastructural mechanisms to own and distribute water or irrigated land. Research in this area pays special attention to the risk that ongoing liberalization processes concentrate water rights in the hands of a few commercial investors or business actors. In urban contexts, justice depends on how access to water services is arranged across city spaces and people, and on the spatial distribution of floods, droughts and water-related diseases. Why are some places and people being more vulnerable than others, and how can they be protected?

The water rights and justice field takes inspiration from and engages with an emerging body of philosophical, critical, feminist and legal scholarship on water and environmental justice. It mobilizes this scholarship to engage in empirical investigations of how injustices become manifest and how they can be challenged in and around water. It also explores options to anchor water justice in laws and regulations, and supports more philosophical reflection on how to re-define justice in ways that take the environment and all of earth’s inhabitants seriously.

Organizations and policies shape the governance and management of water and are crucial instruments for solving water challenges. In researching how they manifest themselves in the water sector, we focus on understanding the practices water organizations that make and implement water policies, including river basin organizations, water utilities and others.

To understand the practical workings of policies and organizations, we use a critical instrumentalist approach to connect academia with practitioners/policy makers.  We critically reflect on organizations, policies and practitioners to better understand how water governance works in practice, and what impacts it has. Ultimately, this critical instrumentalist approach aims to facilitate improved water governance and management.

Governance instruments such as organizations or policies are not effective in all contexts, and therefore, we study them as part of larger planning and implementation processes that are shaped by history, culture and politics as well as by prior interventions and bio-physical conditions. Governance instruments and tools will always need to be translated to fit and work in contexts other than the ones in which they were originally developed.

Related short courses

• Water Policy and Implementation
• Managing Resilient Water Utilities

Urban expansion and growth bring compounding and interrelated societal and ecological challenges and opportunities. Specific histories and practices of exploitation or so-called development have increased the pressure on water and the related environment, resulting in pollution, scarcity, degradation and depletion. To achieve more sustainable and resilient futures, these histories and practices - as well as the developmental pathways they are part of - must be identified and critically questioned. The science and technologies that support the histories and practices or help make them possible should be similarly scrutinized.

Rather than considering cities as places that are bounded and distinct from the countryside, this theme looks at how the making of cities and life in cities responds to and requires transformations elsewhere. How do cities and their inhabitants shape and alter not just flows of water, but also flows of other primary resources as well as flows of money and people?

The theme of urbanization focuses on how these transformations result in inequality in cities, neighbourhoods and among individual people. It also looks at how urban expansion is the result of a an often-unequal fundamental restructuring of agrarian and rural landscapes. In addition, work in this field develops approaches and tools to understand how the distribution of water and water-related risks within and across cities intersects with wider social inequalities and processes of change and differentiation.

Around the world, countries share rivers, lakes, groundwater and other water bodies. Transboundary waters are increasingly under pressure due to competition among water users, and climate change. This sometimes causes friction between countries. IHE Delft has many years of experience in understanding transboundary conflict and promoting cooperation through water diplomacy.

Knowing how to sustainably govern shared waters across borders is crucial for preventing, transforming, and resolving conflicts. IHE Delft’s interdisciplinary approach on water conflict, cooperation and diplomacy enables water sector actors to address underlying problems that trigger competition and conflicts over water, while promoting cooperation.

The core areas of IHE Delft’s research and education activities in this field are:

• Develop knowledge and teach about international water law and legal frameworks, which are crucial in dealing with water-related issues.
• Engage in research, capacity development and advisory services for and with transboundary institutions to improve their effectiveness, equity and adaptability.
• Enable those involved in the resolution of water related disputes to strengthen their   understanding of and ability to use dispute resolution mechanisms.
• Examine how data and information are created, collected, and how they (can) inform inclusive decision-making.

Support to water diplomacy processes requires a thorough understanding of the underlying complexities and root causes of water-related conflicts. Therefore, IHE Delft’s capacity development activities are facilitated by research and analysis on the impacts of different practices and tools of water diplomacy, the causes and dynamics of transboundary water interaction, and the interlinkages of water with the broader political context.

This focus translates into three research lines:

• water diplomacy, including related tools
• linkages between water and the broader political context
• the causes and dynamics of transboundary water interaction

For more information about IHE Delft’s services, projects and experts regarding water conflict, cooperation and diplomacy, please visit our topic page.

Realizing transformations to sustainability in water requires ’thinkers’ (often critical social scientists who look at the past and sift through evidence) and ’doers’ (often planners and engineers who look ahead to build, make, design or implement) connect with each other in new ways. Thinkers often are reluctant to come up with solutions or prescriptions, while doers find it difficult to admit to and productively deal with the politics of their designs and plans. Inter- and transdisciplinarity aims to contribute to an emergent stream of scholarship and action to bridge these divides as part of ’transformations to sustainability’. It brings together scholars and scholarship from different disciplines, and attempts to anchor the production of new insights in real-life experiments to make a difference. These experiments entail collaborations and engagements beyond scientific communities, for instance with government staff, businesses, artists and civil society organisations. Feminist action and scholarship is an important source of inspiration to work in this theme.

Research in this theme aims to organize explicit forms of learning from these new forms of knowing and knowledge production. It includes the critical interrogation of the authority and effectiveness of existing water expertise and experts and asks why some gain authority and not others.