Rivers and Their Cultural Values: Assessing Cultural Water Requirements

Water has always been culturally significant. Throughout history, humans have shaped rivers for navigation, irrigation, and flood protection. In turn, the relationships people have maintained with rivers and other waters have shaped societies. How people relate to and through water is a topic of growing interest to researchers, particularly as threats to rivers and pressures on water supplies increase. Freshwater and its essential and multifaceted role in social and cultural life is now a focus of considerable scholarship in the social sciences, yielding rich insights into norms that shape how water is known, used, and valued, the meaning of water to diverse sociocultural groups, and the role of water in societal power structures and material cultures. Ethnographic studies of customary hydraulic systems and their communal water management institutions have, for instance, contributed to an understanding that departs from the bifurcated concept of nature and culture so prevalent in Western thought. Recent scientific efforts to identify water requirements (of human groups and/or features of the environment) have emerged as a response to the regulation and degradation of rivers, and these efforts form an important focus of this entry. Research has advanced our understanding of the diversity of human relationships with rivers and ways in which water management institutions and scientific practices, such as environmental flow assessments, can satisfy the flow needs of human populations dependent on rivers and connected watersheds for their livelihood and well-being. This article serves as an introductory guide for scholars and students with an interest in understanding how researchers from the social sciences and humanities have researched rivers, the role of water in sustaining diverse forms of social and cultural life, and the varied ways of valuing, managing, and using rivers. It focuses on the conservation paradigm of environmental flows that grew out of efforts in the United States to allocate water to instream uses threatened by dams, thereby conserving culturally embedded relations that the settler society had with its western rivers. Until recently, this approach to the allocation of water and protection of unregulated river flows had not explicitly acknowledged its cultural roots, though many of the early studies revealed the importance of recreational activities (fishing, boating, canoeing) and aesthetic values to the conservation agenda. New categories of cultural “use” have since emerged in response to widespread social changes (Indigenous rights and resistance to dams, for example). These challenge the conception of environmental flows as a technical, apolitical process reliant on Western scientific knowledge alone and the authority of the state to allocate water. A deeper appreciation of the cultural significance of rivers and cultural interpretations of water governance arrangements will enable appreciation of the diversity of ways of knowing, relating, and utilizing rivers and local solutions to water problems.

Water governance challenges in rural South Africa: exploring institutional coordination in drought management

Droughts have severe direct impacts on the livelihoods of rural populations. Thus, the management of water for communal agriculture and water supply should be well coordinated to enhance drought resilience. Notwithstanding the interrelations among water management institutions in South Africa, there are complexities in the way these institutions work together, both in preparation for, and during drought times. In this article, we examine the governance of water resources in South Africa with a view to understanding institutional coordination in drought management at different operational scales. Using a qualitative approach, the roles and relationships between water actors at the local and regional level were analyzed for their adequacy in building local level drought resilience in a village in the Limpopo province, South Africa. Key informant interviews conducted revealed operational drought management challenges that emanate from communication barriers, coordination inconsistences, and undefined, unclear actor roles and responsibilities during disasters. The top-down approach to disaster management, while of some value, currently constrains the effectiveness of the local-level institutions implementing local drought risk reduction efforts. Achieving more successful water and drought governance endeavors could be enhanced by greater and wider engagement with community-based actors and water management institutions.

When do institutions work? A comparison of two water disputes over the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna river basins

This article investigates the motives and incentives that drive countries' diplomatic efforts in water disputes. It aims to identify links between the formation of water management institutions (WMIs) and the outcomes of such institutional cooperation. Three features have been identified as key to the effectiveness of WMIs: (1) the development of trust; (2) sanctions aimed at curbing cheating; and (3) the balancing of different countries’ interests over shared waters. This article conducts a comparative analysis of the formation of institutional arrangements among three riparian states by focusing on two cases: water interactions between China and India, and between India and Bangladesh. It argues that India, China and Bangladesh have exhibited different preferences in regard to their participation in WMIs. The two cases illustrate how different WMIs are formed and also how, in proportion to variations in the level of competition over water quantity, diplomatic cooperation through environmental agreements can lead to different outcomes with varying degrees of success. This article concludes that in the context of the global South, where foreign relations are unstable and countries’ reliance on river basins varied, building trust and balancing interests over water management are especially important to the formation of effective institutional arrangements.

Adaptive Coevolution

Climate change is having a significant impact on water resources globally; more so in developing countries due to lower resilience and weakened coping mechanisms. Water resource and supply management systems need to be adaptive to the uncertainty and unpredictability posed by this challenge. The current water crisis is mainly that of governance within the water sector. On this premise, this chapter seeks to explore the adaptiveness of water management institutions and systems to climate change impacts, with a focus on Kenya's case. Kenya continues to face numerous challenges relating to water supply, which are further exacerbated by climate change. Prior to the development of key legislative and institutional frameworks, through adoption of the Water Act 2002, the water sector grappled with gross mismanagement, manifested via inefficiency in water service provision and resource degradation. Deploying the conceptual model of adaptive (co)-management institutional prescription of polycentric governance, experimentation, public participation, and management of bioregional scale, this chapter stands to contribute novel insights into designing sustainable, adaptive water governance regimes.