Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Societies

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Global Challenges in Water Governance

Part of the book series: Global Challenges in Water Governance ((GCWG))

Abstract

The institutions of global water governance were shaped by social and political conflicts that frequently arose in the context of cultural difference. This chapter is organized according to several aspects of how global water governance has sought to structure social differences. These include: using initial notions of water stress and scarcity to order human-water relations, linking water scarcity to compounding problems of risk and water security, promoting procedural norms regarding transparency and participation as a key to “good” water governance, and encouraging uniformity in values through discourses of water ethics and as the basis for interpreting the implications of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation passed by the UN in 2010. Across these domains, contested social relations regarding gender, class, race, and politics are intrinsic to the identification, articulation, and programs that seek to address global challenges in water governance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adler, Rebecca A., Marius Claassen, Linda Godfrey, and Anthony R. Turton. 2007. Water, Mining, and Waste: An Historical and Economic Perspective on Conflict Management in South Africa. The Economics of Peace and Security Journal 2 (2): 33–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Allan, Sarah. 1997. The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anand, Nikhil. 2017. Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Asthana, Vandana, and A.C. Shukla. 2014. Water Security in India: Hope, Despair, and the Challenges of Human Development. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bacigalupi, Paolo. 2015. The Water Knife. London: Orbit.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bakker, Karen. 2004. An Uncooperative Commodity: Privatizing Water in England and Wales. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bakker, Karen, and Cynthia Morinville. 2013. The Governance Dimensions of Water Security: A Review. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 371: 1–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackbourn, David. 2006. The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany. New York: W.W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blatter, Joachim, and Helen Ingram (eds.). 2001. Reflections on Water: New Approaches to Transboundary Conflict and Cooperation. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyd, David R. 2011. No Taps, No Toilets: First Nations and the Constitutional Right to Water in Canada. McGill Law Journal 57 (1): 81–134.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Peter G., and Jeremy J. Schmidt (eds.). 2010. Water Ethics: Foundational Readings for Students and Professionals. Washington, DC: Island Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chamberlain, Gary. 2008. Troubled Waters: Religion, Ethics, and the Global Water Crisis. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conca, Ken. 2015a. An Unfinished Foundation: The United Nations and Global Environmental Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Conca, Ken. 2015b. Which Risks Get Managed? Addressing Climate Effects in the Context of Evolving Water-Governance Institutions. Water Alternatives 8 (3): 301–316.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cook, Christina, and Karen Bakker. 2012. Water Security: Debating an Emerging Paradigm. Global Environmental Change 22 (1): 94–102.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coulthard, Glen Sean. 2014. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Das, Sushant, Sagnik Dey, and S.K. Dash. 2015. Impacts of Aerosols on Dynamics of Indian Summer Monsoon Using a Regional Climate Model. Climate Dynamics 44 (5): 1685–1697.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Desbiens, Caroline. 2013. Water From the North: Territory, Identity, and the Culture of Hydroelectricity in Quebec. Vancouver: UBC Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eckstein, Gabriel. 2010. Water Scarcity, Conflict, and Security in a Climate Change World: Challenges and Opportunities for International Law and Policy. Wisconsin International Law Journal 27 (3): 410–461.

    Google Scholar 

  • Escobar, Arturo. 2012. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Falkenmark, Malin, and Carl Folke. 2002. The Ethics of Socio-Ecohydrological Catchment Management: Toward Hydrosolidarity. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 6 (1): 1–10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Falkenmark, Malin, and Carl Folke. 2010. Ecohydrosolidarity: A New Ethics for Stewardship of Value-Adding Rainfall. In Water Ethics: Foundational Readings for Students and Professionals, ed. Peter G. Brown and Jeremy J. Schmidt, 247–264. Washington, DC: Island Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Falkenmark, Malin, J. Lundqvist, and C. Widstrand. 1989. Macro-Scale Water Scarcity Requires Micro-Scale Approaches: Aspects of Vulnerability in Semi-Arid Development. Natural Resources Forum 13: 258–267.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, David. 1995. Water Resources Management: In Search of an Environmental Ethic. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gaard, Greta. 2001. Women, Water, Energy: An Ecofeminist Approach. Organization & Environment 14 (2): 157–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galaz, Victor. 2007. Water Governance, Resilience and Global Environmental Change—A Reassessment of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Water Science and Technology 56 (4): 1–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gandy, Matthew. 2015. The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grey, David, and Claudia W. Sadoff. 2007. Sink Or Swim? Water Security for Growth and Development. Water Policy 9: 545–571.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Groenfeldt, D., and J.J. Schmidt. 2013. Ethics and Water Governance. Ecology and Society 18 (1): 14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Habermas, Jürgen. 1996. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Habermas, Jürgen. 1973. Legitimation Crisis, trans. T. McCarthy. London: Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jaeger, W.K., A.J. Plantinga, H. Chang, K. Dello, G. Grant, D. Hulse, J.J. McDonnell, S. Lancaster, H. Moradkhani, A.T. Morzillo, P. Mote, A. Nolin, M. Santelmann, and J. Wu. 2013. Toward a Formal Definition of Water Scarcity in Natural-Human Systems. Water Resources Research 49: 4506–4517.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jarvis, Todd W. 2013. Water Scarcity: Moving Beyond Indexes to Innovative Institutions. Groundwater 51 (5): 663–669.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaika, M. 2005. City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirsch, Stuart. 2014. Mining Capitalism: The Relationship between Corporations and Their Critics. Oakland: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krippner, Greta R. 2012. Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Langley, Paul. 2016. Liquidity Lost: The Governance of the Global Financial Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lehner, Bernhard, Petra Döll, Joseph Alcamo, T. Henrichs, and F. Kaspar. 2006. Estimating the Impact of Global Change on Flood and Drought Risks in Europe: A Continental, Integrated Analysis. Climatic Change 75 (3): 273–299.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matthews, Nathanial. 2012. Water Grabbing in the Mekong Basin—An Analysis of the Winners and Losers of Thailand’s Hydropower Development in Lao PDR. Water Alternatives 5 (2): 392–411.

    Google Scholar 

  • Matthews, Nathanial, and Jeremy J. Schmidt. 2014. False Promises: The Contours, Contexts and Contestation of Good Water Governance in Lao PDR and Alberta, Canada. International Journal of Water Governance 2 (2–3): 21–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mehta, Lyla. 2005. The Politics and Poetics of Water: Naturalising Scarcity in Western India. New Delhi: Orient Longman Private Limited.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mehta, Lyla (ed.). 2010. The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation. London: Earthscan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mehta, Lyla, and Synne Movik. 2014. Flows and Practices: Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in African Contexts. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ministerial Declaration of The Hague. 2000. Water Security in the 21st Century. 3.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mirumachi, Naho. 2015. Transboundary Water Politics in the Developing World. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murphy, Craig. 1994. International Organization and Industrial Change: Global Governance Since 1850. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norton, Bryan G. 2005. Sustainability: A Philosophy for Adaptive Ecosystem Management. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ohlsson, Leif. 2000. Water Conflicts and Social Resource Scarcity. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth: Part B 25: 213–220.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Orlove, Ben, and Steven Caton. 2010. Water Sustainability: Anthropological Approaches and Prospects. Annual Review of Anthropology 39: 401–415.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ostrom, Elinor. 2010a. Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Systems. The American Economic Review 100 (3): 641–672.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ostrom, Elinor. 2010b. Polycentric Systems for Coping With Collective Action and Global Environmental Change. Global Environmental Change 20 (4): 550–557.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peppard, Christiana Z. 2014. Just Water: Theology, Ethics and the Global Water Crisis. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Phare, Merrell-Ann S. 2009. Denying the Source: The Crisis of First Nations Water Rights. Surrey: Rocky Mountain Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pietz, David A. 2015. The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pigman, Geoffrey A. 2007. The World Economic Forum: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach to Global Governance. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pope, Francis. 2015. Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor.

    Google Scholar 

  • Postel, Sandra. 1992. Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity. New York: W.W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Postel, Sandra, and Brian Richter. 2003. Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature. Washington, DC: Island Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2011. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Priscoli, Jerome Delli. 2004. What is Public Participation in Water Resources Management and Why is it Important? Water International 29 (2): 221–227.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Priscoli, Jerome Delli, J. Dooge, and R. Llamas. 2004. Water and Ethics: Overview. Paris: UNESCO.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pritchard, Sara B. 2011. Confluence: The Nature of Technology and the Remaking of the Rhône. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pritchard, Sara B. 2012. From Hydroimperialism to Hydrocapitalism: ‘French’ Hydraulics in France, North Africa, and Beyond. Social Studies of Science 42 (4): 591–615.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rademacher, Anne. 2011. Reigning the River: Urban Ecologies and Political Transformation in Kathmandu. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Richter, Brian, D. Abell, E. Bacha, K. Brauman, S. Calos, A. Cohn, C. Disla, S. O’Brien, D. Hodges, and S. Kaiser. 2013. Tapped Out: How Can Cities Secure Their Water Future? Water Policy 15 (3): 335–363.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rijsberman, Frank R. 2006. Water Scarcity: Fact or Fiction? Agricultural Water Management 80: 5–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rogers, Peter, and Alan W. Hall. 2003. Effective Water Governance. TAC Background Papers No. 7, Evander Novum, Sweden.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sabatier, Paul A., Will Focht, Mark Lubell, Zev Trachtenberg, Arnold Vedlitz, and Marty Matlock (eds.). 2005. Swimming Upstream: Collaborative Approaches to Watershed Management. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, Jeremy J. 2012. Scarce or Insecure? The Right to Water and the Ethics of Global Water Governance. In The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles, ed. Farhana Sultana and Alex Loftus, 94–109. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, Jeremy J. 2014. Water Management and the Procedural Turn: Norms and Transitions in Alberta. Water Resources Management 28 (4): 1127–1141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, Jeremy J. 2017. Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, Jeremy J., and Christiana Z. Peppard. 2014. Water Ethics on a Human Dominated Planet: Rationality, Context and Values in Global Governance. WIREs Water 1 (6): 533–547.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, Jeremy J., and Dan Shrubsole. 2013. Modern Water Ethics: Implications for Shared Governance. Environmental Values 22 (3): 359–379.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, Jeremy J., Peter G. Brown, and Christopher J. Orr. 2016. Ethics in the Anthropocene: A Research Agenda. The Anthropocene Review 3 (3): 188–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Selborne, Lord. 2000. The Ethics of Freshwater: A Survey. Paris: UNESCO.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaw, Sylvie, and Andrew Francis (eds.). 2008. Deep Blue: Critical Reflections on Nature, Religion and Water. London: Equinox.

    Google Scholar 

  • Strang, Veronica. 2014. The Taniwha and the Crown: Defending Water Rights in Aotearoa/New Zealand. WIREs Water 1: 121–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sullivan, Caroline. 2002. Calculating a Water Poverty Index. World Development 30 (7): 1195–1210.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sultana, Farhana. 2011. Suffering for Water, Suffering From Water: Emotional Geographies of Resource Access, Control and Conflict. Geoforum 42: 163–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sultana, Farhana, and Alex Loftus (eds.). 2012. The Right to Water: Politics, Governance and Social Struggles. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Swyngedouw, Erik. 2005. Dispossessing H2O: The Contested Terrain of Water Privatization. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 16 (1): 1–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Syme, G., B. Nancarrow, and J. McCreddin. 1999. Defining the Components of Fairness in the Allocation of Water to Environmental and Human Uses. Journal of Environmental Management 57: 51–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Syme, G., N. Porter, U. Goeft, and E. Kington. 2008. Integrating Social Well Being Into Assessments of Water Policy: Meeting the Challenge for Decision Makers. Water Policy 10: 323–343.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tortajada, Ceilia. 1999. Women and Water Management: The Latin American Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • UNDP [United Nations Development Programme]. 2006. Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis. New York: United Nations Development Programme.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vörösmarty, Charles J., P.B. McIntyre, M.O. Gessner, D. Dudgeon, A. Prusevich, P. Green, S. Glidden, S.E. Bunn, C.A. Sullivan, C. Reidy Liermann, and P.M. Davies. 2010. Global Threats to Human Water Security and River Biodiversity. Nature 467: 555–561.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vörösmarty, Charles J., Michel Meybeck, and Christoper L. Pastore. 2015. Impair-Then-Repair: A Brief History & Global-Scale Hypothesis Regarding Human-Water Interactions in the Anthropocene. Daedalus 144 (3): 94–109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vos, Jeroen, and Rutgerd Boelens. 2014. Sustainability Standards and the Water Question. Development and Change 45 (2): 1–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wagner, John R. 2013. The Social Life of Water. New York: Berghahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Warren, Karen. 1990. The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism. Environmental Ethics 12 (2): 125–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weitz, Nina, Måns Nilsson, and Marion Davis. 2014. A Nexus Approach to the Post-2015 Agenda: Formulating Integrated Water, Energy, and Food Sdgs. SAIS Review of International Affairs 34 (2): 37–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wescoat, James L. 2013a. Reconstructing the Duty of Water: A Study of Emergent Norms in Socio-Hydrology. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 17: 1–10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wescoat, James L. 2013b. The ‘Duties of Water’ With Respect to Planting: Toward an Ethics of Irrigated Landscapes. Journal of Landscape Architecture 8 (2): 6–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Westra, Laura. 2010. Climate Change and the Human Right to Water. Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 1 (2): 161–188.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whiteley, John M., Helen Ingram, and Richard W. Perry (eds.). 2008. Water, Place & Equity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilkinson, Charles F. 2010. Indian Water Rights in Conflict With State Water Rights: The Case of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe in Nevada, US. In Out of the Mainstream: Water Rights, Politics and Identity, ed. R. Boelens, D. Getches, and A. Guerva-Gill, 213–222. London: Earthscan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolfe, Sarah, and David B. Brooks. 2003. Water Scarcity: An Alternative View and Its Implications for Policy and Capacity Building. Natural Resources Forum 27: 99–107.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • World Bank. 1995. From Scarcity to Security: Averting a Water Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wu, Peili, Nikolaos Christidis, and Peter Stott. 2013. Anthropogenic Impact on Earth’s Hydrological Cycle. Nature Climate Change 3: 807–810.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zeitoun, Mark, Jeroen Warner, Naho Mirumachi, Nathanial Matthews, Karis McLaughlin, Melvin Woodhouse, Ana Cascão, and Tony J.A. Allan. 2014. Transboundary Water Justice: A Combined Reading of Literature on Critical Transboundary Water Interaction and ‘Justice’, for Analysis and Diplomacy. Water Policy 16 (S2): 174–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zeitoun, Mark, Bruce Lankford, Tobias Krueger, R. Tim Forsyth, A.Y. Carter, R.Taylor Hoekstra, Olli Varis, Frances Cleaver, Rutgerd Boelens, Larry Swatuk, Christopher A. Scott, D. Tickner, Naho Mirumachi, and Nathanial Matthews. 2016. Reductionist and Integrative Research Approaches to Complex Water Security Policy Challenges. Global Environmental Change 39: 143–154.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zwarteveen, Margreet Z., and Rutgerd Boelens. 2014. Defining, Researching and Struggling for Water Justice: Some Conceptual Building Blocks for Research and Action. Water International 39 (2): 143–158.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Durham University, Durham, UK

    Jeremy J. Schmidt

  2. Senior Visiting Fellow, King’s College London, London, UK

    Nathanial Matthews

Authors
  1. Jeremy J. Schmidt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Nathanial Matthews
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jeremy J. Schmidt or Nathanial Matthews .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Schmidt, J.J., Matthews, N. (2017). Societies. In: Global Challenges in Water Governance. Global Challenges in Water Governance . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61503-5_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61503-5_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61502-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61503-5

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation