Tribal communities,the forests,the fisher folk and the river: whither water justice?

Excessive exploitation of and skewed access to dwindling water resources raise serious water justice concerns. Environmental justice movements and related literature have raised critical questions regarding the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of a development paradigm that is founded on excessive exploitation and appropriation of natural resources. This paper explores the growing relevance of a water justice framework that addresses both the social and ecological aspects of water use and appropriation, with reference to a four-decade long water conflict over the Chaliyar River in Kerala, South India. It highlights how ecosystem degradation and denial of justice go hand in hand. The paper argues that the framing and articulation of the conflict in a partisan manner led to the glossing over of certain critical features, thus preventing a full view of water injustices. It also failed to inform subsequent policies and practices in this regard.     

跨流域调水的公正问题——基于环境正义的分析视角

水资源时空分布不均造成的水资源短缺问题已成为阻碍区域发展的重要因素。为了应对区域间的水资源短缺问题,跨流域调水工程作为不同流域水资源优化配置的一种手段,被广泛用于解决水资源分配不均和区域需水不平衡问题。调水工程虽然短期内缓解了水资源压力,平衡了区域间用水需求,但其建设和运营过程对工程所涉区域的地方经济、地理环境、人文环境以及生态环境也造成不同程度的压力。本文通过对当前世界范围内跨流域调水工程的文献回顾,围绕跨流域调水工程所引发的社会公平正义层面的争议,借助环境正义理论的分析方法,通过对国内外调水案例的实践分析,追踪相关环境不公的现象和争议,剖析当前社会—生态冲突的产生机制。最后从我国水生态文明建设实际出发,提出以建立健全水权交易市场,构建"赋权—认同—合作"参与机制和树立"人类命运共同体"理念的解决对策,以期降低调水工程对环境和社会所造成的负面影响,推进水生态正义体系的建设。     

When sustainable may not mean just: a critical interpretation of urban water consumption decline in Barcelona

In this paper, we document and analyse the recent decline (2007–2013) in domestic water consumption in Barcelona. The postulates of ecological modernisation and market environmentalism celebrate these declines as an example of sustainable development, thanks to the combination of more efficient technologies and economic incentives. However, these interpretations ignore the new framework of social relations introduced by technologies and markets and take environmental improvements as homogeneous and universal regardless of distributional issues. Therefore, it would be perfectly possible to achieve optimal environmental situations in the context of deteriorating social conditions, particularly in terms of access to basic resources by the most disadvantaged. We explored the relationships between declining domestic water consumption and the uneven impact of the economic crisis on Barcelona’s urban geography. We found that the alleged increase in environmental sustainability that follows decline in resource use translates into highly uneven social impacts in terms of both accessibility and consumption. These results show that water flows have profound political dimensions and that water justice in terms of distributional costs and benefits but also in terms of recognition and participation of the less well-off should be a fundamental component of future urban water policies in this area.     

Drought,water access,and urban agriculture: a case study from Silicon Valley

In California, the growing popularity of urban agriculture (UA) has unfolded against a backdrop of historic drought. While UA is often celebrated as an urban sustainability strategy, it must be able to persist during drought if it is to perform these functions. Using Santa Clara County – the geographic core of Silicon Valley – as a case study, we use interviews and surveys to explore the implications of drought for UA. We show how developing an understanding of water access for UA during a drought requires examining the social and institutional context of water management and use. In metropolitan California, the highly decentralised water supply system combined with the diverse institutional arrangements that support UA create an uneven landscape of water access. Consequently, the pressure to change water-consuming practices – that is, the stress that institutional drought responses place on different water users – is geographically and socially differentiated. Among UA water users, responses to drought have also varied, in part because the possibilities for change are constrained by the sociotechnical arrangements of UA sites and the different purposes of UA.     

Institutional arrangements for managing water conflicts in lake basins

Water conflicts may arise from market failures caused by (i) poor specification or transferability of water rights; (ii) incentive problems such as rent seeking, open access or free riding; or (iii) transactions costs. They may also occur because of failures in non-market alternatives such as government management. Recent recognition of non-market failures has led to greater consideration of market-based approaches to conflict resolution such as tradeable permits or bargaining. It has also enriched our understanding of government-based approaches. All approaches would appear to benefit from greater attention to promoting collective action by the users of water. For illustration we refer to the problems of lake basins, using several specific examples from Asia.     

Injustice and organisation in Anchicayá, Colombia: an environmental legal case in a hydropower watershed

The paper looks at Colombia's first major environmental justice legal case involving a riparian Afro-Colombian community and the Pacific Energy Company (EPSA). Riverine Afro-Colombian communities gained political recognition as a culturally distinct group largely based on their conservation practices in riparian environments. The work contrasts the complexities of the case with the vulnerable reality of the people of Anchicayá who largely live in conditions of poverty, violence and political isolation. It also describes the institutions that frame watershed management, the ethnic rights to collective land and self-governance and the property rights of energy companies in the backdrop of decentralisation reforms that clarified different types of property rights and refounded Colombia as a multicultural nation. The legal suit, however, demonstrates that the government failed to offer equal protection to collective versus private cultural and socio-economic uses of land and water in order to protect energy investments. The Constitutional Court's jurisprudence ultimately privileged technical and legal know-how and overlooked the limits community intermediaries face offering similar evidence. By doing so, the court not only disregarded the constitutional rights of Afro-Colombians, but it also failed to mitigate a socio-environmental conflict.     

The supervision of environmental risk: The case of HCB waste or Botany/Randwick?

The governance activities of capital and the state include attempts to control the timing and spacing of social activities such as the production of environmental risks and settlement of different social groups. The supervisory activities that have shaped the environmental and social history of the Botany/Randwick area are identified here, to examine how the HCB waste risk developed in that community. The analysis shows that multiple environmental risks and an ethnically diverse, working class community have been brought together in space to create environmental injustice. Analysing the governance of one environmental risk like hexachlorobenzene (HCB) waste may not increase understanding about communities facing multiple environmental risks or the supervisory processes that lead to the unfair accumulation of risks for particular places or social groups. Lessons from the environmental justice movement suggest that reframing problems like HCB waste management at Botany/Randwick as distributive justice issues may contribute to governance arrangements that better manage multiple risks and pollution sources in space affecting marginalised communities.     

Power,responsibility and justice: a review of local stakeholder participation in European flood risk management

Over the past few decades, there has been an increasing interest in the active involvement of local stakeholders in the management of floods in Europe. Such involvement is seen as necessary as the management of floods becomes more complex. Management approaches now seek to include a range of potential measures to reduce risk (e.g. structural defence, spatial planning and property-level protection measures). Local stakeholder involvement is seen to be important because governments lack the capacities such as knowledge and funding required to deliver all these measures alone. This paper focuses on the implications that more participative approaches have on the fairness of European flood risk management (FRM). Studies of environmental justice are well placed to address this question because they are interested in who is included and excluded from decisions related to the distribution of environmental goods (resources) and bads (risks). Existing literature suggests that fair decision-making processes (procedural justice) can lead to fair distribution or resources and risks (distributive justice). This literature review of 30 peer-reviewed papers provides an analysis of justice and FRM by assessing practices of participation which are presented in the recent literature on local stakeholder involvement in FRM in England, Germany and the Netherlands. It was found that participation in practice generally focuses on transferring responsibility to the local level at the expense of power. This paper discusses the implications that this finding has for justice and synthesises potential ways forward based on recommendations of the reviewed literature.     

Project coordinators’ views on climate adaptation costs and benefits – justice implications

ABSTRACT

As local climate adaptation activity increases, so does the number of questions about costs, benefits, financing and the role that economic considerations play in adaptation-related decision-making and policy. Through five cases, covering a range of climate risks and types of adaptation measures, this paper critically examines Swedish project coordinators’ perceptions of costs and benefits in already-implemented climate adaptation measures. Our study finds that project coordinators make use of different system boundaries – on temporal, geographical and administrative scales – in their cost/benefit evaluations, making the practice of determining adaptation costs arbitrary and hard to compare. We further demonstrate that the project coordinators interpret costs and benefits in a manner that downplays the intangible environmental and social costs and benefits arising from the adaptation measures, despite their own experience of how such measures negatively impact upon social value. The exclusion of social and environmental costs and benefits has severe implications for justice, as it can bias decisions against people and ecosystems that are affected negatively. Based on the findings, we propose three tentative social justice dilemmas in local climate adaptation planning and implementation: 1. Cost and benefit distribution across scales; 2. The identification and valuation of non-market effects; and 3. The equitable allocation of costs and benefits.     

Unsafe waters: the hydrosocial cycle of drinking water in Western Mexico

ABSTRACT

Mexico faces multiple water quality challenges, both in terms of the water supplied to the population as well as surface and underground water sources. Problems with drinking water supply affect the population in diverse ways, from associated health risks to high levels of intermittency in service to the poor perception of the quality of piped water – leading to high levels of bottled water consumption. In this text we explore the issue of drinking water quality in three contexts in the state of Jalisco: in Guadalajara, the state’s main urban area, in the peri-urban municipality of El Salto, and in the mid-sized city of San Juan de los Lagos. Our analysis explores drinking water regulations, the water quality monitoring undertaken by state and local authorities, access to information, as well as the actions and perceptions of water service providers. Looking at cases of indirect reuse of wastewater as well as groundwater sources with high levels of fluoride and arsenic, we argue that the foregrounding of water quality is key to illuminating social inequalities in access to water and in teasing out power relations prevailing in current hydrosocial regimes. We conclude that this hydrosocial cycle of drinking water is characterised by prioritising access to water for economic actors, facilitated by lax regulations and minimal enforcement, as well as by the systematic neglect by government authorities at all levels of the protection of watersheds and aquifers, and of water quality issues generally.     

Metabolisms of injustice: municipal solid-waste management and environmental equity in Barcelona's Metropolitan Region

Environmental justice studies that focus on the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) typically examine the unequal distribution of associated health and environmental risks in minority social groups and the political processes that generate these inequalities. With the aim to complement current views on the field, in this work, we explore whether there is an issue of environmental justice in municipal systems' grade of self-sufficiency in treating the MSW that they generate and in their effort to close their material cycles. The methodology used is based on the concept of urban metabolism and is applied to 12 coastal municipalities of Barcelona's Metropolitan Region in Spain. The metabolism of the MSW flows of each system is analysed to examine (i) the system's efficiency to close its MSW cycles, corresponding to an indicator of environmental sustainability, and (ii) the MSW export and import flows, as an indicator of social sustainability. The results demonstrate a positive correlation between socioeconomic status and the externalisation of MSW treatment-related hazards. The proposed indicator proves to be an excellent tool for the evaluation of both the environmental and social performance of a system considering MSW management.     

THE IMPORTANCE OF PERCEPTIONS IN THE DETERMINATION OF INDIAN WATER RIGHTS1

ABSTRACT The American Indian occupies a unique place in the federal system of government There are indications that this relationship will continue and that Indian reservations are at the threshold of economic development. As this occurs, the nature and extent of Indian water rights becomes more important to Indian and non-Indian alike. The determination of these rights is a matter of more than judicial decisions. To a large degree the determination of these rights will rest in the non-judicial arena and will be influenced by the perceptions of those rights held by Indians and water allocation officials, both state and federal. If the perceptions of these political actors are not congruent, then political conflict will occur as the rights become more important. To depend solely upon the judicial system to resolve these conflicts entails risks and costs to both Indians and to allocating officials. Indians are taking seriously the federal policy of Indian self-determination, and water allocation officials run decided risks in failure to realize this. An alternative suggested is to include Indians as consulting parties when decisions are being made that affect Indian interests.     

Water injustices and potential remedies in indigenous rural contexts: A water justice analysis

This paper examines Indigenous water rights in rural and remote Australia and how water justice seems to be elusive in many of these spaces. The purpose of this literature review is to link water justice theory and practices to the way different water cultures are valued in Australia while simultaneously critiquing the water justice movement. This paper situates the notion of water justice as a specific kind of environmental justice to cater for the unique qualities that define this resource. In doing so, this paper draws on Schlosberg’s (2004) conception of environmental justice with its trivalent approach that describes the following three ‘circles of concern’: recognition of difference, plurality of participation, and finally equitable distribution of resources and costs and benefits. This framework provides that if the first two ‘circles of concern’ are not in existence in a natural resource management process, then inequitable distribution of that resource is a likely outcome. This paper presents two areas where water injustices exist in the context of Indigenous rural and remote Australia. The first relates to how Indigenous rights to water have been inadequately recognized and the second presents empirical data on water supply and sanitation in rural and remote Indigenous communities that demonstrates ongoing dilemmas around securing this basic human right. The undervaluing of cultural differences relating to water is argued to be antecedent to the injustice manifest in poor water supply and sanitation provision for Indigenous rural contexts. This paper does not attempt to survey the body of ethnographic work on society-water relations in rural and remote Indigenous Australian contexts but reviews the gaps in current mainstream acknowledgement of Indigenous water cultures. In exploring water justice in rural and remote Indigenous Australia, this paper offers a novel approach to a dilemma more frequently analysed solely as a health development issue.     

Institutions for Interstate Water Resources Management1

Abstract:  This paper evaluates alternative approaches to management of interstate water resources in the United States (U.S.), including interstate compacts, interstate associations, federal‐state partnerships, and federal‐interstate compacts. These governance structures provide alternatives to traditional federalism or U.S. Supreme Court litigation for addressing problems that transcend political boundaries and functional responsibilities. Interstate compacts can provide a forum for ongoing collaboration and are popular mechanisms for allocating water rights among the states. Federal‐interstate compacts, such as the Delaware River Basin Compact and federal‐state partnerships, such as the National Estuary Program, are also effective and complementary approaches to managing water resources. However, all of these approaches can only make modest improvements in managing water resources given the complicated and fragmented nature of our federalist system of government.     

Nuclear waste facilities on Tribal Land: The Yami's struggles for environmental justice

Abstract

This paper examines environmental justice in the context of nuclear waste controversies on Orchid Island, Taiwan. The Yami's anti-nuclear waste movement is a manifestation of problems of distributional inequity, lack of recognition, and limited participation of the tribespeople in decision making. These are interwoven in political and social processes. In addition, the disputes over the nuclear waste problem between the Yami and Taiwanese groups also show the historical and socioeconomic complexity of environmental justice. This study argues that a democratic and participatory procedure is likely to bring recognition or help the situation of lack of recognition improve, which could facilitate more just distribution. Building partnerships and networking within a variety of indigenous environmental organizations as well as other Taiwanese environmental organizations could help to transform the Orchid Island community and the Taiwanese society in the direction of environmental justice.     

Transformative climate change adaptation: bridging existing approaches with post-foundational insights on justice

ABSTRACT

Climate adaptation is a complex policy domain, spanning multiple sectors, scales and actors, and wherein those most at risk have the least power. The influence of linear positivist models of science uptake are proving ineffective in a world with increasingly concentrated wealth and power, institutional barriers, and rapidly growing risks facing the many. A plurality of approaches is needed to better examine those dynamics of climate adaptation which are often invisible in models of science uptake – equity, the value of contestation, path dependency – and to consider how to empower communities to find solutions. In this conceptual paper, we argue that bridging existing positivist and interpretivist methods with insights from post-foundational theory so as to underpin pluralism and re-orient ethical principles of justice, strengthens the capacity of social research to support transformative climate adaptation. Principles are proposed to facilitate such bridging.     

Draining us dry: scarcity discourses in contention over bottled water extraction

Water scarcity is a highly contested concept. The dominant narratives of water scarcity in policy debates have been criticised for prioritising purely quantitative metrics and eliding questions of inequality and power. While much scholarship on water scarcity examines contexts in the global South where potable water infrastructures do not reach most residents, this article examines conflict over commercial water extraction in a Northern setting where access to potable tap water is nearly universal, yet local water supplies are increasingly constrained. It addresses three main questions: (1) How are narratives or discourses of water scarcity mobilised by a range of actors in local conflicts over groundwater extraction for water bottling?; (2) To what extent do these discourses invoke biophysical versus socially produced scarcity, current versus future scarcity, and local versus regional or global scales of scarcity?; and (3) What are the implications of the findings for efforts by environmental advocates and communities to protect local water supplies? We explore these questions by analysing a local case study of conflict over groundwater extraction by the leading bottled water firm, Nestlé Waters, in southwestern Ontario, Canada. We find that the scarcity narratives deployed by local residents, activists, public officials, and bottling industry representatives illustrate the use of several forms of figurative conflation involving geographic and temporal scales of water scarcity, and economic and volumetric forms of scarcity. We argue that this conflation illuminates deeper issues of economic and social justice at the heart of the conflict, which transcend reductionist hydrological assessments of scarcity or abundance.     

Agriculture,ethics, and restrictions on property rights

The argument in this essay is twofold. (1) Procedural justice requires,in particular cases, that we restrict property rights in natural resources, e.g., California agricultural land or Appalachian coal land. (2) Conditions imposed by Locke's political theory and by dense population require,in general, that we restrict property rights in finite or non-renewable natural resources such as land. If these arguments are correct, then we have a moral imperative to use land-use controls (such as taxation, planning, zoning, and acreage limitations) to restructure land ownership and land use in a far more radical way than has ever been accomplished in the past.     

Taking away David’s sling*: environmental justice and land-use conflict in extractive resource development

Exploring cases of gas and coal extraction in Australia and the U.S.A., this paper considers instances in which legal and political frameworks have been used to prioritise development interests and minimise opportunities for community objection. Two case studies illustrate the role of law and the influence of politics on environmental conflict, conflict resolution, and participation in decision-making associated with resource extraction. A range of barriers to meaningful community participation in land-use decision-making are exposed by combining legal and non-legal concepts of equity and justice with ideologies of democracy and representation. These include asymmetry in information and resources available to parties; instances of misrecognition of weaker participants; and examples of malrecognition, where community attempts to engage democratic rights of public participation were thwarted by the strategic and deliberate actions of both industry and government. This paper illustrates the limits of current legal approaches to addressing land-use conflict and contributes to the developing scholarship of environmental justice as an analytic framework for addressing complex environmental and social justice issues.