Through case studies and theoretical analyses, this volume brings new value to the study of water conflict. Rather than an obstacle to cooperation, conflict becomes an invitation to explore more deeply the who, why and how of water policy decisions. David Groenfeldt, Director,Water-Culture Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico The book demonstrates that as society makes and remakes the hydrosocial cycle, frictions occur, slowing down or hastening the flows of power through waters. It offers an invitation to reimagine water conflicts as those innumerable and minute abrasions that occur every day, but are often not recognised as ‘water conflicts’, a term which unfortunately remains globally associated with violent, large-scale acute disputes. This book will remain a milestone for academic researchers, scholars, practitioners, and activists involved in the ongoing reconceptualisation and reinterpretations of water and water conflicts. Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, Professor, Resource, Environment & Development Program, Crawford School of Public Policy,The Australian National University This rich collection highlights conceptual and empirical issues for reconceptualisation of water conflicts, from an insightful introduction, to case studies from India to Bolivia. Moving away from notions of violence, incorporating notions of structural or slow violence, while also engaging contemporary issues such as the water–energy nexus, and conflicts related to the end of the big dam era, the authors have gifted us with a worthwhile and highly recommended contribution. Leila M. Harris, Professor, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability and Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British Columbia It is widely believed that people are willing to fight and die for water, and the notion of widespread water conflicts is a compelling one. By charting the social life of the idea of water conflicts, Spilt Waters powerfully urges us to re-examine simplistic notions of scarcity and environmental conflicts that can serve to legitimise certain interventions and interests, and also potentially engender more water conflicts. A must-read for scholars, activists and practitioners striving for water justice. Lyla Mehta, Professor, Institute of Development Studies, UK and Norwegian University of Life Sciences 9780367371753_FM.indd 1 09-04-2021 09:13:23 Split Waters is a fascinating collection of essays that shed new light on the enduring dramas of overt and covert water-based injustices and socio-territorial transformations. The authors’ critical, pluralist perspectives also illuminate how those affected by multi-dimensional water violence engage in socially and politically empowering action to construct dignified livelihoods. A must-read for students and scholars interested in the grounded understanding and crossdisciplinary theorisation of water conflicts, this book constitutes an essential reference. Rutgerd Boelens, Professor,Water Governance & Social Justice, Wageningen University & Professor, Political Ecology of Water, CEDLA/University of Amsterdam 9780367371753_FM.indd 2 09-04-2021 09:13:23 SPLIT WATERS Limited, finite, contaminated, unavailable or expensive, water divides people all around the globe.We all cannot do without water for long, but can for long enough to fight for it. This commonsensical narration of water conflicts, however, follows a pattern of scarcity and necessity that is remarkably unvaried despite different social and geographical contexts. Through in-depth case studies from around the globe, this volume investigates this similarity of narration—confronting the power of a single story by taking it seriously instead of dismissing it. In so doing, it invites to rethink water conflicts and how they are commonly understood and managed. This book: • • • Posits the existence of the idea of water conflict, and asks what it is and what it produces, thus how it is used to pursue particular interests and to legitimise specific historical, technological and environmental relations; Examines the meaning and power of ideas as compared to other categories of knowledge, advancing theoretical frameworks related to environmental knowledge, discursive power and social constructivism; Presents an alternative agenda to deepen the conversation around water conflicts among scholars and activists. Of interest to scholars and activists alike, this volume is addressed to those involved with environmental conflicts, environmental knowledge and justice, disasters and climate change from the disciplinary angles of environmental anthropology and sociology, political ecology and economy, science and technology studies, human geography and environmental sciences, development and cooperation, public policy and peace studies. 9780367371753_FM.indd 1 09-04-2021 09:13:23 Essays by Gina Bloodworth, Ben Bowles, Patrick Bresnihan, Luisa Cortesi, Mattia Grandi, K. J. Joy, Midori Kawabe, Adrianne Kroepsch, Vera Lazzaretti, Leslie Mabon, Renata Moreno Quintero, Madhu Ramnath, Jayaprakash Rao Polsani, Dik Roth, Theresa Selfa, Veronica Strang, Mieke van Hemert, Jeroen Warner, Madelinde Winnubst. Luisa Cortesi is Assistant Professor, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Hague, The Netherlands; Marie S. Curie Fellow; Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies Fellow, Freiburg, Germany;Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Natural Resources, Cornell University, USA. She leads the Water Justice and Adaptation Lab. K. J. Joy is Founding Member and Senior Fellow, Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, India; Convener, Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India. 9780367371753_FM.indd 2 09-04-2021 09:13:23 SPLIT WATERS The Idea of Water Conflicts Edited by Luisa Cortesi and K. J. Joy 9780367371753_FM.indd 3 09-04-2021 09:13:23 First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Luisa Cortesi and K. J. Joy; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Luisa Cortesi and K. J. Joy to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-37175-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-46642-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-03017-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo SPi Global, India 9780367371753_FM.indd 4 09-04-2021 09:13:23 CONTENTS Lists of figures List of tables List of contributors Foreword: Under the surface of water conflicts Veronica Strang Acknowledgements Luisa Cortesi and K. J. Joy Introduction: Water conflicts: The social life of an idea Luisa Cortesi vii ix x xiv xviii 1 PART 1 Agential purchase of the idea 1 Can’t trust: The boaters of the waterways of south east England versus ‘the charity that makes you homeless’ Ben Bowles 2 Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries? Evaluating framings and narrations of risk governance in marine radiation after the Fukushima nuclear accident Leslie Mabon And Midori Kawabe 3 Room for the river, no room for conflict: Narratives of participation, win-win, consensus, and co-creation in Dutch spatial flood risk management Dik Roth, Jeroen Warner and Madelinde Winnubst 9780367371753_FM.indd 5 27 29 51 69 09-04-2021 09:13:23 vi Contents PART 2 Instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict 4 Tocks Island and the end of the big dam era in the USA Gina Bloodworth 93 95 5 When oil meets water: Debating the hydraulic fracturing energy–water nexus in Colorado Adrianne Kroepsch 117 6 Water and conflicts around religious heritage: Oscillations between centre and periphery? Vera Lazzaretti 135 PART 3 Naturalisation of ecological, technological, historical relations 7 Taming the Cauca river: Community and sugar landowners’ contrasting narratives in addressing flood risk in Valle Del Cauca, Colombia Renata Moreno-Quintero and Theresa Selfa 8 Images of the Nile: How competing narratives frame water disputes Mattia Grandi 9 Infrastructural care and water politics in Cochabamba, Bolivia Patrick Bresnihan 10 The negation of change as a narrative strategy of control: The Case of the Polavaram Mega-Dam in India Mieke Van Hemert, Jayaprakesh Rao Polsani and Madhu Ramnath Conclusion: Deepening the conversation around water conflicts K. J. Joy Index 9780367371753_FM.indd 6 153 155 176 194 216 224 247 09-04-2021 09:13:23 FIGURES 1.1 1.2 2.1 3.1 3.2 5.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 9.1 9780367371753_FM.indd 7 Part of an e-mail sent to me by a CaRT enforcement office, clearly marking their definition of the ‘places’ in which my boat had been spotted 35 A map image showing as a line the distance between the water points at Mile End, Angel Islington, and the other Old Ford Lock (River Lea); the population living within this area is made up of those who must rely on the Old Ford Lock (Regent’s Canal) as described below.The facilities mooring itself is marked with a pin 42 Location of Iwaki within Fukushima Prefecture (left) and ports and key fisheries locations within Iwaki (right) 52 Illustration of the inlet of the proposed retention area of the village Millingen in the Ooijpolder. At a later stage, the water will flow into the village dike ring, the so-called ‘bathtub effect’ 78 Kampen as a bathtub (c/o Werkgroep Zwartendijk) 81 Frequency of coverage of hydraulic fracturing and water resources issues in The Denver Post, Greeley Tribune and (Boulder) Daily Camera from 2007 to 2014, with water resources issues divided between water quantity and quality 124 Valle del Cauca 159 Agricultural occupation of the floodplain 160 Area flooded (000 ha) by year in Valle del Cauca (1950–2011) 162 Flooding 2011 in Valle del Cauca 163 A traditional farm in Robles, Jamundí 166 National Park with ‘improvements’, Cochabamba, Bolivia 200 09-04-2021 09:13:23 viii Figures 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9780367371753_FM.indd 8 New developments and existing agricultural uses in the peri-urban area of Cochabamba, Bolivia PA system on the roof of the Tunari water cooperative building. It was directed in all four directions and is used to call the members of the cooperative together—whether for a protest, assembly, work, or celebration Aurora water treatment plant, Bolivia Mural on treatment plant by Mona Caron 201 202 205 206 09-04-2021 09:13:23 TABLES 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 9780367371753_FM.indd 9 Media Sample by Newspaper, News Market, and News and Opinion Coverage Prevalence of Volumetric Water Framing within Articles Concerned with Water Quantity Issues (N = 83) Prevalence of Competition Framing within Articles Concerned with Water Quantity Issues (N = 83) List of Legal Water Sources for Hydraulic Fracturing Use in the South Platte River Basin, as Derived from CDWR et al. (2012) and Interviews with Water Stakeholders and Energy Companies 122 125 127 130 09-04-2021 09:13:23 CONTRIBUTORS Gina Bloodworth has a Ph.D. in Geography and is an associate professor in Environmental Studies and in Geography at Salisbury University in Maryland. She researches human–environment interactions and specialises in rivers. Previous work includes both large-scale management on the Delaware River in the Eastern U.S., the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest and local scale water management of agricultural drainage ditch systems in the rural Chesapeake Bay region. Other interests include water issues in developing nations, including rivers in the Lake Victoria region of Kenya and the Volta River system in Ghana. Ben Bowles is a social anthropologist with an interest in the materiality and governance of water. His Ph.D., from Brunel University in 2015, was written as a result of fieldwork conducted with itinerant boat-dwellers, known as Boaters, on the canals and rivers of London and the South East of England. He has recently begun a postdoctoral position at the London School of Economics and Political Science interrogating the resilience of water infrastructures. Ben is also a Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS, University of London. Patrick Bresnihan is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, Trinity College Dublin. His work is situated within the overlapping fields of political ecology, and science and technology studies. He has published widely on topics that include the fisheries and aquaculture, the commons, and natural capital. His current research examines the political ecologies of Ireland’s water sector, with an empirical focus on rural Group Water Schemes. Luisa Cortesi is an environmental anthropologist who studies water disasters and climate change, environmental knowledge and technologies, environmental justice and sustainable development. She has founded and leads the Water Justice 9780367371753_FM.indd 10 09-04-2021 09:13:23 Contributors xi and Adaptation LAB, a new platform for collaborative work between scientists and communities on water-related environmental justice. Holding a dual Ph.D. in Anthropology and Environmental Studies from Yale University, she is assistant professor of Water, Disasters, and Environmental Justice at the International Institute of Social Sciences, Erasmus University; visiting assistant professor of Environment and Sustainability, Cornell University; Marie S. Curie Fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, Freiburg University. Mattia Grandi currently holds the position of Research Fellow within the Emerging Research on International Security Group at the Institute of Law, Politics and Development (Dirpolis) of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (Pisa, Italy). He has extensive experience across Africa, both as researcher and as practitioner in development cooperation agencies. His research interests include International Relations, Security Studies, Environmental Studies, Hydropolitics, Transboundary Water Management. K. J. Joy is a founding member of and senior fellow with the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, India. He has been an activist-researcher for more than 30 years, working on people’s rights to natural resources at grassroots and policy levels. His research interests include drought proofing, participatory irrigation and river basin management, water conflicts, water ethics and people’s movements. He coordinates the ‘Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India’, a national level network in India that engages with various types of water conflicts. He has published extensively on water–environment– development issues including the co-edited book, Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts in the Making (Routledge 2008). Midori Kawabe is a professor in Marine Policy at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology. Her research focuses on coastal and ocean management, with a particular interest in social learning of stakeholders in collaborative management. Since the 2011 nuclear accident, Midori has been working closely with the fisheries sectors of Fukushima by having participatory workshops and café scientifique with natural scientists, fishers and citizens to discuss ways for rehabilitation of the Fukushima coastal area. Adrianne Kroepsch is an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines, the USA. She studies environmental governance in the American West with an emphasis on how discourse, data, and deliberation shape governance processes and outcomes. Vera Lazzaretti is a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo. Her research deals with everyday negotiations of religious heritage and the politics of the past in urban contexts of Northern India.Vera also worked on patterns of sanctification of space in Hinduism as part of her doctoral and post-doctoral research at the universities of Turin, Milan and Heidelberg. 9780367371753_FM.indd 11 09-04-2021 09:13:23 xii Contributors Leslie Mabon is a reader in Environment and Society at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. He holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography, and is especially interested in the governance of complex and ethically contentious environmental issues. Leslie’s research has a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and on working at the science-policy interface. He has been carrying out empirical research in Fukushima Prefecture since 2014. Renata Moreno-Quintero is a professor in the Social Sciences and Economics Department at Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, in Cali, Colombia. Her research is focused on water governance, environmental conflicts and the politics of urban sustainability, especially in the Latin-American context. She pursued her Ph.D. at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science & Forestry, in Syracuse, New York under a Fulbright scholarship. Madhu Ramnath is a botanist and has been living and working with the adi- vasi people of Bastar, Chhattisgarh (India) for over 30 years. He is the author of Woodsmoke and Leafcups: Autobiographical Footnotes to the Anthropology of the Durwa People (2015). Jayaprakash Rao Polsani is emeritus associate professor in Sociology at Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. He has been doing research as a social anthropologist among the Konda Reddy people in the Khammam district in Andhra Pradesh (India) since the late 1970s. He has been supporting adivasi (indigenous) people in their legal struggle against the Polavaram dam project since 2005. Dik Roth is an associate professor at the Sociology of Development and Change Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. With a background in social anthropology, he has done extensive research in Indonesia and has been involved in several research programmes in South Asia. One of his research areas is water governance and water conflicts. In the framework of this topic, he is involved in ongoing research on river interventions in the Netherlands, together with Madelinde Winnubst. Theresa Selfa is a professor in the Environmental Studies in the Department at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science & Forestry in Syracuse, New York. Her research is focused on environmental governance and the politics of agri-food, energy and water systems, with field-based research in Latin America and the US. She also studies the use of non-state governance tools for sustainability and for biotechnology in agriculture. Veronica Strang, professor of social anthropology, is an environmental anthropolo- gist and the Executive Director of Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study. Her research focuses on human–environmental relations, in particular, people’s engagements with water. She is the author of The Meaning of Water (Berg 2004); 9780367371753_FM.indd 12 09-04-2021 09:13:23 Contributors xiii Gardening the World: Agency, Identity, and the Ownership of Water (Berghahn 2009); and Water: Culture and Nature (2015). Mieke van Hemert is an independent researcher. She studies socio-ecological issues from a science and technology studies (STS) perspective. In her doctoral work, she analysed transdisciplinarity in river science with an eye on the governance of science and the transformation of landscape through theory and technology. Her current action-oriented research focuses on agro-ecology and food sovereignty. Jeroen Warner is an associate professor of Disaster Studies with the Sociology of Development and Change Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He teaches, trains and publishes on domestic and transboundary water conflict, participatory resource management, and water governance as well as the politics and cultures of disaster. From 2015 to 2017, he coordinated the Horizon 2020 ‘EDUCEN’ project and was Special Visiting Professor at the University of Sao Paulo. Madelinde Winnubst is a senior researcher at the Utrecht University School of Governance, Utrecht, the Netherlands. One of her research areas is Dutch river projects, particularly infrastructural and spatial interventions, such as bypasses, dike relocations and retention areas. Jointly with Dik Roth, she is doing longitudinal research in this field. Her areas of expertise include government–citizen relationships, participation, citizen involvement, and the role of knowledge and communication. 9780367371753_FM.indd 13 09-04-2021 09:13:23 FOREWORD Under the surface of water conflicts Anthropologists naturally have interests in conflicts over water, given that these are concerned with people’s fundamental capacities to maintain health and well-being, to have agency and to flourish. The control and ownership of water offers a precise reflection of social and political relationships within and between societies, and between societies and the non-human world. Who decides how and where water flows; who benefits from these decisions; and who enjoys secure rights to water: these are the things that reveal the dynamics of power in these relationships, and the extent to which the participants—human and non-human—are democratically enfranchised or, at the very least, have their needs and interests represented in decision-making fora. It is therefore a pleasure to be asked to write a foreword for a book that so ably elucidates what it means to have a conflict over water, and the weighty issues that, as Joy observes, lie under the surface of such conflicts like the hidden bulk of an iceberg. The case studies and discussions reveal the underlying factors: the diverse forms of knowledge through which people understand, categorise and evaluate the world, and the deeply embedded cultural beliefs, values, histories, and practices that form their current positions on water issues. The major contribution of the book lies in its focused deconstruction of how these underlying complexities are represented in conflicts over water, in what Cortesi describes as a ‘social life of ideas’: a process through which ideas gain discursive form, are expressed narratively, visually and performatively, and lead to actions and reactions. This draws attention to the fluidity of ideas: their temporality—how they draw on the past and present to create visions of a desired future—and their spatiality, in flowing through social networks and communications media on multiple scales. 9780367371753_FM.indd 14 09-04-2021 09:13:23 Foreword xv Placing representational processes front and centre also illuminates the social and political arrangements through which particular narratives have achieved dominance. It demonstrates the hegemonic nature of ontologies and ideologies that conceptually separate Culture and Nature, and take for granted the right to commandeer water flows to meet political and economic aims. Promoted by governments and powerful commercial interests, such meta-narratives have become so normalised internationally that they can appear incontestable. Presenting a seductive vision of human capacities to impose order on an unreliable element, and to deliver prosperity, they enable the authoritative imposition of major infrastructures that both materialise particular ideas and values, and carry these forward into the future. In many conflicts, the narratives of the most powerful actors override placebased engagements with water that are more sympathetic to the shared interests of local human and non-human communities. However, few conflicts raise more passion than those affecting people’s relationships with water. Despite the disparities in power that they must confront, smaller or less powerful groups critique, resist and subvert imposed narratives and practices. They protest strenuously to promote their own values and protect their homelands and lifeways. The case studies in this volume offer several ‘David and Goliath’ stories: of boating communities questioning attempts to control their movements; of grassroots protesters resisting major dams, fracking and the privatisation of water; of indigenous communities seeking protection for sentient ancestral landscapes.The examples also draw attention to the multiple scales on which water conflicts can emerge. We see religious leaders drawing upon deep cultural heritage to negotiate shifting balances of power in relation to sacred water places and, at the other end of the scale, transboundary negotiations about water flows between countries trying to navigate national differentials in power and influence. Contested narratives therefore vie for influence on every scale, and the devolution of authority to local ‘stakeholders’ does not assure equality. As is amply demonstrated in the contributing authors’ descriptions of Dutch notions of ‘room for the river’, both in the Netherlands and transported to Colombia, a putative ‘depoliticisation’ of discourses can merely render the underlying conflicts invisible. This is a familiar phenomenon in Australia: the establishment of local or regional river catchment management groups has regularly been represented as ‘democratic’, but it has also tended to obscure an abdication of state responsibilities for social and environmental justice, and has created a process that is open to capture by transnational irrigation companies and farming interests.Yet, the devolution of responsibilities to a local level can work with more progressive governance: in Bolivia, for example, collective forms of water ownership and provision have enabled more socially and ecologically sustainable forms of infrastructural care. The central theme in each case study is the representational processes through which participants in conflicts over water seek to achieve their aims. The focus is primarily on discursive forms, but there is clearly potential to connect this work with the methods of representational analysis located in visual anthropology. These have been particularly useful in exploring the communicative efforts of communities 9780367371753_FM.indd 15 09-04-2021 09:13:23 xvi Foreword for whom art and performance are more important than written modes of expression. Some well-known examples include the famous ‘bark petition’ used by the Yirrkala community in northern Australia in 1963, to protest against the excising of areas of their homelands for bauxite mining. Such representational endeavours continue today, with many aboriginal communities producing art and performances intended to communicate and thus give agency to indigenous beliefs and values. Another familiar example is that of the Kogi people in Colombia, who collaborated with a British film-maker, Alan Ereira, in the 1990s, to make a film warning ‘Younger Brother’ (Western societies) that exploitative engagements with land and water would lead to disastrous consequences. The emergence of and access to digital media has been transformational for many subaltern communities, supporting their direct participation in debates about the ownership and management of water. It has enabled the forging of vital links between indigenous communities and campaigners for social and ecological justice, creating international networks that, as they have coalesced into counter movements, have begun to challenge the entrenched narratives that have hitherto dominated debates. The contributions to the volume also suggest strong potential to engage more with research, considering how conflicting visions of relationships with water are materialised. Water infrastructure appears in several of the case studies implicitly or explicitly as a major actant. But, as the examples of alternate forms of infrastructural care make clear, water infrastructure is not just dams, hydroelectric generation and irrigation schemes: it is also domestic and industrial architecture, household technologies, and the bureaucratic and administrative processes that manage the delivery of water supplies and the removal of waste. Some would argue that we should consider non-human ‘natural infrastructures’ too: the land and waterscapes that contain and direct freshwater flows, the wetlands and forests that store and clean water, the rivers and aquifers themselves, and the climate and weather that influences hydrological cycles. There is an increasingly lively debate about the ‘rights of nature’ that has particular relevance for conflicts over water, in that it opens the door to ideas about what we might call ‘pan-species democracy’. Indigenous and environmental counter movements have sought to persuade the UN to declare that the non-human world has fundamental rights, which would logically include rights to water. Legal activists are calling for Earth Laws, and trying to persuade the international court of criminal justice to define ecocide—the destruction of ecosystems—as an international crime. There is much that could be said about how non-human rights are represented in water conflicts, with efforts to present particular species and even whole rivers as persons, with images of oxygen-deprived ‘fish kills’ in places like the Murray-Darling Basin, and stark photographs of the parched, dry riverbeds resulting from over-abstraction. A key question in these debates is how to extend notions of democracy beyond humankind, to the extent that, in every society, there is a responsibility to ‘speak for’ the river and the non-human ‘other’. 9780367371753_FM.indd 16 09-04-2021 09:13:23 Foreword xvii Non-human needs and interests in relation to water are often subsumed by the inter-human conflicts described in this volume, but they are part of the same iceberg, and subject to many similar factors. All species share a need for secure access to water in order to flourish, yet there are major imbalances in relations of power. Dominant managerial narratives override more reciprocal understandings of human–non-human relations, and impose visions of water flows as commercial assets, or ‘ecosystem services’. There are efforts by powerful groups to maintain or gain control over ‘resources’. There is similar but much greater dependence upon human interlocutors to challenge dominant norms and represent non-human needs and interests. The focus of Split Waters on water conflicts therefore achieves several important things. It takes us under the surface to consider how ideas and values about water form particular representational narratives, and how some dominate international debates, while others seek to challenge this hegemony. But, like all good research, it also has the potential to contribute to related areas: for example, by connecting with analyses of how visual representational forms are used in water conflicts; or with work concerned with how meanings are encoded in and communicated by material objects and infrastructures. It opens up the possibility of diving deeper, to explore how representational processes shape not only relations of power between human groups, but also human relationships with the non-human world. Thus, this insightful volume, with its thoughtful analyses of water conflicts, has the potential to carry research into activism on behalf of all living kinds. Veronica Strang 9780367371753_FM.indd 17 09-04-2021 09:13:23 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to extend our gratitude to the many persons and institutions who have supported, encouraged and contributed to the making of this book. First and foremost, the authors of the chapters, not only for their deep intellectual engagement, but also for their patience with the many drafts, suggestions, corrections, and the conferences, meetings, virtual workshops, internal peer reviews, external peer reviews. It was a long journey for them and us—from the first draft of their chapters to the final versions and the production of the book—outliving many moments of uncertainties, but also taking up challenges and occasions of fun on the way. As the proverbial cherry on the cake, Professor Veronica Strang read the full manuscript and wrote the Foreword at a very short notice. We also would like to acknowledge and express our gratitude for the meticulous work of the chapters’ peer reviewers, two for each chapter, one providing topical, one geographical expertise. Two anonymous and attentive reviewers read and provided helpful comments on the full manuscript. Sugeeta Roy Choudhury completed a thorough copyediting job. The Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India (Water Conflict Forum) supported this book project as part of their third Phase (2014–2018), with the Steering Committee members providing valuable inputs at various stages of the project. The Arghyam Trust, Bengaluru, financially supported the Third Phase of Water Conflict Forum’s work and took care of most of the costs involved in the book project. The Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, that houses the secretariat of the Water Conflict Forum, similarly supported the project throughout the various phases. In particular, Craig D’Souza and Neha Bhadbhade of SOPPECOM tied up the project at various phases. Sarita Bhagat, Pratima Medhekar and Tanaji Nikam of SOPPECOM provided the necessary logistics and administrative support. We could not have done it without them. 9780367371753_FM.indd 18 09-04-2021 09:13:23 Acknowledgements xix Luisa Cortesi would like to express deep gratitude to K. Sivaramakrishnan, M.R. Dove, J. Scott, P. Kockelman, K. Hebert, J. Saiers and R. Prentice for their unrelenting support. Ella Sahertian, Samantha Ostrowski, Wyatt Westerkamp, and Ellen Abrams, as well as the many incredible students of her courses in Water Societies, Environment, Technology and History in Fall 2018; How Do We Know Nature? Language, Ecology and Meaning in Fall 2019; Water Disasters: Floods, Toxic Drinking Waters and Other Muddy Disasters in Spring 2019 at Cornell University, who have read and provided critical comments on the various drafts. Luisa’s work has been possible thanks to the support of the Stanford H. Taylor Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Josephine de Karman Fellowship, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Fulbright-IIE Fellowship, the MacMillan Centre. The institutions with which she has been affiliated over the course of this work,Yale University, Cornell University, the International Institute of Social Studies have offered the perfect ecology, fertile for this and many more intellectual engagements. Many thanks also to our publisher Routledge and Shoma Choudhury, the Commissioning Manager, and her colleagues Aakash Chakrabarty, Commissioning Editor, and Brinda Sen, Editorial Assistant. None of the above are, of course, responsible for any errors and weaknesses that may still be there in the book and for which we take complete responsibility. Luisa wishes to dedicate this book to her mother Dora Martucci, her Naniji Urmila Devi, and her sisters Livia Cortesi and Sanchita Sinha, four amazing women whose love and care are her primary strength. The family of the late Pawan Kumar Bind, a hero of social justice, has been designated as the automatic recipient of her part of the royalties from this publication. Joy dedicates this book to two persons who have had a lasting influence on his life and thinking and both of whom passed away in the space of a year (2019–2020): his father, K.A. Joseph, a toiling farmer who took him to the paddy fields as a schoolgoing kid and taught him how to hold a plough and also irrigate the fields; Prof. A. Vaidyanathan, a renowned academic and policy person in the water–environment– development arena, for his affection and for being an ‘informal teacher’ and mentor. Luisa Cortesi and K. J. Joy 9780367371753_FM.indd 19 09-04-2021 09:13:23 9780367371753_FM.indd 20 09-04-2021 09:13:23 INTRODUCTION Water conflict: the social life of an idea Luisa Cortesi During the many times I have discussed water conflicts with my students in India, in Europe and in the United States, the images they conjured were often those of two groups violently fighting for the last drop of water. Internet searches for the same keywords produce similar results—men with assault weapons threatening, ambushing one another around a muddy puddle. Even a more satirical take on water conflicts reveals a drawing of an individual with a wooden bat, a catcher’s helmet and a water bottle, who, when asked whether they are going to play baseball, answers that they are going to collect water instead. Puzzled by this consistent imaginary, I turned to the literature and found that environmental conflicts are defined as the violent escalation of an unresolved dispute (Burke, Hsiang and Miguel 2015; Homer-Dixon 1999; Khagram and Ali 2006; Peluso and Watts 2001) due to situations of environmental degradation (Libiszewski 1991). When an issue involves water, it is either one of quantity, i.e. scarcity (see Arsel and Spoor 2013; Donahue and Johnston 1998; Ganguli, Kumar and Ganguly 2017; Homer-Dixon and Blitt 1998;Verhoeven 2011) or quality (see Joy et al. 2010). This long-debated definition takes a lot for granted. What is violence, for example? The World Health Organization defines violence as ‘the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation’ (World Health Organization 1996). Authoritative review studies of climate change and collective violence, such as Levy et al. 2017, use a similar definition, even though such authors might be expected to have a more nuanced understanding of issues related to environmental injustice and environmental racism. Many scholars have exposed the limitations of these oversimplified definitions. Those who study conflict, for example, have expanded the notion of violence to include structural violence, or the erosion of people’s well-being by socio-economic structures (Galtung 1969), as well as slow 9780367371753_C000.indd 1 09-04-2021 09:06:15 2 Luisa Cortesi violence, a form of destruction that is dispersed in time and space (Nixon 2011) of which climate change is an excellent example. Political ecologists, first and foremost Peluso and Watts, have contextualised the complexities and dynamism of violence (2001) rooted in ‘site-specific’ local histories and social relations. Others refute that conflict occurs because of the depauperation or loss of a resource. Joy et al. compiled a compendium of case studies about water conflicts to broaden the range of conflicts under consideration (2010). Khagram and Ali note that maldevelopment and environmental discrimination both contribute to conflicts, although they define both factors in terms of resource access (2006). Political ecologists, whose approach has developed precisely around the study of environmental conflicts, invoke the analysis of site-specific conflictual processes instead, reading local values in conjunction with associated global forces (Peluso and Watts 2001). In so doing, they also retain an association between conflicts and natural resources (Martinez Alier 2002). Environmental anthropologists, on the other hand, despise an understanding of nature as purely material. This rebuke is also informed by their defiance of the nature/culture dyad, an opposition that, as I have argued, has been the organising principle of the subfield (Cortesi et al. 2018). Björkman, for example, builds on Mehta’s argument about the construction of scarcity (Mehta 2013), a line of thought that rests on Sen’s early reflections on famines as a political product (Sen 1981). According to Björkman, Mumbai’s water scarcity is produced through the control over water distribution—what Björkman calls ‘pipe politics’—which is contingent on aspects of knowledge infrastructures, sociopolitical power processes, and material networks, and is thus simultaneously social and material (Björkman 2015). Another approach has been to dismantle the ‘resource curse’ bias, or the direct, simplistic, unidimensional correlation between the scarcity of environmental goods and conflict. In her case study in Caledonia, for example, Horowitz traces the roots of the environmental conflict she examines in the local lack of political legitimacy and trust in the democratic process, both of which are, in turn, grounded in the political-economic history of the area (Horowitz 2009). Pursuing a similar goal, Hiner unearths her share of resource conflicts in different understandings of rurality (Hiner 2016) and related political ecologies and environmental imaginaries (also in Nesbitt and Weiner 2001). Zhouri and Oliveira question the meaning of the environment as a universal asset detached from particular practices, projects and meanings (2012), as Strang (1997) and Ingold (2000) have also mapped out. Tuned into the ontological questions posed by Latour (2009) and Povinelli (2001, 2011), Blaser further explicates environmental conflicts as politico-conceptual difficulties, expanding on the notion of reasonable (read: agreeable) onto-politics, an idea that undermines the concept of culture by limiting it to reasonableness and alignment (Blaser 2013; Cortesi 2018, 2021). Excellent studies such as those cited above label the mainstream definition of environmental conflict as not only obtuse but also pernicious. For example, Peluso and Watts’ Violent Environments (2001) is devoted to discrediting Homer-Dixon’s approach not only because of its Malthusian origins, but also because of the 9780367371753_C000.indd 2 09-04-2021 09:06:15 Introduction 3 influence Homer-Dixon’s framework has exerted on American politics since 1995, including in its reverberating effects found, for example, in the environmental security discourse. As a corpus, perhaps, the effort of deviating from a standard univocal interpretation also implicitly addresses the problem of the definition, which I will discuss below. It remains that there is something eerily recurrent in the common representation of water conflicts across the most diverse groups of people. Earlier, I mentioned how I was struck by the fact that, when asked about environmental conflicts around water, my students, across continents and sociocultural contexts, conjured an image comprised of similar components: (a) two groups, b) contraposed to each other and in competition for a (c) scarce resource that both groups need and want. To be sure, when prompted, my students were also able to conceptualise environmental conflicts in more sophisticated and reflexive ways, as well as to consider conflictual and violent situations that would not immediately fit this narrow definition. As scholars, we learn such complexities and nuances from our interlocutors, and we aspire to teach the same in our pedagogical pursuits. Yet, such empirical experience of the way in which people deal with the idea of water conflict pushed me to realise the existence of a standardised understanding of the concept.1 Instead of focusing on dismissing it as inaccurate or dismantling the definition of water conflict, I am more interested in learning about the consequences of the concept so many deploy. Not only does the concept exist, but it also acts, insofar as it produces consequences. My intent here is to recognise that some forms of this standardised understanding, despite scholarly efforts to criticise it, have consolidated, remain alive, and have a life of their own. In this introduction, I elaborate on what I call the social life of an idea, and what such an approach means in the particular case of water conflict. More than a lexicon, it is a concept, a thing, which owns its own social life. As other theories that aim to elucidated and explain inductively, the idea of an idea does not undervalue, instead underscores, the real lived experiences of water conflicts, while recognizing their interconnections, as discussed below. Attentive to broader sociocultural processes and frameworks of perception, knowledge, and understanding, while acknowledging problems of translation and word-choice, in my other work I ask: how do we word the world, and how do our ways of wording the world contribute to our knowledge of it? It is the social life of this normalized, homogenised idea of water conflict that will unfold in what follows. Instead of attempting to track down the idea of water conflict historically or geographically, I am interested in a synchronic view of the life of an idea as standardised across different contexts and in a specific set of global circumstances, inhabiting the contemporary globalised neoliberal society (Cortesi 2014). More than feeding on its situatedness, it thrives on circumstances (beyond the scope of this reflection) such as English being the lingua franca for several economic sectors across more than one generation, the globalisation of elites’ education regardless of their national origins, and the oligarchic conquest of the information market by a handful of mediatic empires. I am not assuming the content of such knowledge to be universal, nor do I assume an amalgamated society in which 9780367371753_C000.indd 3 09-04-2021 09:06:15 4 Luisa Cortesi cultural differences lose traction. I am instead suggesting a reflection on the empirically appreciable results of an idea that, if acquiring different shades in different contexts, maintains a set of common assumptions that coagulate in the category of water conflicts.2 What an idea is (and isn’t) I use the term ‘idea’ the way the Greeks did. Neither blindly submissive to Western epistemologies nor to their ostensible dismissal by those native in its contemporary imperialistic version, I reflexively trace the lexicon I use. In Greek—differently than in English—an idea is not just a mental representation. For Plato, differently from Descartes and his followers, an idea is a substance, it is form and it has matter, with neither pitted against the other. While for Descartes, an idea was only a mode of thinking, the carrier of a representation, for Plato, the idea was a thing that fulfils ontological expectations.3 In the allegory of the cave (Republic), Plato tells the story of a dark cavern where chained prisoners see shadows of objects that pass in front of a light source behind them. Whatever the physics of the shadows, for the prisoners (at least), the shadows, or the phantoms, are reality, objects, things—they are not representations. Plato posits that one prisoner—the philosopher, or the academic—manages to escape the cave. When his eyes4 stop hurting and adjust to the light, he eventually sees ‘true reality’ and realises that he, and his fellow prisoners, have been deceived all along. But when, proud of his discovery and full of compassion, he goes back to the cave to free the others from their epistemic prison, his eyes are again blinded by darkness.The other prisoners, seeing him incapacitated and therefore unable to see as clearly as they do, refuse to be ‘freed’.Were they not chained, warns Plato, the prisoners would kill their saviour. This fable underpins my use of the word idea. Such a Magrittian richness in the metaphor of the shadow, the reflection over the fallibility and fragility of knowledge, the ambiguity and flaws of enlightenment, the casting of values over the damp, dark walls of our lives, the alienation of those who pursue knowledge vis-à-vis their previous lives and companions! Yet, if I make an effort to ignore the most obvious reading of the story, or the reference to the killing of Plato’s teacher, Socrates, I realise that this allegory does not necessarily have to be read as a commentary on the human condition, or the situation of distorted knowledge that prevents humans from seeing what they do not see until their eyes are opened by the enlightened. The allegory of the cave can be turned and folded in other ways. For example, the cave could stand for today’s academic community, the phantoms being the language that scholars use to talk about the knowledge they produce. I am interested in twisting the fable of the epistemic assumption of a single truth that originates a series of illusionary representations. I wish to dislodge the fantasy of the well-intentioned elitist scholar who works hard to eventually discover ‘reality’ and then returns to the cave to epistemically save his fellows humans, only to find himself (sic) blind again, unable to see what his fellow humans can see. As an anthropologist, I wish for my eyes to be firmly aligned with those of my fellow prisoners, taking seriously what (we) commoners all see and name. 9780367371753_C000.indd 4 09-04-2021 09:06:15 Introduction 5 As introduced above, an idea is not a definition, despite both being of Platonic/ Socratic inheritance. In Plato’s earlier dialogues, Socrates asked his disciples and acquaintances ‘what is x’, where x is piety (Euthypro), justice (Republic), temperance (Meno), friendship (Lysis), virtue (Laches), love (Phaedrus, Symphosium), knowledge (Theaetetus), or wisdom (Philebus). The task of defining is the cultural project of grasping the essence of the thing, of reaching its universal and univocal nature, of attaching it to precise, necessary and sufficient conditions. Defining, or pretending to get closer to, a constantly moving goal seems to be an inherently failing project, caught between the action of limiting to maintain specificity and broadening to account for variations. Yet this project continues to exert influence on contemporary reasoning, despite the criticism to essence (Mill 1991), the notorious difficulty of finding the meaning of meaning (Putnam 1975), the polysemy of language (Bakhtin 1986), the ambiguities of representation (Foucault 1971), and the push to de-centre (Derrida 1966). As mentioned above, however, the x that Socrates asks his friends to define continues to exist, even when we find the definition fallacious or the project of defining too tight: the x has an ontological presence; it is a thing, a signified, not a word or a signifier. Confronting what is often taken for granted by a flat definition, a genealogy is the Nietzschean and later Foucauldian technique of accounting for the history and the conditions of possibility for a certain discourse. Nietzsche, in his second essay on the Genealogy of Morality, explains how punishment acquires different meanings and proposes the method of genealogy over that of a definition, observing that ‘only something which has no history can be defined’ (Nietzsche 1887: 94). Foucault acquires and develops this method, which he intends to ameliorate his archaeology (Foucault 1977). A product of such illustrious lineage is Molle’s seminal essay (2009) on the idea of a river basin. Molle’s Social Life, worth mentioning here also because it is subtitled with a locution similar to the one I am proposing (‘River-Basin Planning and Management: The Social Life of a Concept’), is certainly more than what I suggest in this Introduction. Perhaps a humble synonym for a genealogy, in Molle’s work, “Social Life” carefully traces the history of the concept of river-basin planning and management in its evolution from early colonial conceptualisation to recent developments in ecosystem approaches. By tracing the multiple meanings that a certain concept has carried over several decades and signifiers, a genealogy differs from the social life of an idea in that the former is a method, and a container, while the latter is substance and form. Further, the latter is grounded in its contemporary materialisation.This does not mean that the present is not relative to the past or that a concept’s coming into being cannot be explored, but that, in a pendular meta-history of diachronic and synchronic frameworks, the fact that these ideas are neither timeless nor static should not distract from the contemporaneity of the category: having seeped into the cognitive imaginary of a large number of people and influencing how they think and make decisions, its sway rests in its future present. For the same reasons, the idea introduced here is not a genealogy, it is neither an ideology: they differ in both structure and content. Far from being a ‘science of ideas’, the word ideology has been considered by Marx and Engels, but also by 9780367371753_C000.indd 5 09-04-2021 09:06:15 6 Luisa Cortesi members of the Frankfurt School, as a distortion of reality that naturalises, and thus protects, exploitative economic relations (Marx and Engels 2001). Even without the metonymic association with the specific ideologies of capitalism and communism that informed the perception of a distortion, an ideology, differently from an idea, operates at a more complex, systemic level. Different from an idea, an ideology lends itself towards the teleological and prescriptive, thus it is projected in time towards the future, while the idea here proposed is alive in its contextual present, it is engaged not with time, but rather with its continued potential. Like an idea, however, an ideology is a form of social cognition held, often unconsciously, by large groups of people and across cultural contexts. Nonetheless, while positing a global lexicon filled with a set of dogmatic homogenised meaning, by being less systemic and complex, an idea is available for travelling across ideologies. An idea is more ductile: I stress its circularities, freezing the path which continues to be followed and the channelling of the many possibilities that could have materialised instead, as well as recalling its bottomless possibilities. Like in Derrida’s reading of Mallarmé, an idea dwells in the imitation of an imitation of another imitation (1972). An ideology is reproduced by a discourse, a close heuristic. Discourse—with its methodological deployment, discourse analysis—is involved in recognising both its effect in engendering subjectivity and in its depoliticising tendencies. Similar to discourse, unpacking an idea illuminates the construction of texts, practices and other forms of meaning production that affect the positioning of the subjective self. Pace Fraser, who criticised Foucault for lacking the political commitment that permits normative adjudication (1985), an idea is not interested in the underlying political interests and responsibilities that a discourse helps individuate, nor even in the structure it derives from them. The politics of investigating the social life of an idea are situated in a normative commitment to the value of difference, and thus in the political recognition of the dangers of homogenising both ontology and subjectivity. The concepts of narrative and framing, which refer to the act of selecting and arranging narrative elements to attain a certain message (Entman 1993), are also not appropriate synonyms for ‘idea’ for several reasons. First, as discussed above, both the concept of narrative and that of framing are forms of representation, thus refer to an object. Epistemologically different, the idea is an appellative—it is possible to make reference to the narrative of an idea, an important example in Kroepsch (Chapter 5 in this volume). Second, narrative and framing are subsumed to a certain agential capability, if not intentionality. As mentioned earlier, the idea of water conflict is the product of a set of circumstances, but, most importantly, retains an agential purchase, a consequentiality of actions. Third, both concepts refer to a speech-related act, not a cognitive or epistemological one. Those terms could have perhaps been more appropriate for Molle’s essay (cited above), which illustrates how the concept of the river basin has been technocratically appropriated by and invested with social power configurations. Vice versa, the terms concept and imaginary stress the epistemic and the cognitive, which are only part of the story I am narrating here. The latter, in particular, is a ‘constellation of ideas that groups of humans develop about a given landscape’ 9780367371753_C000.indd 6 09-04-2021 09:06:15 Introduction 7 (Davis and Burke 2011) that reflects the local congeries of sociocultural values, norms and power relations (Grandi, this volume; Watts and Peet 2004). As such, however, it retains a much more contextual understanding of socio-ecological processes. The idea, instead, shifts the focus to its consequences, albeit originated in articulation with a given context. The idea here explained could be considered the phenomenon, intended primarily as the object as it appears and is intended (Husserl 1913). In common, an idea and a phenomenon have the ontological presence of objects and mental representations. Given that the social sciences are more influenced by Merleau-Ponty than other phenomenologists, however, a phenomenon is commonly understood as related to perception, to our immediate experience of the thing, and is thus distinct from inference, even though Kant, Popper and many others have made clear that our perceptions are influenced by a priori categories (intended as pre-experience, see Kant 1878) and from previous experiences (Popper 1963;Thornton 2007).The idea here proposed, however, remains directed towards the dissolution of the dichotomy of visible versus invisible/logos thus invested in the refusal to engage in chicken-egg dilemmas such as sense versus intellect and things versus language. The word idea has had its own ordeals, and my use of the term derives from such lineage. Hacking uses it to explain that social constructionism is not necessarily resting on a dichotomy between reality versus representation (1999). While Pickering has been outspoken about reality, not the idea of it, being socially constructed, Hacking believes ideas to be constructed as much as objects and words, intending social constructionism as the process of formation of categories that are rooted in a context (Hacking 1999; Pickering 1995). In the path of anti-essentialists such as John Stuart Mill (Systems VII, 1991), Hacking’s idea, which he qualifies as a ‘a shorthand, a very unsatisfactory shorthand’, is therefore the unspecific for kind, for category, that works through a mechanism of reinforcement that he calls looping effect (1995). To reply to Hacking’s question—what’s the point?—my point is to discuss the consequences of the idea of water conflict, an idea that has become part of the cultural armour in a wide variety of contemporary situations and has cementified in observation and practice.The rationale for this argument is rooted in the insufficient inattention to the actual processes of circulation and dispersal (and then influence) by Foucauldians on one side, and the focus on the interaction and competition between ideas (and perhaps the uncritical formulation of their intrinsic attractiveness as the cause for their success) by intellectual histories and history of science on the other side. This is not about how and why repeatedly falsified or discredited ideas remain powerful, discussed to great length by the Orientalism tradition and Postcolonial Studies, for example, but more about the pathways, transformations and contentions through which ideas have consequences.5 It is by re-discovering a simple, overused word like idea, explaining it by virtue of difference within its semantic field, and justifying its ability to influence a set of processes that this book is making, through a series of essays, a collective theoretical contribution to the literature on water and environmental conflicts. 9780367371753_C000.indd 7 09-04-2021 09:06:15 8 Luisa Cortesi The social life of an idea This introduction rotates around the observation that the locution ‘water conflicts’ conjures up a similar image for people with different backgrounds, professions, levels of education, and environmental beliefs, across cultural contexts. This does not mean that all of these individuals share the meaning of water conflict, or of water, or of conflict, but that such individuals are socialised—informally trained—into a specific way of interpreting the idea of water conflict. I am here interested in the agential purchase of the idea of water conflict, shifting the focus from critically exploring a concept and liberating people from false representation towards taking seriously the epistemic categories that people use for what they engender, in line with the anthropological contribution to the social sciences. Other scholars have engaged in similar projects, including James Ferguson, who, in his pathbreaking The Anti-politics Machine (1990), sets out to discover not the reasons for which a certain development project failed but the consequences of its failure. The social life of the idea of environmental conflict resides in its private and public existence and epistemological purchase. Calling a concept ‘social’ is reminiscent of Arendt, who defines social as neither private nor public, but both (Arendt 1959). Reference to the social life of an idea has the purpose of evoking its material, almost archaeological character, and yet the fact that its existence rests on its shared validity and communicability. De Wit, in her work with Masai agro-pastoralists, calls adaptation to climate change, as well as vulnerability, a ‘traveling idea’. In her story, however, such an idea inevitably clashes with local categories (De Wit 2015). My interest is complementary to hers: how does this idea live both private and public existences, and enact consequences by surviving cultural incompatibilities? This leads me to the broader question at the heart of this book: what does an idea engender? As an anthropologist, I look at common understandings that live in the practices and communications that people engage with, which are the result of a variety of contextual social, historical and political factors. When Joy and I started thinking about this book, we found immediately a great set of diverse collaborators whose work, expressed in multiple drafts, conference presentations, peer-reviewing workshops, has enriched tremendously our original understanding and led to the theorisation proposed above. In the following pages, the authors investigate ten cases of water conflicts for how the idea of conflict itself has defined, moulded, sharpened those conflicts. The process of writing an introduction to this volume has further stirred the essays below into forming the following overarching theoretical argument. The idea of water conflict emerges primarily in three ways: (i) how the idea has conditioned the conflict itself, including leading to its avoidance; (ii) how the idea has been utilised or mobilised in order to pursue a set of interests, to justify the actions and decisions behind such pursuit, or in order to provoke or prevent change; (iii) how the idea has been instrumental in naturalising or challenging a certain understanding of socioenvironmental relations, including ecological and technological ones, as well as a specific historicising of such relations, i.e. ways of remembering the past and imagining 9780367371753_C000.indd 8 09-04-2021 09:06:15 Introduction 9 the future.These situations, whether intended goals or unintended outcomes, are not mutually exclusive: as will be made clear, most papers are examples of all the three phenomena. In the subsequent part of this introduction, I will interpret the essays with respect to their contributions to the broader discussion, noted as (i) agential purchase of the idea of water conflict; (ii) instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict; (iii) naturalisation of environmental, ecological, technological, and historical relations. Where appropriate, the contribution to other sub-arguments will also be noted. Part 1 Agential purchase of the idea of water conflict Chapter 1: Bowles in the UK Boaters live on London’s canals for a variety of reasons, from a preference for a floating lifestyle to a necessity related to historical and contemporary housing crises. Living on a boat without a permanent mooring is soaked with daily inconveniences: a floating habitation precludes a zip code, and thus access to health care, mail, social services, and documents such as passport and work permits. While Boaters can easily obtain gas and electricity, for their drinking water and disposal of sanitary waste, they rely on a network of facilities-providing moorings that are run by the newly instituted charitable Canal and River Trust (CaRT). CaRT is a charity that not only facilitates the Boaters’ permanence on the water, but, paradoxically for people whose identity rests on their non-sedentary lifestyle, also enforces a rule that requires them to change their mooring every 14 days. The 1995 British Waterways Act, which allows Boaters to live on the canals, has de facto defined this group of people in terms of their way of living, with ‘continuous navigation’ a condition for their presence on the canals. Although the Boaters’ ethos tends to encourage mobility, the 14-day rule remains gruelling: navigation may be temporarily hindered by the weather, personal issues, or mechanical complications. It is unclear what motivates this ruling if not the need to impose a definition on people’s identity: hinging on a sedentary logic, the ruling implies that Boaters are different citizens from those who live on land or own private moorings. We do not know the motivation behind the imposition of shorter moorings, either: it does not seem to be an attempt to solve a conflict, but we know from Bowles’ paper that it did, instead, trigger one. By forcing movement, the ruling penalises the very identity it supposedly undergirds, thus engendering hostility and oppositional identities (i). The Boaters, even when self-identifying as such, seemed to be a loosely defined group before finding themselves sharing the negative experiences of CaRT’s policing: it was the enforcement of the 14-day rule and the exasperation it caused that unified the Boaters as a group.This group formation mechanism reached the point of exploring legal instruments that would equate the Boaters to an ethnic group, perhaps one of ‘Bargee Travellers’, in order to protect their lifestyle by further codifying it. As Bowles explains at the end of the chapter, water had an important role to play in exacerbating the conflict. Boaters enjoy water as a medium that provides their life with both the desired affordances of mobility and a substratum to habitation that 9780367371753_C000.indd 9 09-04-2021 09:06:15 10 Luisa Cortesi does not imply possession.Thus, the water of the canal does not qualify as a resource subjected to depauperation—Boaters do not consume it nor evidently limit others’ ability to enjoy it. But their life on water is dependent on accessing drinking water and sanitation services, a vulnerability that CaRT uses to arm-twist the Boaters. As water was ‘resourcified’ (transformed into a resource) and weaponised, the Boaters appropriated the idea of the conflict in the form of a media appeal to the human right to water, an operation that results not only in public sympathy and (if only temporary) conflict resolution, but also in the consolidation of the Boaters’ identity. In this case, the idea of water conflict has been used to justify a certain decision (ii) that furthered the interests of the state in sedentarising people. It conditioned the conflict itself, creating opponents where there had not been any (i). The idea of water conflict has also been mobilised in order to challenge a status quo perceived as discriminatory (ii) and, as a result, it has helped to naturalise a certain understanding of water as a resource (iii). Chapter 2: Mabon and Kawabe in Japan Chapter 2 is of particular interest in this collection because it contributes to our discussion the case of a conflict whose official narrative includes the construction of the adversarial other, which is then followed by an alternative narrative that pursues the same outcome through a different path.6 The official narrative about radiation in fish produced after the Fukushima disaster claimed the existence of sufficient facts and scientific information to guarantee the ‘absolute safety’ of Fukushima produce. Opposing concerns were thus framed as fuhyo higai, ‘harmful rumours’. Realising that such a narrative would be ineffective in rebuilding the consumers’ trust and thus in returning to full-scale business, the fisherfolks of Ikawi, one of Fukushima’s fishing districts, provided an alternative narrative based on a more localised, nuanced account of the uncertainties surrounding radiation. By constructing the imaginary of an antagonistic set of people who either believe in or spread rumours, the official narrative created a broad ‘we’ that included the state, the farmers and the fisherfolk of Fukushima, as well as all the citizens who were supportive of science, technology, reason, society, and the nation. The fisherfolks of Ikawi, logically the primary beneficiaries of such a narrative, did not, however, support the assumptions of risk and trust that underpin it, and instead prioritised winning consumers’ trust. Choosing a more transparent, if slower, process of trust building, they set up additional monitoring by citizens groups, created independent data, made visible the process of data production, and accepted the losses that came with such additional information. Pursuing the goal of returning to business, they distanced themselves from the political apparatus that promoted economic growth at all costs, thus avoiding an alignment of their interests with those of the industrial and nuclear sector. In deconstructing the patriotic, rational ‘we’ from which they were meant to benefit, the fisherfolk of Ikawi established an alliance with the imagined adversarial group that supposedly damaged them. By actively reframing the conflict and their 9780367371753_C000.indd 10 09-04-2021 09:06:15 Introduction 11 positionality within it, not only did they recognise that consumers hold the ultimate economic power by choosing whether or not to purchase the fish, but they also challenged the idea of water conflict as operating between two opposite and homogenous groups. They acknowledged that the way in which an issue is framed both influences its development and orients its consequences. In this case, the idea of conflict is mobilised by the state in order to pursue a specific set of interests (ii), engendering a nebulous set of opponents as a by-product (i). A sub-group, however, reinterprets the alliance, choosing to avoid conflict in favour of trust building (i). This move leads to a reinterpretation of certainty, and thus of socio-environmental and technological relationships (iii). Chapter 3: Roth, Warner and Winnbust in the Netherlands Like Lazzaretti in Chapter 6, the authors of Chapter 3, Roth,Warner and Winnubst, describe a pendulum, an oscillation between two alternate paradigms, in this case between centralised top-down and decentralised participatory management. Like Quintero and Selfa in Chapter 7, the authors of this chapter narrate the paradigm shift between the infrastructural approach to the ‘Room for the River’ framework, but do so precisely where it originates, in the Netherlands. Unlike all the other chapters in this collection, however, they narrate a case of conflict denial despite complex dissent and divergent interests and priorities. Shifting from the centralised engineering model (the Delta programme) to the decentralised paradigm (the Room for the River model) was not based on the agreement of scientists, engineers and policy makers, but instead on the assumption that environmental management should be depoliticised and that consensus should be enforced by decoupling the decision-making process from parliamentary negotiation. The consequences of these bold and often unilateral decisions were not met with the same kinds of opposition found in the Tocks Island case that Bloodworth narrates in Chapter 4, but nor were they left unattended: citizens organised to source counter-expertise, file lawsuits and build coalitions across interest groups as well as alliances across national borders.The opposition was effective in contesting standard narratives as well as constructing alternative representations and even solutions. Following Mouffe, the authors suggest that conflict should be recognised and dealt with. The Room for the River model advocates ‘giv[ing] room to the political’, making the case that conflict is foundational for democratic decision-making processes in so far as antagonism forces the negotiation of different priorities among different political forces. The conflict avoidance that the authors narrate is perhaps peculiar to its context: the Netherlands is not only a democratic setting with low institutional violence, but it is also a country based historically and discursively on land reclamation. With well-established expertise pertaining to the management of floods, ‘water conflicts’ in the Netherlands are perhaps less influenced than elsewhere by the global idea thereof. What happens when the idea of water conflict is actively negated? While perhaps not paradigmatic (see different outcomes of a similar negational approach in an 9780367371753_C000.indd 11 09-04-2021 09:06:15 12 Luisa Cortesi industrial contamination case in Ottinger 2018 for example), this case study showcases prototypical effects of conflict denial (i). It traces, for example, the vocabulary used to deny transformative participation (Hickey and Mohan 2004): citizens are ‘stakeholders’ (yet powerless ones), ‘sounding boards’ and legitimising ‘supporters’, language that resonates with similarly gregarious terms used in the development sector such as beneficiaries, recipients, users, members, and communities. While all these terms sound inclusive, the opinion of the stakeholders who were most involved in the decision’s outcomes managed to elude decision makers. It was the apolitical consultation process put in place that short-circuited dialogic possibilities. Nonetheless, the political imaginary did not succumb to the depoliticising mechanism (i): the denial of the water conflict did not result in consensus, but in the broadening of the conflict to include more stakes than ‘just water’, such as flood safety versus agrarian interests, aesthetic environmental benefits and infrastructural growth. It did not result in passive acceptance of the flattening of possibilities, but in an enhanced engagement and participation in grading them according to a shared value system. Part 2 Instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict Chapter 4: Bloodworth in the USA At the end of the Bowles’ chapter, we see how the Boaters, eventually aggregated as a group, were able to leverage the media to assert their right to water. The case study of Tocks Island in the 1960s and 1970s instead zooms into a moment of collision between two ideas, one of the technocratic appropriation of nature and one of environmental conflict (both ideas also referred to in most of the other chapters). The controversy around Tocks Island and Sunfish Pond was a decades-long event in the United States that undermined the Army Corps of Engineers’ hegemonic power, but also, as Bloodworth argues, made a dent in the global dam paradigm. This history is often overlooked in favour of its international version, which features the story of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (the protest against the dam on the river Narmada) in India that, in the 1980s and 1990s—decades after the movement on Tocks Island—delayed a mammoth dam project by the World Bank and the Government of India, an action whose global resonance culminated in the 2000 Report of the World Commission on Dams and effectively halted financial support to big dams for more than two decades. In this vividly written chapter, Bloodworth tells us how the Army Corps and associated interest groups fostered the idea of a dam as unstoppable progress and regional economic growth by saturating the media with a persuasive and glossy campaign. Despite the campaign, because of the gross, arrogant and oppressive actions of the Corps, and thanks to a concomitant set of legislation, grassroot protesters were able to contest the paradigm with a story of environmental destruction, wasteful federal spending, and violent conflict. Such oppositional narratives were represented by a few committed individuals, common people who were able not 9780367371753_C000.indd 12 09-04-2021 09:06:15 Introduction 13 only to grab the attention of the media, but also to provide a face and a set of relatable interests representing the other, oppressed, side of the story. The idea of conflict, which conditions the dispute as it develops (i), was therefore mobilised to challenge the naturalisation of a technocratic understanding of socio-environmental relations (iii), in order to pursue a set of interests and to justify actions that provoked change (ii). The narrative of the conflict revealed the social and environmental tensions that would have otherwise gone unseen. It also engendered, like in Bowles’ chapter on the Boaters, both the consolidation of a group identity (i) and the sympathy of public opinion, which in turn made the situation recognisable and put pressure on those who would resolve it (ii). Chapter 5: Kroepsch in the USA While Bloodworth’s work in Chapter 4 digs into the potentials of mediatic representation, Kroepsch examines its pitfalls in Chapter 5. Without attempting to determine the risk of fracking, Kroepsch conducts a discursive analysis of water narratives in Colorado’s hydraulic fracturing debate vis-à-vis other resources’ competitive allocations and their respective narratives. Through media analysis, participant observation and interviews, Kroepsch examines the proliferation in the public realm of numerical representations and related policy narratives fuelled by the idea of water conflict that underpins fracking in the United States (ii). In doing so, she illustrates the agential purchase, both symbolic and political, of the idea of water conflict (i), which saturates the discursive space of data production and reliability and naturalises associated ideas such as nature as a resource (iii). Such power is revealed by exposing the strategic use of specific framings to represent water consumption, such as through volumetric comparisons, which flatten other variables, such as time, space and allocation trade-offs. Ultimately, Kroepsch reveals that ‘a full accounting of how much water is being used for hydraulic fracturing (…) and whose water it is’ was never achieved, most likely due to a lack of cooperation between the water and energy sectors, in particular between regulators. Information about water quantity issues is simply not available, a dearth that is shaped by, and shapes, the narratives about the topic. As I understand Kroepsch’s argument, the idea of the conflict acts as a convenient matrix to shape accounts about water, its regulations and its consumption. It also performs a narrative gatekeeping function (ii) by effectively clouding the possibility of data production. In addition, Kroepsch’s analysis suggests that water is not the only reason or casus belli for this conflict, with several other contingencies heavily informing the debate. First, water is merely the vehicle through which policy debates are played out in the public space. Second, media attention, volatile and erratic, instrumentalised the idea of water conflict for their own interest of representation (ii). Third, concerns around the weather influence the volatility of media attention as much as political interests do: after two years of drought, a rainy season was sufficient to archive the debate and render ‘an already non-transparent energy– water nexus even more invisible’. In conditions of climate change, the effective 9780367371753_C000.indd 13 09-04-2021 09:06:15 14 Luisa Cortesi volatility of the debate is all the more consequential because it impedes environmental learning, which instead requires sustained and steady attention. Chapter 6: Lazzaretti in India Similar to Kroepsch’s and Bowles’ chapters (Chapters 1 and 5, respectively), this case study from Benares, India, shows that water is not the reason for this particular conflict but rather the weapon in historical political clashes between Hindu and Muslim peoples (ii). The Well of Knowledge is situated in the same compound as the Vishvanath temple, one of the main pilgrim destinations for Hindu followers, and the Gyan Vapi mosque, the main mosque of the city. Because the two religious groups have been in a political clash (at the national level) since Independence, the co-presence of two centres of worship traps the well in a site of conflict. The Well itself, as Lazzaretti writes, has not been uniformly associated with the conflict, but rather its role vis-à-vis the dispute has oscillated from central to peripherical and from peripherical to central. At times, water has been a pillar in the narrative of Muslim usurpation of Hindus gods. At times, the well, and the unity of the compound itself, have become invisible, a mere space of passage that overlaps in alternative ways to live religious belonging as conflated in the urban fabric.The idea of water conflicts, infused with symbolic power, is fertile ground for other conflictual narratives to take root. I also take this chapter as a reflection on the idea of water conflicts as naturalising water as a resource (iii). The Well of Knowledge is a water place, but one of minor importance, whose water is only a symbolic presence, often forgotten until other less watery tensions arise.This thought merits pause: we have come to the awareness of the false dualism between the symbolic and the material, which is particularly salient in studies of semiotics (see Kockelman’s work, for example, 2005, 2010b, 2010a, 2013, 2016). Lazzaretti goes to great lengths to explain that the water of the well may not even be there (see Cortesi 2018 for a similar analysis of the semiotic presence of mud) and that the well structure itself is repeatedly forgotten, out of sight, until it again becomes involved in practices of heritage that are instrumental for articulating the conflict. The point is that water here remains a resource, at least narratively: water’s symbolic power is particularly susceptible to being inflamed with meanings that sustain narratives of disputes. It is therefore readily appropriated for its entanglement with other narratives, fuel for heating up the conflict (see Mabon and Kawabe, Chapter 2, for a discussion on heating up and cooling down conflicts), lubricant in the mechanism of the technology of conflict. Water also returns here as the carrier par excellence, infused with ad hoc meanings. The reasoning of it, however, is associated with the idea of water conflict, whose social life has melted together the two parts (water, conflict) of this compound into one singular idea. As two substances that form a third and whose chemical bond is preferred by both elements, one constantly recalls the other: water conflict is a narratively stable compound, where one element, in the right conditions, conceptually conjures up the other. 9780367371753_C000.indd 14 09-04-2021 09:06:15 Introduction 15 Part 3 Naturalisation of environmental, ecological, technological and historical relations Chapter 7: Moreno Quintero and Selfa in Colombia Moreno Quintero and Selfa show how the idea of conflict, this time, river versus people, naturalises a set of relationships that is far from ‘natural’ (iii). As in Chapter 1 by Bowles, Chapter 7 reflects on the construction of opponents, a construction that reveals the power dynamics behind the category of ‘the people’. As in Chapter 2 by Mabon and Kawabe, behind a group discursively constructed as aligned on the basis of shared interests, there is a multiplicity of different, at times competing, political relationships. Further, Moreno Quintero and Selfa continue the discussion by demonstrating how such groups are also aligned (if roughly) with different ontologies. As a result, we see how the idea of the conflict is able to mask not only subgroups and relations, but also radically different ways of seeing the world as well as the possibility of their incommensurability (iii). Following major floods in the Cauca River Valley (Colombia) in 2010 and 2011, the previous top-down, engineering-intensive river management paradigm modelled after the Tennessee Valley Authority was renegotiated for the Room for the River paradigm, a more recent model of Dutch derivation based on spatially accommodating the river as well as on principles of participatory, egalitarian and horizontal governance (see Chapter 3).The earlier paradigm, however, had enforced a differential set of environmental rights, whose resulting race-based power inequalities ended up hindering the realisation of the new scheme. Sugar landowners managed to appropriate the decision-making process and to eventually override the components of the project that did not foster their interests. As a result, the project was stripped of its own purposes. The Afro-Colombians’ voices, ironically the only ones compatible with the Room for the River model, were instead silenced. This experience—and I am here interpreting Moreno Quintero and Selfa’s work— questions the ability of a water management scheme to design social equality into a technical solution, in particular when deprived of the instruments, the capabilities and the power to understand or affect the social fabric on which the project is positioned.Yet, this is not only a story of the inattentive import of an ineffective environmental management model, but also of its epistemic consequences: the earlier programme had engendered an understanding of water and land that treated them as resources, limited, desirable, meant to be optimised for productivity (iii). If the perspective of the Afro-Colombians, whose livelihood was based on small-scale agriculture and fishing, considered flooding the manifestation of a living ecosystem, the earlier project had caused the minority view to lose its grip in the larger social context. The narrative of the rivers versus the people was perhaps too unrealistic to consolidate a group, such as in the case of the Boaters (Chapter 1), but it is still held together by the corollary narrative of disaster and risk as well as of the historical memory of the harshness of flooding. This cluster of narratives that pretends to unite people against the river does not convince everybody, however; it does not 9780367371753_C000.indd 15 09-04-2021 09:06:15 16 Luisa Cortesi cohere for the African-Colombians, for whom the river is neither an enemy to be tamed nor a beast to be subjugated to human needs. But it continues to have purchasing power with the experts who have the final say on the project—to their eyes, the cluster of narratives effectively masks the views of those affected by the events along with the power gradients that silence their perspective. We could also interpret this case as a non-conflict, or at least as a case in which another invisible conflict (not that of humans versus the river, but that of the sugarcane landowners versus the Afro-Colombians agriculturalists) is too latent, has not (yet, perhaps) escalated, and is (not yet) considered a conflict by its own stakeholders (the Afro-Colombians do not necessarily represent themselves as a group with cultural consciousness). As Mabon and Kawabe (Chapter 2) remind us, there is a conflict-potential that could eventually heat up, open to the different narratives by the diverse groups that make up ‘the people’. Precisely the idea of the water conflict could be instrumental for this process(ii), set up against different ontologies and power differentials. This heating up would be necessary, Mabon and Kawabe’s (Chapter 2) discussion seems to imply, and Roth et al. (Chapter 3) seem to insist, in order to then ‘cool down’ the conflict by reaching a resolution. Chapter 8: Grandi in Egypt and Ethiopia Grandi’s political analysis reframes the transboundary water conflict on the exploitation of the Nile between Egypt—downstream, yet politically and economically hegemonic in the region—and Ethiopia—upstream and historically weaker yet armed with recent hydro-developmental ambitions. As a water conflict that has long been predicted but has not (as of yet) fully materialised, this story teaches us the many unpredictable possibilities of an idea by serving as a warning against its own realisation (i). Grounded in international relations and allied disciplines while effectively engaging multiple levels of analysis, this contribution rests in finding that the idea of water conflict intersects, and its agential purchase manifests, in resource governance. In my liberal interpretation of Grandi’s political analysis, I understand resource governance as the art of allocation through the negotiation of environmental imaginaries with political priorities, both aspects that this chapter goes to great lengths to investigate. Chapter 8 accomplishes the innovative move of grounding international relations between two countries in the contextual environmental imaginaries built through long-term engagements with the river. The life of the idea of the Nile is semiotically and rhetorically built through language, history and literature: the Nile is ‘the river to be harvested’ for Egyptians vis-à-vis the fatherly yet destructive figure who punishes Ethiopians by stealing from them their fertile land. In part, this analysis explains the counterintuitive relations of the two countries vis-à-vis the river, with Egyptians benefitting from the river despite being downstream, and Ethiopians only recently interested in exploiting the resource despite being upstream. Such complex three-way relation is at the root of the resource conflict, yet unexplainable through a purely materialistic framework. The chapter continues by substantiating 9780367371753_C000.indd 16 09-04-2021 09:06:15 Introduction 17 how the idea of the conflict between the two countries is leveraged to modify enviro-social relationships with the other country, and, in the case of Ethiopia, with the river itself. Political priorities are built, as this case shows, through the idea of a water conflict, or through the narrative that water is ‘essentially threatened’ by others—hence naturalised as a resource (iii) and creating opponents—and that its securitisation requires ‘extraordinary measures’ (such as violence), i.e. the instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict (ii). In order to induce political support and compliance from the population, the process of securitisation leverages the idea of water conflict because the latter serves to dramatise and prioritise the issue in the public sphere (ii); to legitimise extraordinary measures to manage (ii) and therefore to influence (i) the conflict; and to naturalise a single one-dimensional interpretation to the exclusion of alternative perspectives (iii). Chapter 9: Bresnihan in Bolivia Chapter 9 brings us to the epitome of a water conflict, one of the most consequential cases for the development of its idea: the so-called Water Wars that occurred in Cochabamba in the early 2000s. For our discussion, the contribution of this chapter lies in empirically challenging two discourses at the basis of the idea of water conflict: that of water as a resource and that of water as a right.The suggested change in perspective is consequential because the case of the Water Wars is perhaps the most paradigmatic case of water conflicts, and hence the case is influential in the formation of the idea. While the typical story of the Cochabamba Water Wars narrates that citizens, motivated by the unaffordability of water after privatisation, protested against the state and the corporations that formed the Aguas del Tunari consortium, the goal of the protesters, as Bresnihan and other authors make clear, was to save not SEMAPA, Cochabamba’s water supply agency, but the many water collectives that the state had appropriated during the privatisation process. In this chapter, Bresnihan focuses precisely on these cooperatives, that, even two decades after the Water Wars, continue to provide basic water services where the government pipes do not reach. The Tunari water cooperative, with its almost mythological genesis, is an institution built on the shared responsibility of the water system and an understanding of water that goes beyond its value as a resource. Although part of the Tunari’s members’ activism consists of opposing new development and urbanisation, the cooperative is willing to accept newcomers as long as they actively perform their duties towards the collective. The cooperative is not willing to sell water, however, nor will it include those who are likely to disperse the responsibility into a monetary transaction. Instead, the Tunari are investing their attention, labour and time in a relationship with the infrastructure of water that Bresnihan qualifies as one of care. The idea of water conflict has imposed a pattern of exploitative relationships (iii) that members of the cooperative comprehend well. The cooperative’s President, for example, expresses his scepticism towards the newcomers, who ‘only care for water 9780367371753_C000.indd 17 09-04-2021 09:06:15 18 Luisa Cortesi in their tap’, while they, instead, have much more at stake: ‘the political dispute amongst the members of the cooperative’, says Bresnihan, was about who ‘had the right to discuss and make decisions’. In so doing, the idea of water conflict and its effects (iii) are powerful, but not impossible to upend. Despite having appreciated the value of water in ‘highly stressed conditions, rapid urbanisation, and a sclerotic public administration’, they nonetheless refuse to treat water as a finite and indispensable resource. Such a stance is also an ontological consideration that, importantly, does not presume an attribution of personhood, nor a flattening of ontological hierarchies (King 2007).The relation of responsibility resides between humans, and the relationship of care extends towards the infrastructure. Such relationships grant ecological benefits, but do not necessarily involve an ontological fluidity among humans, water, pipes, and the non-human beings that follow a restored ecology. This is intellectually relevant because it helps to de-romanticise the scholarship on the relationship with the non-human, and thus directs some of our attention to societies whose motivation for ecological care are not necessarily ontological. Further, challenging the categorisation of water as a resource also means questioning the standardised positive outcome prescribed by the idea of a water conflict (i), which states that its resolution involves attributing rights to water. Establishing water as a right, Tunari and Aurora cooperative members seem to note, not only remains subjected to power relations, but may potentially remain productive of conflict in situations where the relationship between people, water and infrastructure is not a transactional one, but one of responsibility. This is an example where questioning the standardised idea of water conflict means challenging not only its political-economic assumptions—state/public versus market/ private—but also its expected positive outcome—the establishment of water-rights. The Water Wars were not only about resisting privatisation or claiming the right to water access, but they were also about reclaiming water as a collective responsibility. The analysis of the Water Wars and their consequences proposed in Chapter 9 sets the narrative straight in terms of their history as it belongs to those actors. It also points to the idea of water conflict and the consequences that it does (not need to) have (i–iii). Chapter 10: Van Hemert, Polsani and Ramnath in India Similar to Chapter 7 by Moreno Quintero and Selfa as well as Chapter 3 by Roth, Warner and Winnubst, the final case study of the collection discusses a water conflict that is the negation of a conflict. Almost a counter story to the protest told by Bloodworth in Chapter 4, this chapter is a standalone piece in so far as it does not explain how the idea of water conflict has agential purchase (i), has been mobilised or instrumentalised (ii), or has engendered appreciable consequences not tied to the conflict per se but to socio-environmental relations (iii). Instead, it focuses on a complementary aspect of our argument:Van Hemert, Polsani and Ramnath’s analysis of the pro-dam argument explains the narrative work it takes to keep the idea of water conflict at bay, out of the discursive arena. 9780367371753_C000.indd 18 09-04-2021 09:06:15 Introduction 19 The multipurpose mega dam on the Godavari river, pushed by the state of Andhra Pradesh since before Independence, today adds to an ever-growing budget shared with the central government that does not justify its expected benefits, which are distributed primarily in Andhra Pradesh at the expense of land in Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. Although the project has been shelved several times over the preceding decades, its justification continues to hold on to the original reasoning, based on unfounded, and long-dismissed, claims about the ability of dams to solve poverty based on water availability for irrigation. The state of Andhra Pradesh also prides itself on pro-tribal resettlement and rehabilitation packages, despite the project on paper being very different from its actualisation: the compensation coverage is partial and arbitrary and it removes people from the forest, which is the source of their livelihoods, their environmental knowledges, customs and food supply as well as the main locus of their identity, sense of community, and spiritual world. We do not know, in this case, how much the idea of water conflict played a direct role in the narratives presented, but we know that it was carefully excluded from the hegemonic, pro-dam narrative. The chapter’s most important contribution for our argument rests precisely in showing how this result is achieved: the authoritative tone of the pro-dam narrative holds performative value as it ‘brings about’ the representation it projects. It does so through the articulation of two complementary narratives: the pro-dam reasoning ties together the narrative of irrigation benefits and that of the compensation policy. Their articulation is based on contextually valuable ideas of timelessness and innovation—dams as a timeless solution to poverty, the compensation package as an ‘innovative’ ‘pro-tribal’ land-for-land. Such articulation, successful in appearing as solid and non-negotiable, is a mechanism that contains contestation and thus curbs the possibility of water conflicts emerging. Counternarratives, if they invalidate the official ones, do not overturn the latter’s hegemonic positioning. A lesson plan Lucky enough to have access to the chapters below before anyone else as an editorial privilege, I have deployed these case studies for teaching in seminars on water, environment and society, and the like. Based on my experience, I recommend the following as a lesson plan. Lecture Most of the introduction can be used as a lecture, or perhaps two.The most obvious use of this material is to discuss the power of ideas intended as theory impregnation of observation and factual statements. Depending on the course, such learning objective can be either related or unrelated to the idea of water conflict. In addition, the theoretical part of this introduction—the comparison between the concepts of idea, definition, genealogy/archaeology, ideology, narrative, framing, discourse, concept, imaginary, phenomenon—can be used to clarify, and increase students’ 9780367371753_C000.indd 19 09-04-2021 09:06:15 20 Luisa Cortesi familiarity with, key concepts commonly used by the social sciences and still beneficial in other disciplines. The elaboration here offered can also serve to direct students’ attention to the complex articulation between theories of social phenomena and their lived realities. Hands-on activity When used in conjunction with a lecture on the social life of the idea of water conflict, I have used the chapters for a hands-on interactive activity, which works well either in class or virtually (but could also be proposed as an individual homework). I divided the students into three groups, each in charge of reading one section of the book and then presenting it to the rest of the class. I have suggested that the students summarise the argument of each chapter with the prompt ‘this chapter argues that…’ and ‘this chapter contributes to the sub-argument of the section (identified above through the lowercase Roman numbers i, ii, iii) by virtue of….’ After each presentation, I have asked the other students to engage with the question discussed by their colleagues and to think how the chapters they read also engage with the sub-argument just presented. An alternative exercise, versatile because it is suitable for students of different educational levels and backgrounds, is to instead make explicit the links between the chapters. I suggest mapping the chapters according to an argumentative connection, placing them as nodes of a network. I have proposed this exercise on a blackboard, but I have found it to be more suggestive when completed with props, such as the physical front page/copy of the paper, yarn and coloured cards. To be specific, I have provided the physical copy of the paper when it was reasonable to assume that the students could benefit from going over it in teams to refresh their memory and I chose to minimise screen distractions. I have used coloured yarn (or chalk on black tabletops) to connect papers and cards to write down the type of relation between them. To spice it up, I have divided the class into two teams and assigned them relationship cards of different colours. In this game-like version, each identified relation was counted as a point, with extra points for particularly poignant interpretative relations. Another exercise, perhaps more suitable for advanced students, is to apply the same epistemic framework proposed in this introduction to other powerful ideas in order to understand how such ideas live an impactful social life. Research students will benefit from a similar exercise with their own research project and the intellectual engagements that sustain it. Conclusion The idea of water conflict is a powerful one.We can all succumb to it; I did succumb to it, if for a moment. Reading about instances of water conflicts, I found myself thinking about water as the substance one cannot do without for long but can generally do without for long enough to fight for it. With all the tropes water has been defined 9780367371753_C000.indd 20 09-04-2021 09:06:15 Introduction 21 with—the matter we need to sustain our life, to drink, clean, irrigate, feed, absorb, bathe, cook, soak, enjoy, purify, save—such a thought was the result of my internalising the truism of water as the thing that we all need, of which there is not enough, for which we are willing to fight. Until I paused to gather the realisation that such an understanding was limiting, instead of illuminating, my quest to understand water and its role in conflict. My own definition was extending the idea of the conflict in framing water as a resource. Further, I was buying into a story that positioned itself as the only one. In a certain sense, I then realised, it is the only one. One standardised, homogenised story, and a consequential one.7 What does such a uniformity imply? I started this introduction noting how the idea of water conflict exists across contexts, societal and cultural differences, and is standardised in projecting two factions without visible internal tensions, interests or power differentials that compete for water, intended as a natural resource, material, scarce and essential. I posit that the idea of water conflict stands on the twin passage points of homo homini lupus and water scarcity and indispensability. The standard definition, then, is correct in identifying the main tenets, if not of water conflicts in their multitude, of the idea of water conflict. It was by stirring these essays together, again and again, leveraging them to pay attention to the real cases in which this idea was formed, operated, acted, and responded, that emerged the collective argument this book proposes: water conflict is an idea—an idea being not a representation, but an ontologically dignified thing. Without pretending to represent the theoretical traduction of the lived experiences of water conflicts, the idea of water conflict lives a life of its own: it engenders consequences for the conflict itself (i), is instrumentalised to foster or justify specific interests (ii), and it intersects with and legitimises specific environmental, ecological and technological relations8 as well as a specific historicising of such relations (iii). I wish to quickly recall these three points. First, to say that the idea of water conflict engenders consequences for the conflict itself means to say that it has agential purchase, or the power to modify the course of events.This has nothing to do with performativity, the reality-creation ability of an utterance that becomes a fact once it is pronounced. An idea is not an utterance, nor does it simply materialise. The idea of water conflict puts things into motion and enacts change, although the operation it performs is not only and necessarily activating a conflict—a conflict can be prevented, and other processes can be intersected or transformed by the idea.An idea creates, for example, values, senses of places, feelings of belonging, commonality and difference, timelines.All of these influence the conflict, including the possibility of its pursuit or its avoidance. Second, an idea is interpreted: it becomes an interface that is used, instrumentalised, leveraged by people, things, narratives. The idea of water conflict is mobilised to support, or defy, a certain set of interests; to justify actions or representations that pursue specific positions or ideologies; to enforce, or to avoid, a modification, a transformation. An idea, to be clear, is neither right nor wrong, neither a good thing nor a bad one. This instrumentalisation is open to negotiation and counterinstrumentalisation: it can be used to protect the status quo but also to challenge 9780367371753_C000.indd 21 09-04-2021 09:06:15 22 Luisa Cortesi it. Problematic when it curbs ecological and social experiences, the idea of water conflict can also give voice to the voiceless or be used to enact progressive change. Within the doxa, the delimitation of the field of processes in which consequences can develop, an idea may become a recognisable category to mobilise in order to prevent or engender change (Bourdieu 1977). Even Derrida, who believed in nothing outside of the text, explained that the text is a game whose result is unexpected; the idea of conflict can take the form of repression of other futures, or that of an empowering resource. It provides a transcendental signifier, whose significance, and roles, are all to be played (Derrida 1969).The possibility of closing the gate does not exclude the feasibility of opening it. Third, the idea of water conflict has the peculiar ability to intersect with other ideologies and solidify them, naturalise their ideological identity. This idea is tied to ideologies that regard the environment as a set of resources, thus naturalising (socio-) environmental and ecological relations, including from a political, historical, technological perspective, about the possession and utilisation of such essential and scarce substances, and it is used to legitimise these ideological stances. Several chapters of this collection, for example, de-centre the over-representation of the powerful as the only consequential influence on environmental management decisions. They instead demonstrate how the idea of water/environmental conflict itself plays a role in pushing for a certain understanding of nature that is erected on specific conceptual and sensorial configurations of the river, the water, the land, as well as people, power relations, and decision-making mechanisms. Such an idea is understood as actively enforcing these views. This book does not delve into all the mechanisms that make this possible. From my own empirical exploration of environment knowledge of disastrous waters (forthcoming), I suspect the leverage of an emotive component, for example the fear that the likelihood of a conflict incites. This aspect, not present in the empirical material of the chapters, is worth to be signalled in its possibilities of conceptual exploration. If Derrida describes a communication marked by the absence of an idea, the idea he questions is the message, the content between a sender and a receiver. What is proposed here instead is to re-centre the idea in the event, including a communicative one, not as the content of the communication between players, but as a fullyfledged player. The idea is therefore an agential interlocutor—for example, imagine a magnetic field that conditions the event or can be played to a specific advantage. This does not, therefore, undermine the concept of subjecthood that feminists have worked hard to rescue from both Foucault and social constructionism (Allen 1989; Fraser 1989; Hartsock 1990). An idea travels, lives both private and public existences, and survives cultural incompatibilities. It ripples and multiplies, feeding on itself as well as on mediatic and political amplifications, but also on silences and avoidances. It provides a format that may fit uncomfortably, or productively. It is the channelling of the many possibilities and ways in which things could have gone, or a wild card to get to a new level of action. This is, at its simplest, what this book proposes: to learn about water conflicts by looking at the idea of it. 9780367371753_C000.indd 22 09-04-2021 09:06:16 Introduction 23 Notes 1 This remark, of course, is also fed by a larger set of observations pertaining to my own anthropological work on how people learn about and from disastrous waters. 2 Concurrently with other local ontologies, this category counts a large and diverse number of people in its community of practice. 3 While Kantian metaphysics has been called into question, and without assuming a split between noumenal and phenomenal words, to explain the ontology of the thing, it is useful to use the concept of das Ding, a physical entity that exists. 4 Plato’s philosopher is clearly a man—how could it ever be a woman? This being said, most citations in this second part of the introduction refer to European philosophers, more in reference to standard concepts used in the social sciences than to the politics of citation that it implies. 5 Thanks to K. Sivaramakrishnan for this acute observation. 6 Chapter 2 offers a contribution to several bodies of literature, for example, exposing and weaving together common difficulties in the knowledge of disastrous nature (see also Cortesi 2021), such as the trouble of understanding nature beyond our sensorium, of trusting science beyond its official representation, of communicating risk and managing uncertainty at different spatial and temporal scales. 7 For a wonderful educational tool on the power of a single story see Adichie (2009). 8 For pure heuristic purposes, I here differentiate environmental from ecological. Environmental include social relation, while ecological focuses more on understanding humans as living organisms. 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Blaser, M. 2013. ‘Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe’. Current Anthropology, 54(5), 547–568. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burke, M., S. Hsiang and Miguel, E. 2015. ‘Climate and Conflict’, Annual Review of Economics, 7, 577–617. Cortesi, L. 2014. ‘Global News’, in D. Naito, R. Sayre, H. Swanson, and S. Takahashi (eds), To See Once More the Stars: Living in a Post-Fukushima World. Santa Cruz:The New Pacific Press. Cortesi, L. 2018. ‘The Muddy Semiotics of Mud’, Journal of Political Ecology, 25, 617–627. Cortesi, L. 2021. ‘An Ontology of Water and Land’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 27(4), forthcoming. 9780367371753_C000.indd 23 09-04-2021 09:06:16 24 Luisa Cortesi Cortesi, L., M.R. Dove, C. Hebdon, J. Stoike, and M. Lennon. 2018. ‘Environmental Anthropology’ in H. Callan (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Davis, D.K. and E. Burke. 2011. Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press. De Wit, S. 2015.‘Changing Patterns of Rain or Power? How an Idea to Adaptation of Climate Change Travels Up and Down to a Village in Simanjiro, Maasailand Northern Tanzania’, Working Papers of the Priority Programme of the German Research Foundation, 1448(11), 1–19. Derrida, J. 1966. ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’. Lecture presented at Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University. Derrida, J. 1969. De la Grammatologie (Collection). Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Derrida, J. 1972. ‘Hors Livre’ in La Dissémination. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Donahue, J.M. and B.R. Johnston. 1998. Water, Culture, and Power: Local Struggles in a Global Context. Island Press. Entman, R. 1993. ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. Ferguson, J. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine:Development and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, M. 1971. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books. Fraser, N. 1985. ‘Michel Foucault: A “Young Conservative”?’, Ethics, 96(1), 165–184. Fraser, N. 1989. Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Galtung, J. 1969.‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’, Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191. Ganguli, P., D. Kumar and A.R. Ganguly. 2017. ‘US Power Production at Risk from Water Stress in a Changing Climate’, Scientific Reports, 7(1), 11983. Hacking, I. 1995. ‘Looping Effects of a Human Kind’ in D. Sperber, D. Premack and Ann James Premack (eds), Casual Cognition, pp. 351–394. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hacking, I. 1999. The Social Construction of What? Boston: Harvard University Press. Hartsock, N. 1990. ‘Foucault on Power: a Theory for Women?’ in L. Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism. London & NY: Routledge. Hickey, S. and G. Mohan. 2004. Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development. London: Zed Books. Hiner, C.C. 2016. ‘“Chicken Wars”, Water Fights, and Other Contested Ecologies Along The Rural-Urban Interface in California’s Sierra Nevada Foothills’, Journal of Political Ecology, 23(1), 167–181. Homer-Dixon,T. 1999. Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Homer-Dixon, T. and J. Blitt. 1998. Ecoviolence: Links Among Environment, Population and Security. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Horowitz, L.S. 2009. ‘Environmental Violence and Crises of Legitimacy in New Caledonia’, Political Geography, 28(4), 248–258. Husserl, E. 1913. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. London and New York: Routledge Classics. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling. London and New York: Routledge. Joy, K., B. Gujja, S. Paranjape, V. Goud, and S. Vispute (eds). 2010. Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts in the Making. Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflict in India. New Delhi: Routledge. 9780367371753_C000.indd 24 09-04-2021 09:06:16 Introduction 25 Kant, I. 1878. Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Khagram, S. and S. Ali. 2006. ‘Environment and Security’, Annual Review of Environmental Resources, 31, 395–411. King, J.T. 2007. ‘The Value of Water and the Meaning of Water Law for the Native Americans Known as the Haudenosaunee’, Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, 16(3 Summer), 450–470. Kockelman, P. 2005. ‘The Semiotic Stance’. Semiotica, 157(1/4), 233–304. Kockelman, P. 2010a. Language, Culture, and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kockelman, P. 2010b. ‘Semiotics Interpretants, Inference, and Intersubjectivity’ in R. Wodak and P. Kerswill (eds), The Sage Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kockelman, P. 2013. ‘The Anthropology of an Equation’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3(3), 33. Kockelman, P. 2016. ‘Grading, Gradients, Degradation Grace’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2, 95–466. Latour, B. 2009. ‘Spheres and Networks: Two Ways to Reinterpret Globalization’, Harvard Design Magazine, Spring/Sum, 138–144. Levy, B.S., V.W. Sidel and J.A. Patz. 2017. ‘Climate Change and Collective Violence’, Annual Review of Public Health, 38, 241–257. Libiszewski, S. 1991. ‘What is an Environmental Conflict’, Journal of Peace Research, 28(4), 407–422. Martinez Alier, J. 2002. The Environmentalism of the Poor. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Marx, K. and F. Engels. 2001. The German Ideology (Part One, with Selections from Parts Two and Three, together with Marx’s ‘Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy’). New York: International Publishers. Mehta, L. 2013. The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation. The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation. Washington, DC: Routledge, Earthscan. Mill, J.S. 1991. The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (1963 rd ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Molle, F. 2009. ‘River-Basin Planning and Management: The Social Life of a Concept’, Geoforum, 40(3), 484–494. Nesbitt, T. and D. Weiner. 2001. ‘Conflicting Environmental Imaginaries and The Politics of Nature in Central Appalachia’, Geoforum, 32(3), 333–349. Nietzsche, F. 1887. On the Genealogy of Morals. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nixon, R. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Boston: Harvard University Press. Ottinger, G. 2018. Refining Expertise: How Responsible Engineers Subvert Environmental Justice Challenges. New York City: NY University Press. Peluso, N.L. and M.J. Watts. 2001. Violent Environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pickering, A. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Popper, K. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations:The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge. Povinelli, E.A. 2001. ‘Radical Worlds: The Anthropology of Incommensurability and Inconceivability’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 319–334. Povinelli, E.A. 2011. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Putnam, H. 1975. ‘The Meaning of Meaning’, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 7(7), 131–193. Sen, A. 1981. Poverty and Famine. An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 9780367371753_C000.indd 25 09-04-2021 09:06:16 26 Luisa Cortesi Strang,V. 1997. Uncommon Ground: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Values. Oxford, New York: Berg. Thornton, S. 2007. ‘Popper, Basic Statements and the Quine-Duhem Thesis’, Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society, 9, 1–10. Verhoeven, H. 2011. ‘Climate Change, Conflict and Development in Sudan: Global NeoMalthusian Narratives and Local Power Struggles’, Development and Change, 42(3), 679–707. Watts, M. and R. Peet. 2004. Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. London: Routledge. World Health Organization. 1996. Violence: A Public Health Priority. Geneva: World Health Organization. Zhouri, A. and R. Oliveira. 2012. ‘Development and Environmental Conflicts in Brazil: Challenges for Anthropology and Anthropologists’, Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 9(1), 181–208. 9780367371753_C000.indd 26 09-04-2021 09:06:16 PART I Agential purchase of the idea 9780367371753_P001.indd 27 09-04-2021 09:14:11 9780367371753_P001.indd 28 09-04-2021 09:14:11 1 CAN’T TRUST The boaters of the waterways of South East England versus ‘the charity that makes you homeless’ Ben Bowles1 Introduction The UK has over 2,000 miles of navigable waterways, a vast interweaving network of canals and rivers, all of which are populated (albeit some rather sparsely) by boatdwellers who live in narrow steel boats, fibreglass cabin cruisers and barges. In the absence of a home mooring, some of these ‘Boaters’ travel the system, moving from place to place and thereby forming a number of interlinking itinerant communities and loosely affiliated groups. Over six years of living aboard a boat, including 13 months during which I was engaged in participant observation fieldwork with Boaters as part of my PhD studies at Brunel University, London, my travels have taken me around the comparatively highly populated canals and rivers of London and the South East. Much of the Boaters’ interaction, and a large part of what binds them together as a community, is centred around a longstanding series of conflicts with the authority tasked with managing and maintaining the waterways:2 the charitable trust Canal and River Trust (CaRT), which took over the running of the waterways from a quango—British Waterways (BW)—in early 2012.3 The water conflict described here is intensely political: a conflict over access to water as a living space and the Boaters’ ability to remain on the waterways. After briefly introducing the Boaters, this chapter explores the fundamental aspects of this particular political situation. Following this, the chapter outlines two specific disputes that demonstrate how access to drinking and sanitation moorings via water points and facilities moorings can become central paradigmatic scenes (the concept used and understood by Davies [2010]) through which the relationship between the Boaters and CaRT can be seen to emerge. These are places where these independent travellers, who are not linked to national gas or electricity networks, must rely upon others, including agencies of the state. The most important of these places are 9780367371753_C001.indd 29 09-04-2021 09:06:52 30 Ben Bowles the facilities moorings, where Boaters must access their drinking water and dispose of sanitary waste at locations provided and managed by CaRT. It is ironic that, for people living on rivers, water provision can drag the Boaters into antagonistic contact with the sedentary world and with state forces. At these flashpoints, the Boaters and CaRT must engage with each other, and CaRT can therefore try to control the boating population through limiting the number and quality of the facilities. In this way, the Boaters’ fluid, liminal or water-like way of being in the world (Strang 2005) is pinned down or solidified by the material infrastructure of water management. This chapter details the tension that arises when Boaters (who in many ways deliberately attempt to develop a flexible, transient and mobile lifestyle and identity against sedentary outsiders and the state) find that the instability of their relationship with the state (where they exist in a legal grey area and are subject to opaque and inconsistent surveillance and enforcement procedures) is one of their lifestyle’s greatest challenges.4 Some Boaters see this as a necessary evil, some relish the battle, while for others (particularly those poorest Boaters who are mainly afloat for reasons of economic necessity), ‘choice’ is actually too strong an expression. This chapter describes the ‘arms’ length’ relationship wherein the Boaters, from the authority’s perspective, are a problematic and hard-to-govern acephalous mobile group, and the authority, from the Boaters’ perspective, is the inconsistent, unpredictable and frequently discriminatory tool of a state that is biased towards a sedentary and sedentarising logic. In addition, as I have written elsewhere (Bowles 2016, 2017), having an antagonist in the form of CaRT has an aggregative function: binding disparate Boaters together as a community against a powerful common aggressor. Introducing the boaters The Boaters are those who have taken to living aboard boats on the canals and rivers since the last of the population known as the ‘working Boaters’—professional goods-carrying boat-dwellers with their own long history going back to the boom of canal building (see Burton 1989; Smith 1974[1878]; Rolt 1999 [1944])—moved from the ‘cut’, as the canal is known, in the winter of 1962–63. This population has slowly increased as the canals and rivers have become cleaner, better maintained and more attractive as holiday and leisure destinations over the intervening years. In recent years, particularly since travelling on the highways of the UK has become more difficult, and again in the aftermath of the 2007 financial crash, boat-dwelling has become vastly more popular. The boating population has grown with particular speed around cities such as London, where a housing crisis (see Croucher 2015; Hill 2013) has left many unable to afford sky-high rent prices. The histories and socioeconomic statuses of these live aboard (a term which simply means ‘those that live permanently on a boat’) are mixed, but most tend to be on the less affluent end of the socioeconomic spectrum, with some explicitly stating that they are living on boats as a way to avoid imminent homelessness. The Boaters are in a different position than sedentary people with regard to their 9780367371753_C001.indd 30 09-04-2021 09:06:52 Can’t trust 31 position within state legibility (as they do not hold a postcode) and state taxation, as they pay only their boat license cost and thereby avoid local authority council tax. Their utilities are also generally cheaper, due to the Boaters’ ability to generate their own electricity from generators and solar panels and their right to gather water from CaRT-provided taps. It is important to note, however, that Boaters are often quick to state that they live aboard for more personal reasons than economic reasons, and that it is important to ‘love the lifestyle’, particularly the freedom and mobility afforded by boatdwelling. Some Boaters with families find it difficult to maintain itinerant lives due to the need to register for schools and, as such, Boaters tend to be younger, or single, or retired and with older children. London, in particular, maintains a varied population of Boaters, especially as many more affluent individuals have chosen boating as a way of living in desirable areas and avoiding rent costs. However, there does exist a tension between more experienced Boaters and these ‘new’ or ‘newbie’ Boaters who are yet to become embedded in the community of practice on the waterways (see Wenger 1998; Lave and Wenger 1991). Being a ‘proper’ and respected Boater within this community of practice involves entering into practices and ethics of hard work, mastering practical skills, becoming as self-sufficient and ‘off-grid’ as possible, and attending to the needs of others in the community who may be in need of support or protection. This may be linked to class background but is not determined by it. Beyond these general commonalities, there is little pattern to the livelihoods adopted by Boaters, other than the fact that due to their need to travel, many Boaters find a way to work part-time, in ‘informal’ sectors of the economy (see Hann and Hart 2011: 114), from home, or providing goods or services for other Boaters. For the Boaters, the ability to move, to have the freedom to choose their neighbours and to navigate around the waterways system is an important part of their identity. Like the traveller-gypsies in Judith Okely’s (1983) account, the potential to move (more than the act of travelling itself) is important to this community’s sense of self and difference. The Boaters tend to move according to their own interpretation of CaRT’s two-week system, moving to what they would describe as a ‘new place’ approximately every two weeks, although some do tend to stay in particular convenient spots for longer periods of time, particularly when mechanical issues with the boat, personal health issues, or the weather make boat navigation inconvenient. Boaters tend to police long-term over stayers to an extent by encouraging the rhetoric that ‘the point of living on a boat is to move’ and speaking of movement around the landscape as being one of the great benefits of a life aboard. For the Boaters, important facets of their identity and their distinction from the sedentary world are their mobility, their appreciation of personal freedoms and self-sufficiency, and the importance of community and mutual support. It is hard to summarise exactly what kind of an object this identity is. Boaters have a wide spectrum of attitudes towards their identity and how they describe themselves to others. Some Boaters are enthusiastic and speak of being a Boater as an important facet of their identity, or even as their ethnic category (such as those who 9780367371753_C001.indd 31 09-04-2021 09:06:52 32 Ben Bowles argue for the uptake of the ‘Bargee Traveller’ ethnic category). Others speak about boat-dwelling as an important part of their lives and the boating community as being important to them, and they may even describe themselves as travellers or ‘a type of Traveller’ but stop short of describing themselves as ethnically separate from the sedentary world. For others, boating is a simple housing choice, often temporary in nature. It is believed by most Boaters that those in this latter category are unlikely to be successful on boats in the long-term, as they are less likely to engage with the supportive community of live aboard (see Bowles 2014), and there is general agreement that those that identify as Boaters must support each other in the face of hostility from outside the community (see Bowles 2017). One of the most valuable ways to observe the Boaters’ identity is in their relationships with outsiders and non-Boaters, particularly when Boaters are aggregated as a community through the commonalities produced by conflicts. ‘Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting’ The water conflict The majority of ongoing conflicts between the itinerant Boaters and the authorities are caused by divergent readings of the 1995 British Waterways Act, an act of the UK parliament which allows Boaters to live aboard without a home mooring (to live as what is known as a ‘Continuous Cruiser’) providing that they travel to a new ‘place’ every 14 days as part of a process where the boat is used ‘bona fide for navigation’5 (British Waterways Act 1995). CaRT, and before them BW, have spent a great deal of time and financial resources policing or enforcing the 14-day rule, including attempting to set minimum distances, implementing no-return policies, and privatising a number of moorings, so that Continuous Cruisers are limited to particular, and now decreasing areas. The overall effect is that Boaters are encouraged to move farther and more frequently and to adopt behaviours understood by the authorities to constitute genuine continuous cruising. Boaters can feel that they are being forced from the waterways by an authority which considers them to be a nuisance, and frequently make the point that CaRT may be acting ultra vires, i.e. beyond the legal remit of their powers as detailed in the 1995 act—a flawed piece of legislation, which both sides admit fails to provide concrete definitions or a strong framework, thereby leaving room for competing interpretations. The essential conflict between the Boaters and CaRT, and the one which shapes and frames the other conflicts described in this chapter, is around the interpretation and policing of the 14-day rule. The Boaters experience forces of explicit governance through CaRT, which manifest as twin (and often somewhat contradictory) pressures. On the one hand, Boaters are encouraged, both explicitly by CaRT and by the general sedentarising logic of states and bureaucracies—what Scott (1998, 2011) describes as the state’s desire to make the citizenry legible and settled6—to give up their itinerant lifestyles and move onto land, or to settle their boats at a 9780367371753_C001.indd 32 09-04-2021 09:06:52 Can’t trust 33 permanent mooring. On the other hand, Boaters are explicitly surveilled by data checkers and enforcement officers: their boat license numbers are recorded in a particular location that falls within one of CaRT’s arbitrary divisions of ‘place’ or ‘neighbourhood’, and they are then placed into an enforcement process when they are deemed to have overstayed in a place for longer than two weeks. At this point, they can potentially lose their boats and become homeless. In this way, Boaters are encouraged to both become sedentary and move farther and more frequently; they are, to borrow a phrase from Bob Dylan’s song Chimes of Freedom, ‘condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting’. The first of these pressures, the general push by CaRT and others to sedentarise the Boaters, can be literally mapped on the waterways through the reduction of mooring space on the towpath—also called the ‘on-side’ or ‘online moorings’—as CaRT moves to create permanent, privately owned mooring spaces. During my fieldwork, a major uproar was caused in the Cowley and Uxbridge area by CaRT’s proposals to reduce online moorings by 10 for every one permanent ‘affordable’ mooring they provided. This planned 10:1 reduction did not come to fruition, but the announcement of the proposal was the direct cause of the creation of a Boaters’ advocacy organisation, Cowley and Uxbridge Boaters (CUB). A persistent concern for Boaters is that the UK waterways will become heavily privatised, with boats being confined to particular moorings, given postcodes and made subject to local government political authority. Boaters often specifically link this situation to that which is experienced by boatdwellers in mainland Europe. One participant, Dan, told me that ‘they want to make it like Amsterdam’, where the centre of the city consists almost entirely of expensive residential mooring. This point was almost admitted by a CaRT employee when he told me that Amsterdam was ‘a vision of what we are becoming. The waterways are much more integrated. There’s a lot more local digression in the UK’. By digression, he was referring to local mooring rules, mixed mooring patterns and irregular enforcement of the authority’s take on the law.7 A fully privatised system would halt this ‘digression’ and make the waterways easy to manage from a bureaucratic centre, fulfilling what Scott (1998) describes as the major purpose of the state. As Tim, a Boater in Reading, once said with deliberate sarcasm after a friend had given him grim news of increased ‘enforcement’ at the western end of the Kennet and Avon canal at Bath, ‘it’s almost like they don’t want people living on the canals’. It is important to note that sedentarising pressure is a pressure that is felt implicitly by Boaters and is, in fact, embedded deeply in UK society. Besides more explicit sedentarising measures, it is consistently difficult to live in the UK without a postcode (i.e. ZIP code) and it is not possible to have a residential postcode as a Boater unless you claim to live in a house in which you are not actually resident (a relative’s house, for example). Bank accounts, passports, permissions to work, access to General Practitioners, doctors’ surgeries, access to mail, access to benefit payments, and other pre-requisites of life in the UK are significantly harder or impossible to access without a postcode. One participant told me ‘you aren’t a person without a postcode’ and claimed that the daily inconvenience of not holding one of these important bureaucratic symbols was a subtle ‘push’ factor discouraging a life afloat. This background pressure, when combined 9780367371753_C001.indd 33 09-04-2021 09:06:52 34 Ben Bowles with CaRT’s more explicit measures of sedentarisation—including the increased privatisation and legislation of towpath mooring, and forcing Boaters who they deem as ‘non-compliant’ to take a home mooring or be refused a license renewal—creates an environment in which it is far easier to be sedentary within the state. The second of these pressures—the pressure to move onwards to a new place every 14 days, and further to make these extensive and frequent movements as part of a process of bonafide navigation of the waterways—is of equal or greater concern than the first for the Boaters of the South East. Both Boaters and the authority have at times sought to map ‘places’ or ‘neighbourhoods’ which they feel represent a reasonable and appropriate moving distance, and both groups have also advocated a more open approach based on what they understand to be common sense. For the Boaters, this common-sense approach takes the form of the practice of encouraging Boaters, via online forums or face-to-face at gatherings or when travelling, not to show a lack of inclination to move (often colloquially referred to as ‘taking the piss’, meaning that these Boaters are making the situation worse for those who do try to move within what they deem to be a reasonable interpretation of the law) and creating a pervasive rhetoric that ‘the point of living on a boat is to travel’. Indeed, many travelling Boaters are as critical of neighbours who are deemed to be moving too infrequently and within too small an area as those from outside of the community.These overstayers may be creating an increased risk of enforcement for those Boaters who deem their cruising pattern to be acceptable and within their own understanding of the law. If there seems to be a contradiction in Boaters’ speaking about the importance of movement and yet running into conflict over the authority’s measures to move them on, then it is important to clarify that, although movement is important to the Boaters, the rigid subdivision of this movement and the addition of arbitrary minimums of distance and frequency is antithetical to most Boaters’ understanding of how the waterways should ideally function. Their understanding is based on a situational flexibility and attention to the ‘natural’ rhythms of life on waterways (see Bowles 2016), and not on arbitrary measurements and distances and timescales that are unrealistic. Such conditions are especially untenable for Boaters with children, with work commitments in specific locations, and Boaters with other ties to general localities, such as the need to attend particular hospitals. For CaRT, an open and flexible approach has been adopted in their official guidance, perhaps reflecting that senior members of the authority have recognised that they cannot legally define ‘place’ or ‘navigation’ without their interpretations being supported by judgements in national courts of law. As such, a section of their guidance, under the subheading ‘Place’, reads: What constitutes a ‘neighbourhood’ will vary from area to area—on a rural waterway a village or hamlet may be a neighbourhood and on an urban waterway a suburb or district within a town or city may be a neighbourhood. A sensible and pragmatic judgement needs to be made. It is not possible (nor appropriate) to specify distances that need to be travelled. (CaRT 2012) 9780367371753_C001.indd 34 09-04-2021 09:06:52 Can’t trust 35 Taken at face value, this approach may seem encouraging to Boaters and may be seen to represent a new flexibility and leeway in the authority’s interpretation and implementation of the law. In reality, it has become clear that CaRT data checkers have continued to register Boaters as being present in particular places and to record this as accurately as their infrequent boat sighting records can allow. As a Boater, I received the following e-mail (Figure 1.1) in April of 2015, an e-mail that clearly marks a succession of places at which my boat has been sighted and recorded. The definition of these locations as places has neither been officially provided in guidance to the Boaters nor tested for its validity in courts against the written law. In this way, Boaters have continued to become part of CaRT’s enforcement process; a process which, like the definitions of ‘place’ and ‘navigation’, has differed over time and from place to place. The system with which many Boaters have become familiar over the years involves a sequence of letters, beginning with what is referred to as a Pre-CC1 (the CC standing for ‘Continuous Cruiser’), warning the Boater to alter their cruising pattern, and progressing to a CC1, CC2, CC3, and then legal action through local courts, at which point the authority can refuse to renew the Boaters’ license and then ‘Section 8’ [remove] the vessel.8 However, this approach has changed dramatically on two occasions since the commencement of my fieldwork in 2012. Firstly, there was general confusion on the waterways in 2012 over CaRT’s decision to add overstaying ‘fines’ of £25 per day onto the license without notice and to present Boaters with these fines on the occasion of their license renewal. It was never clear to the Boaters whether or not the levying of these fines was lawful and whether or not they were legally obliged to pay, nor was it clear whether or not particular Boaters were accruing overstaying FIGURE 1.1 Part of an e-mail sent to me by a CaRT enforcement office, clearly marking their definition of the ‘places’ in which my boat had been spotted. Source: Author 9780367371753_C001.indd 35 09-04-2021 09:06:52 36 Ben Bowles fees or had managed to avoid the attentions of the data collectors, who do not necessarily announce their presence. This unpredictability took another turn in early 2015 when CaRT announced that those termed ‘non-compliant continuous cruisers’ would be offered licenses of only three- or six-month duration, as a prelude to their changing their cruising behaviour or being refused a license entirely at the next renewal opportunity. Boaters, again, were not told whether or not they were being placed on the list of non-compliant continuous cruisers and, therefore, were not aware whether there was an imminent danger of their being made homeless. As can be seen from Figure 1.1 and the discussion above, there is no obvious logic or any particular regularity of pattern to the enforcement approach taken by CaRT. They recognise a legal need, encouraged by complaints from local residents, holiday boat-hirers and hobbyist non-liveaboard Boaters, to move overstaying boats onwards every two weeks and not to allow these Boaters to cruise in a limited area. However, their resources are clearly too meagre to produce efficient data on the current mooring position of all cruising boats (the infrequency of sightings in Figure 1.1 is a testament to this, with whole months between sightings), and there is no obvious consistency over time or geographic region as to who is targeted by enforcement and how this enforcement is felt. In an interview with a high-ranking CaRT officer, I asked why CaRT were so interested in moving Boaters on long distances every two weeks or sooner to limit overstaying. He explained that pressure from sedentary residents, particularly in affluent areas, and from non-residential boaters holidaying through London meant that they had to be seen to be enforcing a law that was, with the available resources, incredibly hard to enforce. He did not recognise that the authority’s interpretation of the law may not be currently legal or that while judgements in some courts have upheld the action of CaRT, some have ruled against their enforcement of the law (for a legal overview, see Bowles 2015: 77–80). Lacking further legislation subsequent to the 1995 Act or judgements in higher courts, such as the Supreme Court of the UK or the European Court of Human Rights, it is yet to be confirmed whether or not CaRT’s actions are within their powers and based on a legitimate interpretation of the 1995 legislation, and multiple interpretations could be argued. When asked why the residents and holiday boaters were concerned with overstaying, the CaRT officer answered, ‘There’s a concern, when there’s a long-term relationship [between Boaters and residents]. [Certain residents] are engaged with monitoring the use of the canal. They equate overstaying with those who do not observe the rules, who are anti-social generally; they don’t care about causing unpleasantness for others’. Asked about whether this reflected the distaste, based on class prejudice, by rich residents against poor Boaters, he replied emphatically, ‘You can’t necessarily draw that class distinction. I may agree that people would rather have neat shiny boats at the end of their garden. It’s perception, the idea that these people may be criminal, may have criminal friends’. From this conversation and from public meetings which I have attended, CaRT’s processes tend to react to pressure from outside and to differ from area to area based on the particular concerns presented to them by locals. For Boaters who travel long 9780367371753_C001.indd 36 09-04-2021 09:06:52 Can’t trust 37 distances around the system, this can lead to an uneasy lack of security and clarity, as Boaters are never clear on whether their current movement will prove acceptable to the authorities or if and when they may be subject to enforcement notices or a reduced period license.9 It can therefore be seen that the primary conflict between the Boaters and CaRT, a conflict over the use of the waterways as a place for human dwelling, comes from the Boaters being subjected to twin and apparently contradictory pressures. The Boaters exist under one series of pervasive pressures to make them sedentary and settled, and another of unpredictable pressures to move onwards, farther and more frequently: ‘condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting’. Either of these pressures has the potential be incredibly harmful, to the point of forcing poorer or vulnerable Boaters from the waterways and into homelessness. However, these twin pressures are neither unique to the waterways, nor actually paradoxical in reality. Firstly, it is important to note that the Boaters’ double bind of being simultaneously sedentarised and moved on in order to show that they are proper legal travellers is not a unique feature of this particular community. Okely (1983) described a similar situation with the Traveller-Gypsies with whom she worked in England, whereby legal changes (particularly the 1968 Caravan Act) attempted to force them to stay in official residential parks where they could be monitored and their movements controlled. Simultaneously, however,Traveller-Gypsies would be moved from council to council as it became clear that no authority wished to house them longterm. In reality, even though (essentially sedentary) provision was to be made for Gypsies by each local council, a status quo prevailed whereby Gypsies would become the recipients of complaints from sedentary local residents and would be forced from the council’s jurisdiction and on to the responsibility of another, constantly being hounded between local authorities (ibid.:105–124). Parallel to the Boaters’ experience, the Traveller-Gypsies find their dealings with the state to be a series of ‘unpredictable events’ which ‘[confirm] their views of Gorgios as untrustworthy and capricious’ (ibid.: 109), and like the Boaters, they too found that, in face-to-face interaction with agents of the state, ‘a modus vivendi is found beneath the letter of Gorgio law’. In this way, the Traveller-Gypsies were also caught in an ambiguous position between a sedentarising pressure and a pressure to move. Okely, in her concluding remarks, summarises that ‘the state has attempted to control, disperse, deport, convert or destroy them’ (ibid.: 231), although she does not reflect explicitly on how some of these pressures may be contradictory and may serve to simultaneously push and pull travelling people in several directions. Further, it is important to note that it is not paradoxical that CaRT, as representatives of the state, does not rigorously or logically surveil or approach the Boaters, and that they seem to be encouraging mutually exclusive behaviours simultaneously—in fact, it should not be surprising. Given CaRT’s relative lack of financial and human resources, their conflicting mandate to be simultaneously an authority that ensures navigation of a water network and the authority responsible for an itinerant group, and the in-built ambiguity of the laws that they attempt to wield, they were always unlikely to have a clear, consistent and logical approach. CaRT are a 9780367371753_C001.indd 37 09-04-2021 09:06:52 38 Ben Bowles group who practise statecraft and management over the waterways, but they do not, as Scott (1998) would predict, simply attempt to make the Boaters settled and legible, nor do they act to move the Boaters onwards in response to their legal responsibility and to outside pressures. Rather, and in a more complex fashion, CaRT veers from practice to practice as individuals join the organisation and suggest particular approaches, or react to outside influence, and then inevitably find each new practice limited by their lack of resources and funding. However, this places the Boaters in the centre of a conflict fraught with immediate and unpredictable danger. For many considering joining the boating community, tales of the ongoing battles with CaRT can make them less likely to make the choice to become a Boater. Many newer Boaters have naively moved aboard thinking that they can live in Central London throughout the year without incurring the attentions of the authority, and then find themselves to be the subject of fines or court summonses, or at the very least, invasive scrutiny. This has caused several of my informants to move from the waterways altogether, or to move to isolated rural parts of the system where enforcement may be laxer and it may be easier to avoid the gaze of CaRT’s surveillance. Boaters and the state A full analysis of the relationship between Boaters and the state is beyond the remit of this particular case study. In summary, however, it is noticeable that many of the Boaters do wish to avoid the more undesirable aspects of being tied down within a state system—the quotidian surveillance, taxation, and various controls over their movements. One Boater in Caversham outside Reading began explaining to me how the government had been increasing the explicit surveillance of the population (through CCTV, official documentation, etc.) since the 1980s, adding, ‘they want to know more and more and control your movements until you’ve just got to say “bugger off ”. On the canals and rivers … you’ll always have people there for you, unless you want to be alone … you’re off the grid, you’re invisible’. This invisibility was, for that rural dweller outside Reading, entirely desirable. For others, however (especially when they wish to make claims on the state through the National Health Service, to claim benefits, or access the police force), being a Boater with no postal address, and therefore not being a fully legible citizen, can be a disadvantage. Equally, the invasive surveillance which marks CaRT’s interactions with the Boaters, and which replaces the more routine surveillance arising from the relationship between a sedentary citizen and the state (a surveillance occurring through bureaucracy, official registration and discreet CCTV) can be paradoxically more stressful for the Boater wishing to avoid the state. From the point of view of governmental bureaucracy, Boaters are hard to account for with any accuracy, especially given the possibility of counting twice when volunteers set out to monitor continually moving Boaters living in moorings across a vast area. They are hard to tax, although most Boaters do pay their license fees to their central managing authority.They are also hard to police, given that they can move from authority to authority and one does not immediately know where 9780367371753_C001.indd 38 09-04-2021 09:06:52 Can’t trust 39 to find a Boater who is wanted by the law (the inverse side of this situation is that Boaters find it harder to access the police when they need protection). Boaters are essentially ambiguous citizens,10 not fully part of the manageable citizenry of the state, nor fully outside of the state’s access or protection. For the Boaters, such a marginal or liminal relationship is agreeable, as it allows life to be lived relatively cheaply, to create a home which is personal to the self, and to have the freedom to move around the landscape in the course of what is often called a ‘better’, an ‘alternative’, or even a ‘utopian’ way to live. The Boaters are not fleeing the state, as such, but they are fleeing the financial burdens, restrictions and limitations of living in sedentary housing, all of which are encouraged by the state as they seek to make populations legible, mappable and taxable (see Scott 1998). Scott recognises this distinction, arguing that ‘it is critical to understand that what is being evaded is not a relationship per se with the state but an evasion of subject status’ (2011: 330). There is, therefore, a situation upon the waterways wherein the Boaters in their mobility find that they are harder to access from the point of view of the state, that they in turn cannot easily access parts of the state apparatus (as mentioned, the lack of a postcode is often the key impediment), and that agents of the state are predisposed to find them at least inconvenient and at most extremely threatening.They are part of the state, but are shadowy and hard to map or manage, living upon one of the last pieces of land which has not been subject to the enclosure processes which all but eliminated the commons and communal and public-owned free space (Polanyi 2001 [1944]). The water conflict as a contested narrative Having been described, what does the water conflict tell us about the narratives used to justify the Boaters’ and the authority’s divergent positions? The above ethnography has within it at least two separate understandings of the history of life on the waterways, the ‘correct’ function of waterways authorities and the peculiarities of the law as it relates to boat dwellers. However, these broadly coalesce into two narratives, one belonging to the Boaters and the other to CaRT.These narratives are in conflict, with the general public, via news outlets and legal and political decision makers, acting as an audience to be persuaded through strength of rhetoric. CaRT frames the water conflict as a matter of fulfilling of their legal responsibilities to keep boats on the waterways moving and to provide a waterways environment that is balanced for the benefit of all users, including residential boat-dwellers.Their narrative carries significant power, as CaRT have a quasi-governmental status, a bureaucratic organisational structure and the ‘official’ platform that these bring. CaRT understand their position as being charged with the enforcement of law and a fulfilment of statutory duty under difficult conditions of underfunding and a lack of resources, with Boaters who are affected by their measures deserving sanction due to being ‘noncompliant’: a stubborn or even criminal element making life harder for a law-abiding majority. This narrative is also found scattered through the blogs, forums and magazines of traditional boating organisations (such as the Inland Waterways Association) that are broadly in accordance with CaRT’s actions and their constructed narrative. 9780367371753_C001.indd 39 09-04-2021 09:06:52 40 Ben Bowles The Boaters, on the other hand, have their own narrative: one of victimisation from a high-handed, often inept and frequently invasive authority. CaRT are said to have acted and continue to act outside of the remit of their legal powers (the ‘responsibility’ that CaRT have to enforce and police is rarely spoken about by Boaters, implicitly casting all enforcement action as unprovoked) out of disregard for the well-being of itinerant Boaters who are preventing them from privatising the waterways and increasing their profit margins.They are also seen as being biased towards sedentary residents who are assumed to dislike the presence of travelling Boaters in their locales due to anti-traveller sentiment. As is demonstrated in the case studies at the end of the chapter, the Boaters have threaded this narrative of CaRT’s skewed priorities and the bias of sedentary residents into their descriptions of the repeated vandalism of the facilities at Old Ford Lock. As demonstrated in the second case study concerning the 2012 Olympic Games, the Boaters have further added into their narrative a discourse of universal human rights and, in doing so, connected themselves to other high-profile struggles against power. The effects of these competing narratives are manifold. CaRT’s narrative allows them to cast categories of compliant and non-compliant Boaters, creating a moral justification for their actions that could be compared to the rhetorical power of the categories of ‘deserving’ and ‘non-deserving’ poor. Through emphasising their legal responsibility to act, their continuity to their more straightforwardly governmental precursors, and the balance of stakeholder needs in their actions, they strive to appear as a moral and official body, comparable to the police or judiciary, with a power that is engrained and similarly hard to contest legitimately. Which of these powerful competing narratives of the same struggle emerges as hegemonic and accepted in the form of legal judgement and public opinion (likely to be shaped primarily through journalistic narratives) is still fundamentally fluid and unset, although CaRT are broadly able to turn their resources into a wider ‘reach’ with regard to the wider public and powerful decision-makers. Legal judgements and news reports have, so far, not come down firmly on one side or the other (see Bowles 2015: 77–81), and, as such, it is important to continue to allow a variety of opinions, viewpoints and narratives to be brought out, and not only those of the powerful and well-resourced. This chapter is both an account of these narratives and an attempt to bring the Boaters’ narrative, somewhat more hidden from the wider public, into focus and to demonstrate its validity against fact. The chapter now turns to demonstrating how these narratives come through in two case studies of actual interactions between Boaters and the Canal and River Trust. ‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any a drop to drink’:11 water points and sanitation facilities Whereas sedentary people in the houses surrounding the canals enjoy easy access to utilities such as gas, heating, electricity, and water, Boaters face the difficulty of having to source these essentials themselves. Boaters burn coal and wood for heating and cook using gas canisters, all of which can be purchased from marinas or 9780367371753_C001.indd 40 09-04-2021 09:06:52 Can’t trust 41 from the ‘coal boats’ or ‘working boats’ which ply their trade along the waterways. Electricity can be generated through a variety of methods, including harvesting solar and wind energy and running engines and generators. Water, however, must be collected from taps at locks and facilities moorings, which are run and maintained by CaRT and, on EA waters, by the EA or local councils. Boaters differ in how they opt to deal with their sanitary waste, with the two most common solutions being the installation of ‘pump-out’ toilets, where a sanitary tank holds the Boaters’ waste which is then pumped out by service boats, at marinas or one of a few CaRT-provided pump-out stations, and ‘elsan’,‘chemical’ or ‘cassette’ toilets, where the Boaters empty a smaller tank by hand at CaRT-provided elsan disposal facilities.12 For all Boaters, particularly those who must rely on CaRT twice, for both water and elsan facilities, these facilities moorings can become sites of contestation between Boaters, the authority and other outsiders. The irony is, of course, that Boaters live on water and tend to be avowedly self-sufficient and yet, in the matter of gaining domestic and sanitary water, they are uncomfortably reliant upon the bureaucratic system. This is illustrated below by two case studies that emerged over the course of my fieldwork. Case 1: Old Ford Lock (Regent’s Canal) The first case concerns one of London’s busiest facilities moorings: those at Old Ford Lock at Victoria Park in Hackney. Boaters estimate that the population living on London’s waterways has grown dramatically over the past two years, although it is important to note that that there is no official data on how many boats London could support and how close the waterways are to this limit—London’s waterways are certainly not ‘full’. ‘Older’ Boaters in the community, who have been aboard for five years or more, remember when London’s canals were almost entirely deserted, whereas now they are teeming with narrowboats double- or even triple-moored alongside others. Rough estimates state that London’s Boater population has doubled over the last two summers and the capital has not met this increase in population with a corresponding increase in the provision of facilities. The elsan (toilet disposal) point and tap at Old Ford Lock have to support a population of Boaters covering the busy Victoria Park visitor’s moorings, the massive number of boats moored above and below Acton’s Lock and Broadway Market and, when the Mile End tap is out of action, as it frequently is, Boaters moored at Mile End and on the Hertford Union canal towards Hackney Wick (see Figure 1.2). This amounts to at least 200 boats, likely many more, meaning, as a rule of thumb, at least 300 Boaters. All of which makes it more than inconvenient that, during a particular period of my fieldwork, as soon as the tap was fixed, it was invariably vandalised, usually by the tap itself being removed, within a night or two. This specific and clearly not random act of vandalism occurred repeatedly throughout the entirety of the nine months of my official fieldwork, which I spent in London between late 2012 and September 2013. Boaters were, during this time, often forced to move long distances, to Angel or to Hackney Wick or Limehouse, to fill up with 9780367371753_C001.indd 41 09-04-2021 09:06:53 42 Ben Bowles A map image showing as a line the distance between the water points at Mile End, Angel Islington, and the other Old Ford Lock (River Lea); the population living within this area is made up of those who must rely on the Old Ford Lock (Regent’s Canal) as described below. The facilities mooring itself is marked with a pin. Source: Author, produced using Google Maps. FIGURE 1.2 water, giving up their mooring spots in the process. My own full water tank would last for between one and two weeks, depending on the number of showers I had, but for one participant, Tom, who did not have a water tank, his journeys every two or three days to the water point with a water butt in tow were made time-consuming, unpleasant or impossible on occasions when his local tap was broken. This oddly specific and repeated act of vandalism can show the researcher a great deal about the relationship between the Boaters and their sedentary neighbours. I cannot vouch for the motives of the vandals as they remain unidentified, but the specificity of their target suggests that their act had a disruptive purpose and was not opportunistic. One is led to assume that the vandals objected either to the presence of the tap or to the Boaters who rely upon it. This assumption was supported by the Boaters’ reactions to the vandalism. The tap’s current operational status was a common topic of conversation on the waterways over this period, with Boaters quick to offer their own theories as to why these acts of vandalism continued to occur. Many stated that ‘locals’, ‘local gangs’ or ‘local kids’ were responsible. It is these groups who are most often blamed for other attacks and interferences, for example, the vandalising of boats, throwing stones at Boaters from canal bridges and setting boats loose from their moorings at night. Boaters often suggest that these kids are ‘bored’ or ‘just having a laugh’, though it is also admitted on occasion that there are groups and elements among wider sedentary society who see the Boaters as undesirable or threatening in a similar way to land-based Traveller-Gypsies and that these attacks may be due to this anti-Boater sentiment (Bowles 2014)—a sentiment which may have its roots in a more general distrust of the threatening nomadic ‘other’ (see Morris 2000; Okely 1983: 2; Okely 2014; Fonseca 1996: 227). 9780367371753_C001.indd 42 09-04-2021 09:06:53 Can’t trust 43 One Boater with whom I spoke, blamed locals, but more specifically the residents of the nearest houses, who he hypothesised were breaking the tap as ‘it was making their water pressure drop’. This was, he stated, an example of how ‘ignorant’ and ‘selfish’ these particular residents were.There is a more general discourse among many Boaters which suggests that sedentary people are alienated from their environment and are closeted from the material realities of life; a typical quote from my fieldwork was that ‘they just turn a tap or switch on a plug and they have no idea about where anything comes from’. Whether or not the housed neighbours were the vandals, from my informant’s comments one can see a rhetorical line being drawn: Boaters understand the value of the tap and the scarcity of water, and the locals are disconnected from these realities and selfishly care only for the convenience afforded by the provision of high-pressure water. I have heard other Boaters differ from this orthodoxy of blaming local sedentary peoples and accuse CaRT. The authority are clearly unlikely to vandalise their own tap and, as such, the level of distrust between Boaters and CaRT is evident in the fact that their complicity is even casually mooted. Even those Boaters who do not think that CaRT could be responsible for the vandalism have been known to use the Old Ford Lock case as an example of how ineffectual and out of touch the authority are. One Boater commented that, rather than paying a plumber to replace the tap on a weekly or biweekly basis, the authority could ‘buy a padlock and a box for about a fiver [five pounds]’. The Boater commented that he himself would fit the security box if he were allowed, but that CaRT had not allowed him to tamper with their equipment. Many other waterways facilities are protected by locks, for which Boaters purchase a single master key. Another Boater later informed me that CaRT were trying to make Old Ford the UK’s first ‘app-powered lock’, meaning that it would open, close, fill, and empty when instructed by a mobile phone application.This information was provided with a sarcastic tone and when I replied, ‘Shouldn’t they get the taps fixed first?’ my informant burst out laughing. ‘Yeah’ he said, ‘you’d have thought?’ Water points are points of vulnerability for Boaters, as they are where Boaters must rely upon those from outside the community. The easily achievable vandalism of a single water point can greatly inconvenience a large number of Boaters and, clearly, some person or group has chosen to exploit this vulnerability. The problem is so irritating and inconvenient that one Boater volunteered to stage an ultimately unsuccessful night-time vigil at the lock in order to try to identify the vandals. As stated in the introduction, Boaters who use the waterways for mobility and freedom are tied to state services at these easily disrupted sites of water provision. What is more interesting in this case, however, is what it can show us about Boaters’ relationships with those outside the community.The Boaters’ description of this event clearly shows where fault lines between communities lie, whatever the motives for vandalism, and it is useful to unpack Boaters’ rhetoric around conflicts so that we may better see their view of the sedentary world, the state and their neighbours. When Boaters blame the ‘house-people’ around them, we can see that evidence of the anti-Boater sentiment exists in certain areas, which can form a security risk for the 9780367371753_C001.indd 43 09-04-2021 09:06:53 44 Ben Bowles Boaters (Bowles 2014). Also evident here is an implicit critique of sedentary peoples’ alienation and selfishness. When Boaters criticise CaRT’s attempts to deal with the situation, there is also an accusation of their being out of touch with the needs and priorities of Boaters and with the simplest ways to meet them. The tap therefore becomes a rhetorical weapon in the Boaters’ struggles against outsiders. Case 2: the Olympics The second case perhaps shows an even clearer example of how water can be used as a weapon in the conflict between Boaters and CaRT, although it focuses upon a point in time rather than a point in space. Before the London 2012 Olympics, an ‘Olympic Exclusion Zone’ was set up on the waterways, effectively in order to keep all Boaters from the Central and East London waterways for the duration of the event. This forced many Boaters out west onto the Paddington arm of the Regent’s Canal at Ladbroke Grove and Greenford, and many others out east onto the rivers Lee and Stort. Between the lock closures of the Olympic Exclusion Zone, a number of Boaters in the East End of the city became stuck, unable to move, without access to a water point. According to an informant, Andrew Bailles, who was active within the organisation London Boaters at the time, CaRT promised to provide boats filled with drinking water, which would travel through the area and allow Boaters to fill their tanks. According to my informant, these promised boats did not arrive, leaving Boaters with a lack of drinking water. This event became paradigmatic for a number of reasons. Firstly, and much in line with the first example, CaRT’s failure to provide the boats was read as an example of their lack of care and concern for Boaters, their uncharitable attitude (pun intended) and their lack of understanding of the Boater’s lived daily reality. More importantly, however, the Boaters’ response showed Boaters that they had the potential to overpower and override the authority by accessing alternative discourses. CaRT may have had the power of law, the support of the Olympic and London authorities and a number of financial and material resources behind them, but the Boaters did not choose to fight on these fronts. My informant explained that London Boaters used their contacts in order to get the BBC [the major UK broadcaster] involved in the dispute, leading to a number of news reports which reflected badly on CaRT (see Melik 2012; BBC 2011). The Boaters began to use the language and discourse of human rights, making the compelling and attractive argument that they were denied the universal right to clean accessible water by, of all organisations, a charitable trust. Boaters used their media connections to claim that CaRT were contravening the Boaters’ human right to access water for drinking and sanitation. Such an argument, in the context of a country preparing for the Olympics and not wishing to attract poor publicity, was tactically effective. My informant explained, ‘We won! They started sending down boats with water and relaxing the movement restrictions.We proved that they didn’t have all the power and that the sympathy of a lot of people was with us’. 9780367371753_C001.indd 44 09-04-2021 09:06:53 Can’t trust 45 The case of the Olympic water dispute has become a totemic victory for London Boaters, the organisation. At a recent meeting in which the purpose and future of the group was to be discussed, a few long-standing members took it upon themselves to explain London Boaters’ previous victories to the large numbers of new Boaters present. As well as the successful protests against the Olympic Exclusion Zone in 2012, prevalent in this narrative was London Boaters’ rejection of the Lee and Stort Mooring Consultation in 2011. When these events are spoken about, it is as an example of how Boaters have public sympathy and how they can use alternative mechanisms (for example broadcast media) and alternative discourses (for example the discourse of human rights) in order to outflank CaRT, whose support in official, legal and governmental circles can be mitigated by the Boaters’ popularity with a large section of the public—a public which tends to exoticise the Boaters and find the idea of boat-living to be quaint, idyllic and romantic.13 The Olympics dispute can also be seen, as in the previous example of Old Ford Lock, as an attempt to rhetorically position Boaters as agents who are concerned with reality and practicality, whereas CaRT are, at best, incompetent and, at worst, malevolent, either misunderstanding Boaters’ daily needs or ignoring them in order to force Boaters from the waterways. CaRT is perhaps the most frequent topic of conversation between Boaters. Telling stories about CaRT, at locks while travelling or at home on moorings, is not just information-sharing—it creates and reinforces a rhetoric of community, of coming together against an antagonistic foe and of having in common a shared project and set of challenges. As Barth (1998[1969]), Cohen (1985) and others describe, and Froerer (2006) compellingly demonstrated in her ethnographic account of Hindu nationalism in Central India, this idea of acting together against a boundary between the self and an antagonistic ‘other’ is a, if not the, major factor in the creation of community and ethnic sentiment.s As shown, it is most frequently CaRT who are the ‘other’ against which the Boaters come together and assert their rights and their needs. Conclusion As described, we find on the waterways an unusual situation whereby travelling Boaters are surrounded by ‘water, water, everywhere’ and yet are reliant upon an outside bureaucratic authority for ‘any drop to drink’. In the first case study, this led to a particular water point being a contested site, the vandalism of which clearly showed the fault lines between Boaters, sedentary residents and CaRT, despite the perpetrator(s) of the frequent crimes remaining undetected. In the second case study, I discussed how the provision of water during the Olympics became the point around which Boaters could rally politically, using alternative mechanisms and discourses to achieve their ends over a more powerful adversary. Here too, conflict over water allowed Boaters to describe themselves as part of a community who are different to others with conflicting understandings and priorities. The irony is, of course, that water provision can limit the freedoms and the mobility that Boaters find through living aboard, by forcing them to move or to 9780367371753_C001.indd 45 09-04-2021 09:06:53 46 Ben Bowles remain in certain areas and by dragging them into direct conflict with CaRT in situations where they may prefer a strategy of avoidance and non-engagement. The Boaters live a life on water which is notable for its flexibility, as the materiality of their living aboard allows them to change their location, allows them to live relatively cheaply in the city, and allows them to remove themselves from neighbourhoods of conflict and insecurity. For this flexible, fluid, and water-like existence (see Strang 2005) to be limited by the infrastructure of water provision is a sad twist in the Boaters’ story. The campaign for more facilities, and for those facilities to be cleaner and better managed, is a cornerstone of the Boaters’ complaints against CaRT. At a meeting between senior CaRT officers and a West London organisation called Cowley and Uxbridge Boaters (CUB), a number of Boaters heckled Sally Ash, CaRT’s then Head of Boating, from outside of the meeting room. Much of their critique focussed on the poor state and limited number of facilities moorings in West London; Sally Ash was stern with these Boaters, accusing them of trying to ‘disrupt the good work we’re trying to do here’, but they continued to interrupt. One shouted, ‘You’re checking boat numbers every week, why don’t you check the facilities whilst you’re going?’ and another, ‘Yeah, check the shitters [colloquial expression for toilets]’. Extract from field notes (14 January 2013) However, while CaRT have limited resources for the upkeep and management of facilities, and while the Boaters have very little presence in the public consciousness and a limited political voice, facilities provision is unlikely to be increased. The cynical Boater could be forgiven for suggesting that CaRT’s poor management of facilities moorings and their failure to build new facilities could be a deliberate ploy. After all, CaRT’s actions (and inactions) decrease motivation to live and cruise on a boat, increase the change of Boaters moving onto land or onto permanent residential moorings, and limit the population of residential Boaters that a locality can support. From the data I have collected, it is clear that, when examining water conflicts, it is important to note the ability of water infrastructure points (taps, drains, etc.) to act as paradigmatic scenes (see Davies 2010)—small flashpoints which can represent the whole and cast light onto wider issues. This is particularly the case when one is dealing with a mobile population, where the water point may be the only tool which the state has to tie them to a particular point in the landscape and to make them subject to the forces of the state as it tries to make them legible and ordered (Scott 1998). It has been seen that, in the case of a highly nuanced conflict involving differing legal understandings and a battle over public representations—as is the case between the Boaters and CaRT—water provision, being such a powerful symbol of individual’s and community’s inviolable rights, can become a crucial frame and an important representational battleground. Claims, counterclaims and narratives 9780367371753_C001.indd 46 09-04-2021 09:06:53 Can’t trust 47 around water provision can therefore be important ways in which we can see the viewpoint of the Boaters on the state and their sedentary neighbours. As the work of Strang (2005) and others has shown, water, even in the industrialised western city, is not always a taken-for-granted commodity—particularly when forces of privatisation and the ‘market’ are seen to interfere with the common good which is a community’s water, bitter disputes can break out. Access to water remains intensely and fundamentally political, particularly when one of the parties involved in the conflict happens to be a vulnerable itinerant population. Notes 1 The first part of this title comes from a satirical image produced by Boaters in my field site. In the image, the CaRT logo was modified to read ‘Can’t Trust’ and was attached to a flyer for a Boaters’ event. This image is demonstrative of the antagonism between the waterways authority and the Boaters. 2 It is important to note that limited parts of the waterway network are controlled by other authorities —often the government’s Environment Agency—although the majority of my fieldwork took place on CaRT controlled canals around London and therefore it is explicitly the situation between the Boaters and CaRT which I interrogate here. As a result of this, my work has a localised rather than nationwide focus, which does not precisely scale up to describe the entirety of the UK waterways system. 3 The change of the authority from quango—quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation—to charitable trust was part of the government’s so-called ‘bonfire of the quangos’ (see Walters 2010), a series of privatisations of government-linked agencies.This process was initiated due to coalition government of 2010–2015’s ideological commitment to neoliberalism and the contracting of public sector in favour of an expanding private sector (see Ganti 2014: 90). 4 In my article Gongoozled: Freedom, Surveillance and the Public/Private Divide on the Waterways of South East England (Bowles 2017), I focus on surveillance rather than enforcement, but make an argument largely similar to the argument that I make here. In that article I describe how the Boaters choose a relationship with the state that is at arms’ length and therefore changeable, more fluid and unfixed.They opt for a relationship where they are interpellated overtly rather than existing within the daily bureaucratic machinery of state institutions. 5 Bona fide is the legal term meaning ‘in good faith’. 6 This process is also recognised in the writings of Deleuze and Guattari and can be seen in their statement that ‘one of the fundamental tasks of the State is to striate the space over which it reigns’ (1987: 385). 7 The digression described here can take many forms. One form of difference is in the ownership of waterways, where for example CaRT control most of the towpath side or on-side of canals and smaller rivers, with private landowners controlling the offside, but with CaRT increasingly privatising parcels of towpath land. Larger rivers, such as the non-tidal Thames and some other waterways such as the Norfolk Broads, come under the control of the government’s Environment Agency, and there are even some privatelyowned waterways. Often it is unclear which local council or private landowner controls an area of offside or even towpath side land. Another digression is in the differences in enforcement procedure across CaRT’s waterways, where policies are sometimes trialled in particular places before being abandoned or rolled out further, and where officers 9780367371753_C001.indd 47 09-04-2021 09:06:53 48 8 9 10 11 11 13 9780367371753_C001.indd 48 Ben Bowles enforce legal requirements in their own idiosyncratic fashions. The situation becomes even more complex when attempting to describe legal responsibility for Boaters and for towpath space, as local councils have individual planning requirements towards their residents, even those of the non-permanent and itinerant kind, and government departments have additional responsibilities for ensuring the security of water infrastructures.The legal situation is complex and, in addition to a growing weight of case law, has generated at least one excellent dissertation in legal scholarship (North 2018). ‘Section 8’ refers to a law distinct from the 1995 Act: the British Waterways Act (1983), Section 8 of which allows the authority to remove boats from their waterways under certain conditions—namely that the vessel is ‘sunk, stranded or abandoned … or left or moored therein without lawful authority’ (British Waterways Act 1983). This is the law that allows the authorities to remove a boat from their waterways if it has been refused a boat license. Skidmore’s (2004) work on ‘incipient fascist’ Burma details how the random and haphazard nature of the state’s repressive threat makes the Burmese so unsure of the shifting political ground that they self-censor more than they may be caused to if the state’s measures were more brutal but predictable. This is, of course, a far more extreme example, where the state is capable of disappearing and torturing dissidents, and so comparing this to the ‘state intervention’ of serving fines and revoking licenses may seem glib. However, Skidmore’s description of the unease and fear created by the inept regime as opposed to the expert regime, precisely due to its unpredictability and lack of logic, closely mirrors the confusion felt in my field site when debating what the authority may be ‘up to next’, second-guessing the work of the unpredictable and ever-changing authority and its inconsistent monitoring and enforcement measures. Skidmore uses Turner’s (1990) concept of the ‘subjunctive mood’ to describe the uncertain position of the Burmese citizen in the face of what she calls the ‘deterritorializing’ efforts of the state, which do not present a logical or consistent position against which the citizens of Burma can act (Skidmore 2004: 182). She describes the state’s intervention as ‘transformative moments’ (ibid.: 182) and states that the concept of the ‘subjunctive mood’ is useful in describing the effect of these ‘rupture[s] in their [the citizen’s] sense of normalcy’ (ibid.: 182). For the Boaters also, the stepping up of enforcement measures over months or years of a modus vivendi in a particular area represents an unsettling rupture of this kind and reminds the Boater that their relationship with the state is far from simple, settled or predictable. Boaters can be seen as ambiguous in the structuralist sense, as hard-to-categorise figures between the sedentary and the completely mobile, in line with Douglas (2002) and other classic theorists. This section title comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1798) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and is a popular and well-known section of verse. These elsan facilities are a grate covering a larger tank, and a tap for rinsing out the smaller tank or ‘cassette’. Having written above about attacks on Boaters and their facilities by those who find them to be an undesirable element, it seems contradictory to write here of their support from the public. The Boaters have always experienced a mixture of demonisation and romanticisation from the public (Bowles 2014) and are not the victims of the same concerted negative rhetoric and media coverage as other travelling groups, for example the Gypsies. There exist, however, those in wider society who disapprove of the Boaters or ‘water Gypsies’ (as they are sometimes incorrectly termed) and are actively hostile towards them. 09-04-2021 09:06:53 Can’t trust 49 References Barth, Fredrik. 1998(1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Culture Differences. Waveland: Prospect Heights. BBC. 2011. London 2012 Olympics Set to Impact on River Community. British Broadcasting Corporation, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15624329 (accessed 17 May 2015). Bowles, Benjamin O.L. 2014. ‘Dangerous Waters: Security Threats and Their Role in Community Formation among Itinerant Boat Dwellers on the Waterways of Southern England’, Student Anthropologist, 4(1): 6–17. Bowles, Benjamin O.L. 2015.Water Ways: Becoming an Itinerant Boat-Dweller on the Canals and Rivers of South East England. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Brunel University, London. Bowles, Benjamin O.L. 2016.‘“Time is like a Soup”: Boat Time and the Temporal Experience of London’s Liveaboard Boaters’, The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 34(1): 100–112. Bowles, Benjamin O.L. 2017. ‘Gongoozled: Freedom, Surveillance and the Public/Private Divide on the Waterways of South East England’, Etnofoor, 29(1): 63–79. British Waterways Act 1983 (c. 8). The National Archive, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukla/1983/2/pdfs/ukla_19830002_en.pdf/(accessed 19 May 2015). British Waterways Act 1995 (c. 3). The National Archives, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukla/1995/1/section/17/enacted (accessed 19 May 2015). Burton, Anthony. 1989. The Great Days of the Canals. Newton Abbott: David and Charles. Canal and River Trust. 2012. Guidance for Boaters Without a Home Mooring. Canal and River Trust, https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/library/633.pdf (accessed 01 November 2014). Cohen, Anthony P. 1985. Symbolic Construction of Community. Abingdon, London and New York: Routledge. 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Unpublished Undergraduate Dissertation. University of York,York Law School. Okely, Judith. 1983. The Traveller-Gypsies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Okely, Judith. 2014. ‘Recycled (mis)representations: Gypsies, Travellers or Roma Treated as Objects, Rarely Subjects’, People, Place and Policy, 8(1): 65–85. Polanyi, Karl. 2001(1944). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Rolt, Lionel T.C. 1999(1944). ‘Tom’. in Narrowboat. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven and London:Yale University Press. Scott, James C. 2011. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland South Asia. New Haven & London:Yale University Press. Skidmore, Monique. 2004. Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Smith, George. 1974(1878). Our Canal Population. Darlington: EP Publishing. Strang, Veronica. 2005. ‘Common Senses: Water, Sensory Experience and the Generation of Meaning’, Journal of Material Culture, 10(1): 92–120. Turner, Victor W. 1990. ‘Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual and Drama?’ in Schechner and Appel, By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walters, Simon. 2010. ‘George Osbourne Unveils £500m Bonfire of the Quangos’, The Mail on Sunday, 23 May, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1280566/Osborneunveils-500m-bonfire-quangos.html (accessed 8 September 2015). Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 9780367371753_C001.indd 50 09-04-2021 09:06:53 2 FIGHTING AGAINST HARMFUL RUMOURS, OR FOR FISHERIES? Evaluating framings and narrations of risk governance in marine radiation after the Fukushima nuclear accident Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe Introduction In this chapter, we evaluate the narration of risk, uncertainty and safety in marine produce in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, since the 2011 nuclear disaster. Given the overarching theme of this volume, we pay particular attention to how the issue of contaminated water is narrated. Or, more specifically, how the potential for contaminated water to find its way into fish and seafood and then into humans is framed and managed by decision-makers at different levels. The more standard way to narrate this issue involves one-way communication of ‘science’ to educate consumers and wider society that marine produce from Fukushima is safe. However, an alternative narrative, which has emerged at the municipal or local level, framing post-disaster fisheries as a sociocultural issue as well as an economic issue, and openly acknowledging remaining uncertainties, may offer a more nuanced way of understanding how marine produce fits with post-disaster recovery. We assess these issues by focusing on Iwaki in the south of Fukushima Prefecture. Iwaki is one of two fishing districts within Fukushima—the other being SomaFutaba in the north—and is itself divided into numerous fishing ports (see Figure 2.1). Iwaki, like Soma, has been moving towards restarting its coastal fisheries. Its coastal areas were badly affected by the 2011 tsunami, and the coastal waters off Iwaki received much of the water-borne contamination from the nuclear plant. The material on which the ideas in this chapter are based comes from research the authors have been undertaking in Iwaki since spring 2011, involving field research in the form of interviews, focus groups, science cafes, ethnography, and participant observation, as well as desk research into how different actors narrate radiation risk in policy documentation, promotional and marketing literature, and the media.1 While in this chapter we put forth empirical issues, it is worth briefly outlining the theoretical underpinnings behind our arguments. Our approach borrows heavily 9780367371753_C002.indd 51 09-04-2021 09:08:13 52 Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe Location of Iwaki within Fukushima Prefecture (left) and ports and key fisheries locations within Iwaki (right). Source: Adapted from map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL (n.b. permission obtained for reproduction). FIGURE 2.1. 9780367371753_C002.indd 52 09-04-2021 09:08:13 Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries? 53 from the ‘risk governance’ school of thought (International Risk Governance Council 2005; Renn 2008). Just as environmental governance in a wider sense involves resolving conflicts through institutional arrangements that may facilitate or limit the use of environmental resources (Adger et al. 2002), we understand ‘risk governance’ in the environmental context to mean decision-making that balances a range of different and often competing perspectives on environmental risk. This is especially crucial for situations of high environmental and social complexity like contamination of a marine environment, where even ‘experts’ may disagree on the science underlying the issue (Pellizzoni 2003) and different understandings of what is meant by ‘risk’ (risk versus uncertainty versus indeterminacy and so on) may be at play (Riesch 2012). The result of this, Kasperson (2014) summarises, is that the increasing complexity of environmental risks comes alongside a decline in trust in scientists and policymakers who may previously have been expected to manage risks on behalf of society. It is because of this decline in trust that Kasperson (2014) believes there is a greater need for risk communication, which he understands as a deliberative and dialogic process towards reaching the most appropriate decisions for society on managing risk and uncertainty. Nonetheless, it is widely argued that in spite of the emergence of a large body of scholarly thought on the relationship between science and society, this ‘risk communication’ in practice often remains a one-way top-down process (e.g. Wynne 2006; Arvai 2014) concerned with correcting misunderstandings and bringing publics and stakeholders to understand and accept the techno-scientific ‘facts’ underpinning an issue. Apart from a range of different perspectives on what constitutes an acceptable level of risk, there may also be differing understandings of what ‘risk communication’ means and what its role ought to be in the risk governance process. What we are interested in this chapter is how different actors frame risk and uncertainty in a highly complex environmental situation, how their understanding of ‘risk communication’ may affect this framing, and how well these narratives are suited to balancing the range of competing conceptualisations of risk that may be at play.We return to these ideas in Section Discussion to theorise from our findings. Background: 11 March 2011 and thereafter On the afternoon of 11 March 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 off the coast of north-east Japan triggered a large tsunami. The cumulative effects of this earthquake and tsunami left over 17,000 people either dead or missing, with the most severe effects being felt in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures. This event also took offline the cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear power plant (FDNPP) located on the coast of Fukushima Prefecture and operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). This in turn led to overheats and hydrogen explosions in three of the plant’s reactors, releasing radioactive contamination over the land and sea of Fukushima Prefecture and beyond. The resulting contamination led to over 9780367371753_C002.indd 53 09-04-2021 09:08:13 54 Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe 120,000 people being evacuated from their homes, many of whom are still unable to return as the radiation dose around their homes remains above safe limits. More significant for our study, however, is the fact that 70–80 per cent of the radiation emitted from the FDNPP fell over the north-west Pacific Ocean (Yoshida and Kanda 2012). Highly contaminated water leaked into the Pacific Ocean in the aftermath of the disaster, and further leaks (albeit of less contaminated water) followed, as on-site contamination found its way into groundwater and/or drainage systems. Further, space for prefabricated tanks to store tainted water, previously used to keep the FDNPP’s reactors cool, has been running out, which has opened up debates on whether or when some of this water—which contains potentially harmful tritium (Buesseler 2015)—ought to be released into the sea. There have also been questions over the effectiveness of the ice wall commissioned by TEPCO to stop contamination from the reactors leaking into groundwater, with its chief architect admitting in spring 2016 that some water will still leak through the wall (Japan Times 2016). We will return to these issues later in the chapter, as they are important in illustrating the difference between viewing the FDNPP situation as ‘under control’ or narrating it as an ongoing incident that has not yet been resolved. Effects on fisheries The tsunami itself was a major contributing factor in the stoppage of fisheries in Fukushima immediately after the disaster. Port infrastructure, boats, equipment, and fishers’ homes were washed away or destroyed, making the swift restart of fisheries impossible in any case. However, with the large radiation releases from the FDNPP, the Fukushima Prefecture Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations (FPFFCA) formally elected to temporarily suspend fisheries days after the tsunami. It is also interesting to note that Fukushima’s coastal fisheries have never technically been embargoed or ‘banned’ outright by the Japanese government. Rather, marketing and distribution restriction directives were issued by the national-level government on species of fish landed2 in Fukushima Prefecture after the discovery in 2011 of samples exceeding the national regulatory threshold. Between April 2011 and 2012, over 40 per cent of the sampled fish were similarly found to exceed the Japanese regulatory limit for radioactive caesium (Buesseler 2012). Hence, the stoppage of full-scale commercial coastal fisheries in Fukushima is described as a ‘voluntary suspension’ as it follows a directive rather than a law (FPFFCA 2016). This national regulatory threshold for radioactive caesium was initially 500 Becquerels/kilogram (Bq/kg3); however, in April 2012, this was lowered to 100 Bq/ kg. Marine contamination has been monitored by the Fisheries Agency of Japan on the coast and out at sea, and by the plant operator TEPCO in the immediate vicinity of the FDNPP. Further, Fukushima Prefecture’s Fisheries Research Section is responsible for monitoring of fish stocks, seawater and bottom sediment post-disaster (Wada et al. 2013). As Fukushima Prefecture’s own research vessel had foundered in the tsunami, fishers themselves supported this emergency monitoring at first, by catching fish in their own boats and bringing them to the prefectural laboratories for analysis. 9780367371753_C002.indd 54 09-04-2021 09:08:13 Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries? 55 If radioactive caesium is not detected in fish species over a period of many months during this monitoring, species may be released for trial fishing operations. These trials, which run at less than one-fifth of pre-disaster capacity, aim to encourage fishers to resume fishing activities and also monitor the uptake of Fukushima produce as it returns to market, by brokers and consumers.The release of species for trial fishing operations is determined by dialogue between fishers, fisheries cooperatives, brokers, prefectural and national government scientists and policymakers, and academics. As of spring 2019, 211 species had been released for operations (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2019). However, the restart of commercial trials proceeded at a faster pace in Soma-Futaba than in Iwaki due to lower levels of contamination and closer proximity to markets and consumers in the large city of Sendai. Consumer uptake of marine produce from within Fukushima also remains divided. It is worth mentioning that the perception of the risk of marine contamination from the Fukushima disaster became an international issue. Other nations (e.g. China, Korea, Taiwan) banned the import of fish not only from Fukushima, but also in some cases from the north-east or even all of Japan. In late 2015, Canadian scientist Jay Cullen received death threats and was branded a ‘shill’ for the nuclear industry, after results from the Fukushima InFORM programme he ran tracking Fukushima radionuclides (Fukushima InForm 2015) suggested that while radionuclides were reaching the west coast of Canada, the risk to human health was virtually non-existent (The Globe and Mail 2015). This section has aimed to give a broad overview of the effects of the Fukushima disaster on the sea and in particular on the area’s fisheries. What we shall now do is evaluate two different narratives and framings for the governance of risk in the recovery of fisheries post-disaster. Fuhyo higai: harmful rumours What we will call the ‘standard’ narrative of radiation risk in Fukushima produce is the one conveyed by those we would consider to be the most empowered actors, those with the greatest financial resources and the largest influence over policy-making processes and the media. Key actors in this group are the Japanese Government, TEPCO and the government of Fukushima Prefecture. This framing of post-disaster risk from radiation involves the management of rumours about the safety of fruit, rice, vegetables, marine produce, water, and any number of other aspects of the lived-in environment. The set phrase used in Japanese to describe such ‘misinformation’ and the consequences arising from it is fuhyo higai, normally translated into English as ‘harmful rumours’. At base, it refers to the idea that economic harm has been done to Fukushima Prefecture, its produce and the people who produce it as a result of baseless/untrue information discouraging consumers from buying Fukushima produce or visiting the region. For instance, the prefectural government narrated the situation in Fukushima thus:‘Fukushima Prefecture was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami which triggered the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Dai’ichi Nuclear 9780367371753_C002.indd 55 09-04-2021 09:08:13 56 Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe Power Station and subsequent damage to the prefecture’s reputation due to harmful rumours’ (Fukushima Prefecture 2011: 3). In a separate document from three years later, TEPCO stated it would continue to compensate local businesses for ‘damages due to groundless rumour’ (TEPCO 2014: 36). In setting out their own plans for post-disaster recovery, the Ministry of Trade and Environment (METI) too aimed ‘to revitalize business operations in affected areas suffering from decreased sales volume due to harmful rumours resulting from the nuclear accident’ (METI 2011: 2). Implicit in such accounts is the idea that a major barrier to the recovery of the Fukushima economy was the unwillingness of consumers to purchase Fukushima produce or spend time in the area, and that this apprehension was the result of concerns that have no basis. The continuation of this narrative reads that the solution to this problem is ‘educating’ consumers through the provision of more accurate information in greater volume. Fukushima Prefecture promised to ‘promptly and appropriately publicize the safety of Fukushima products at home and overseas by providing accurate information’ (Fukushima Prefecture 2011: 16).The Reconstruction Agency aimed for ‘eradicating reputational damage from harmful rumors by risk communication’ (Reconstruction Agency 2013: 41) and TEPCO likewise targeted ‘enhancement of risk communication activities … to counter harmful rumors’ (TEPCO 2014: 11). Particularly interesting to note in this regard is the equation of ‘risk communication’ with the end goal of engendering understanding or acceptance that the concerns leading to economic harm are unfounded. We return to this in Section 5 to consider slippages between the understanding of ‘risk communication’ in this narrative of fuhyo higai, versus how risk communication is increasingly understood within the scholarly literature. For now, though, it is sufficient to note that this standard narrative treats risk communication as a one-way transfer of techno-scientific information from the government and operators to the wider society. Given the nature of contemporary environmental risks we outlined at the start of the chapter and the associated requirements for risk governance processes, such a one-way and tightly bound narrative clearly has the potential to be problematic. The standard narrative of radiation risk in Fukushima focuses on the idea of the underpinning science somehow being known or settled, and that society needs to be brought ‘on side’ with this message. Such ideas of communicating ‘facts’ and raising understanding about radiation have equally appeared in some, if not all, physical science-based literature on radioactivity in Fukushima and elsewhere. Nonetheless, notwithstanding the fact that radiation was and continues to be emitted from the FDNPP and hence is present in the environment even if in small amounts, the idea of harmful or baseless rumours perhaps misses an important point— namely, that a narrative of safety based on technical and scientific information may be of limited value if those delivering the narrative are not trusted to be able to competently assess and manage the risks they frame as being manageable (see Wynne 1992). Such a narrative may even backfire if it gives the impression that uncertainties and limitations of human knowledge in comprehending complex technical and environmental systems—which after all contributed to the accident in the first place—have not been given sufficient consideration or taken seriously. 9780367371753_C002.indd 56 09-04-2021 09:08:13 Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries? 57 This is particularly evident for fisheries in Fukushima, where a complete lack of trust between fishers and TEPCO over the failure to disclose information over leaks of contaminated water in a timely manner led to a breakdown in communications (Kyodo News 2015), even if the fisheries’ stakeholders with whom we spoke did not appear to fundamentally disagree with the content of the data TEPCO produced. The extent to which such lack of trust may work against assurances of safety given by TEPCO is illustrated by the fact that it was not until mid-2015, more than four years after the disaster, that arrangements were made for regular fishers to visit the FDNPP site. The absence of trust between fisheries, their cooperatives and TEPCO thus makes it difficult, if not impossible, to create opportunities like site visits, where fishers may verify TEPCO’s claims that the latter is competent to manage water on the FDNPP site. Indeed, it does not take much to understand why a narrative of absolute safety and ‘harmful rumours’ may arouse suspicion. The drive by the national government and TEPCO to demonstrate that the situation at the FDNPP is under control and that contamination of the environment is minimal (or at least can be easily remediated) was linked to a wider drive to facilitate the restart and continued use of nuclear reactors elsewhere in Japan (Perrow 2013; Sugiman 2014). Proving safety was also argued to be an important component of the return to normality (KottingUhl 2013) by expediting rehabilitation and resettlement, hence reducing the need for the government (and TEPCO) to make compensation payments (AsanumaBrice 2014). Likewise, claims to have the FDNPP situation under control formed a central plank of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s successful pitch for Tokyo to host the 2020 Olympics—itself widely believed to be the key to the national government’s economic growth strategy (Reuters 2013). In other words, those not bearing direct risks to health or livelihood from the accident may be viewed as standing to gain financially by arguing that there is no need for worry and that citizens ‘ought’ to eat Fukushima produce. However, scepticism around the wider motives of those who may stand to gain financially from dispelling ‘rumours’ is not the only reason the fuhyo higai approach (of unequivocal assurances about the safety of Fukushima produce) has come in for criticism. In literature with a more specific focus on the prospects of recovery for Fukushima produce, it has been argued that dismissing societal concerns as mere ‘harmful rumours’ ignores the complexities about how the region and its produce are perceived post-disaster. This, in turn, may actually hamper the rehabilitation of the region’s agriculture and fisheries. Morimoto (2015), for example, argues that the way ‘harmful rumours’ is deployed in some contexts can actually serve to reinforce a Fukushima/non-Fukushima binary. Morimoto’s reasoning is that the phrase ‘harmful rumours’ is applied almost exclusively to Fukushima and not to other prefectures adjacent to it or the rest of Japan, thereby giving rise to the idea that only produce from Fukushima—and not anywhere else—may be perceived as having the potential to be contaminated. Kimura and Katano (2014) hold that a fuhyo higai framing serves to dismiss concerns over the safety of produce as somehow ‘emotional’ and irrational, associating the purchasing and consumption of Fukushima produce with 9780367371753_C002.indd 57 09-04-2021 09:08:13 58 Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe heroism and patriotism. Following on from this, we too have argued elsewhere (Mabon and Kawabe 2016) that dismissing consumer concern as ‘harmful rumours’ overlooks the complexity of factors (e.g. trust, relationships, personal values) that inform legitimate consumer opinion on what constitutes an acceptable level of risk. Interviewed prefectural fisheries scientists, for instance, acknowledged that young mothers in the prefecture had an understandably precautionary view towards radiation risk, and that it was important to show respect for such viewpoints and not force particular groups towards the consumption of local fish. Specific to water, we also note that ‘harmful rumours’ tends to be applied in a general sense to all aspects of post-disaster Fukushima, treating fisheries in the same way as land-based produce and tourism. This may not be appropriate given the uncertainties and indeterminacies inherent in a marine environment, wherein limitations of financial, logistical and scientific knowledge may make it impossible to create data that guarantee 100 per cent freedom from radiation (see Section 5). The narrative conveyed by the fuhyo higai approach is that sufficient knowledge and measures are in place to guarantee the absolute safety of produce like fish, if only wider society can be made aware of this. If the idea that Fukushima’s produce is risky is only fuhyo higai, it is assumed instead that Fukushima produce is safe.4 In other words, by negating the possibility for produce to be unsafe, its safety is asserted.We suggest, however, that this may actually act as a barrier to attaining fuller revitalisation of activities like commercial fishing in Fukushima. The two main reasons for this are that it (a) may over-simplify complexities and uncertainties around the health effects associated with low levels of radioactive contamination, and more importantly (b) ignores the wide range of factors that may affect how the stakeholders and consumers, on whom the revitalisation of Fukushima depends, come to make decisions on risk. With that in mind, we now evaluate an alternative framing for post-disaster radiation that has emerged within Fukushima itself. From Fukushima fisheries to Iwaki fisheries to Joban fisheries The dominant narrative—or at least the narrative emerging from the actors one would traditionally consider to be most empowered—has centred on building understanding that ‘Fukushima’ and its produce are not harmful. However, an alternative narrative emerging at the local level may offer a different pathway to the revitalisation of fisheries. As we explain, central to this, is the way risk and uncertainty are narrated, and the framing of marine radioactivity not only as a techno-scientific issue, but also as an issue of people and of place. Key in developing this more localised narrative—in our fieldwork at least—has been the municipal authorities and fisheries cooperatives, fisheries scientists, and extension officers working for Fukushima Prefecture, citizen monitoring groups working within the community, and fishers themselves. Crucially, as we elaborate shortly, these are all people who themselves live on the Fukushima coast and hence bear some risk of exposure to radiation. In a refinement of the narrative that there is sufficient knowledge in place to guarantee absolute safety of produce, indeterminacies and uncertainties in marine 9780367371753_C002.indd 58 09-04-2021 09:08:13 Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries? 59 radiation are opened up to particular scrutiny. This happens not only within Fukushima, but also within the municipality and the fishing district of Iwaki.5 Contrary to the national government upper limit for radioactive caesium of 100 Bq/kg, the maximum amount permitted by the FPFFCA in marine produce for sale is 50 Bq/kg. Even within this 50 Bq/kg, screened samples of fish exceeding 25 Bq/kg are sent to the prefectural labs for further tests before being released for sale (and samples exceeding 50 Bq/kg are returned to the monitoring-only stage to be reconsidered for trial fisheries at a later stage). These 50 Bq/kg and 25 Bq/kg levels were set voluntarily by the cooperatives in Iwaki and Soma-Futaba—whose members are themselves fishers—as the fishers wished to take a stricter and more precautionary approach to radiation screening. Indeed, in marketing as well as screening, fishers who were members of the cooperatives expressed a desire to see more rigorous screening and traceability than that mandated by the central government. There are also other ways in which publics and those with less formal technoscientific knowledge (such as regular fishers) have shaped the risk governance process within the locality. The process of deciding which fish to monitor, where, and when to release them for trial commercial operations, involved right from the outset, significant levels of input from rank-and-file fishers to gauge motivation and timing for expansion of activities. This involved not only formalised committee meetings, but also informal face-to-face interaction between fishers and fisheries extension officers in the ports. Despite the suspicions raised in the previous section over Fukushima Prefectural Government as an entity, it is also true that individuals and departments within the Prefecture have worked to design and refine monitoring and communication strategies in a way that is responsive to publics’ needs (e.g. working collaboratively with outdoor workers and recreationalists to understand how and where to collect radiation data about complex forest environments). Lastly, in Iwaki, formal fisheries’ monitoring and screening processes are supplemented with additional periodic monitoring of marine radiation undertaken by the Aquamarine Fukushima laboratory in combination with local citizen group UmiLabo (2018). These data from outside the formal fisheries governance process are collected via rod fishing off piers and by boat off the coast of the FDNPP, driven by pride in local fisheries and also a concern with creating data perceived as ‘independent’ from the central and regional governments to allow citizens to make informed choices about eating local fish.While the data collected through this informal monitoring do not feed into the fisheries governance process, it is nonetheless uploaded to the UmiLabo blog (www.umilabo.jp/) and is explained to citizens both via blog posts and through public engagement events (see below). What is significant here is that most UmiLabo members possessed little, if any, knowledge of marine radiation prior to 2011, and yet, as citizens, their members have come to act as significant opinion-shapers within the Iwaki community through provision of data and hosting of public events. Apart from laying down standards, another pivotal activity within fisheries risk governance in Iwaki is the making visible of the processes through which claims to the safety of Iwaki fish can be made. Although a large part of this involves making 9780367371753_C002.indd 59 09-04-2021 09:08:13 60 Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe monitoring and screening data available online in a way that parallels the ‘information provision’ seen in the fuhyo higai framing, what makes the Iwaki fisheries narrative distinct, is transparency in data analysis. The Onahama Danish Trawl Seines Fisheries Cooperative and Iwaki City Fisheries Cooperative carry out screening of trial fisheries’ catches in a laboratory situated inside the New Onahama Fish Market. This laboratory is surrounded on three sides by large glass windows, thereby making the process of radiation monitoring visible not only to consumers, but also to fishers bringing in catches. Traceability plays a large part too in UmiLabo’s activities—any member of the public can join the UmiLabo research cruises and catch fish which form part of the organisation’s dataset, and at the TabeLabo (‘eating lab’) events run in conjunction with Aquamarine Fukushima scientists, participants are taken through the whole process of catching, analysing and ultimately eating fish and seafood caught in Iwaki. Information provision and public engagement are of course part of dispelling ‘harmful rumours’.The nuance here, however, is that rather than a narrative that says marine produce is safe, it is a narrative of how claims to the safety of some (but crucially not all) Iwaki fish being safe for consumption is made. In short, within Iwaki fisheries, risk and uncertainty are narrated not as something to be ignored or suppressed, but as something to be continually assessed, understood more deeply and lived within. Indeed, a large part of the monitoring and screening undertaken by fisheries scientists at the prefectural research station, by the cooperatives and by groups such as UmiLabo emphasises the heterogeneity of exposure to radioactivity within and between fish species. In turn, what is foregrounded is not only what is known, but also where the remaining limitations in researchers’ knowledge lie. The governance of risk and uncertainty at the local level is thus narrated not as a complete assurance as to the safety of all marine produce, but as an ongoing process of refining knowledge that is cognisant of where remaining uncertainties may lie and openly acknowledges the fact that some produce does, in fact, retain the potential to be harmful to humans and hence remains off-limits. In addition to the nature of radiation monitoring and screening at the local level, another central plank of the ‘Iwaki fisheries’ narrative is the prominence and nature of the people assessing/taking risks within this framing. While trust in the Fukushima Prefecture government as a larger entity appears to have been low, the fisheries scientists and extension officers employed by the prefecture but working ‘in the field’ within Iwaki—either at the Onahama Fisheries Research Station on the coast or the Fisheries Office in Central Iwaki—appear to be able to garner much higher levels of trust when engaging with fishers themselves on progressing trial fisheries, and when connecting with citizens, brokers and local media on the results of monitoring data. Part of this, we suggest, may be due to the fact that they themselves are ‘citizens’ living and working in the area and hence are as equally exposed to the risks of radiation from the sea as are the citizens and less empowered stakeholders with whom they engage. The narrative of knowledge for decisions about marine radiation being produced by those who themselves are risk bearers as well as risk assessors may similarly extend to the screening of trial fisheries catches by local fisheries cooperative employees, 9780367371753_C002.indd 60 09-04-2021 09:08:13 Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries? 61 many of whom were born and raised within Iwaki and have had to learn the metrics and processes of radiation risk assessment from scratch since the 2011 accident. This may also be seen in the way some of the more localised monitoring groups—such as UmiLabo and Aquamarine Fukushima—make the enjoyment of consuming locally caught produce themselves a key part of their research process. Pride in the quality of their area’s fish and seafood, and a related desire to help the recovery of Iwaki fisheries by showing fellow citizens that Iwaki fish are both safe for consumption and delicious, was one of the motivating factors behind the commencement of this citizen monitoring activity (see Mabon and Kawabe 2016). The human dimensions of post-disaster fisheries have been similarly played on by the Iwaki City municipal government, whose TV and textual advertising campaign ‘Aiming Towards Return to Full-Scale Iwaki Fisheries’ placed a heavy emphasis on showing the fishers, brokers, administrators, and managers involved as ‘serious and hardworking’ fishers (Iwaki City 2014).This alternative narration of fisheries’ recovery being led from within, not only in Fukushima but also in its cities, presents fishing not just as an economic activity, but as something integral to the community and the people within it. Rather than just a means of restoring profit for those who were spatially removed from the worst effects of the nuclear disaster, fisheries recovery is thus framed as something that is intrinsically bound up with the recovery of the whole Iwaki community. Recovery is thus both part of the narrative and a goal of the narrative, something to be perpetuated by telling the story of what has been achieved so far. The Iwaki-led narrative of post-disaster fisheries also draws upon associations with place. Since late 2015, the Iwaki City municipal government’s fisheries section has been leading a campaign to evoke the old Joban Mono name historically given to marine produce from the Iwaki area. Key in the narrative which draws on the Joban Mono title are the physical environmental characteristics of the Iwaki coast. The meeting of the warm Kuroshio current from the south and the cold Oyashio current from the north is described as producing nutrient-rich waters that give the fish landed in Iwaki a distinctive flavour (Iwaki City 2015). In much of the discussion about Fukushima’s waters and its fisheries post-disaster, the focus has been on how the marine environment may reduce the quality of marine produce. The emphasis has been on the radioactive particles contained within the sea that have the potential to make seafood harmful to eat, or at least create the perception that Iwaki fish may be harmful. The narrative from the municipal level, however, presents the physical environment as something which enhances the quality of Iwaki fish. Further, it is also interesting to note that the Japanese characters used to denote the Joban name—常磐—are a combination of the Japanese characters historically used for the place names of Hitachi (常陸) and Iwaki (磐城). Crucially, however, Hitachi actually belongs in the adjacent Ibaraki Prefecture, hence the name being revived for post-disaster Iwaki fish borrows elements from outside Fukushima. The Joban Mono campaign thus arguably offers a different framing to Fukushima/non-Fukushima fisheries by situating Iwaki and its fisheries in a complex environmental system, one that is influenced by ocean currents and processes from outside the prefecture, yet run by the people within a distinct municipality. 9780367371753_C002.indd 61 09-04-2021 09:08:13 62 Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe One, of course, has to be careful not to over-celebrate this alternative narrative. The aim of monitoring, screening and trial fisheries is ultimately to return to full-scale commercial operations, and the desired outcome of making monitoring processes transparent and engaging with citizens—for the fisheries cooperatives and prefectural scientists at least—is to encourage people to consume (and thus purchase) Iwaki marine produce. Given that this rehabilitation of fisheries depends on having citizens and brokers prepared to pay for local fish and seafood, these narratives are thus instrumental in increasing the number of people prepared to support Iwaki fisheries. Narration becomes all the more important when we consider that as one always has the option to ‘opt-out’ by buying fish caught elsewhere, there is little else that can be done to widen the consumer base. The success of these more precautionary governance initiatives at the local level is still, however, completely at the mercy of decisions taken at the individual or household level as to whether to consume Iwaki fish. There appears to be broad consensus within Iwaki that consumers are divided into two groups—those who are willing to eat locally landed produce, and those who will not, even though monitoring has been undertaken and the relevant information has been provided. Moreover, what a narrative of incremental and precautionary restarts based on continuous monitoring cannot do is to prevent further changes in the situation at the FDNPP. None of the actors involved in the narrative led from within Iwaki City are in charge of the ongoing process of decommissioning the damaged reactors, working to remove the remaining fuel, safely storing contaminated water and ensuring that radioactive material from the FDNPP site does not find its way into the groundwater or the sea. This is the responsibility of operators and regulators working at the national or international level, such as TEPCO and its subsidiaries and subcontractors, and the various agencies of the Japanese government. And yet the narrative that is being constructed within Iwaki City rests on the premise that the worst of the accident is over, that there will be no more large-scale releases of radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean. Thus, the Iwaki-led narrative of fisheries recovery works only if processes outside of its control do not change for the worse. Indeed, the 2015 leaks into the sea and the continuing debate over whether to release tritium-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean to reduce pressure on on-site water storage facilities demonstrate that the FDNPP site will retain the potential to be harmful to oceans, fish and by extension, humans for some time yet. In sum, the alternative narrative of ‘Iwaki’ fisheries offers a different and more nuanced framing of risk from marine radiation post-disaster, but, in practice, its success or otherwise as a means of progressing debate on the future of Iwaki and Fukushima fisheries may ultimately depend on processes outside the control of fisheries governors. It is the nature of ‘communication’ about water which we now theorise by connecting our findings to, and building on, extant literature in this area. 9780367371753_C002.indd 62 09-04-2021 09:08:13 Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries? 63 Discussion Connecting our impressions from Fukushima to wider thinking, we draw out wider lessons for the framing and narration of conflicts related to water that arise from this case study. We reflect on how risk, uncertainty and indeterminacy in the ‘science’ related to an environmental disaster underpinning a conflict are framed and narrated. This concerns, more precisely, how the different actors appear to understand risk communication and how this affects the way they narrate (or not) uncertainties and unknowns. As discussed at the start of the chapter, there is a concern that risk communication in practice remains focused on the one-way communication of techno-scientific information in order to garner support for a desired outcome.This may become problematic for the governance of water-related conflicts if, by closing down the discussion to a narrow one-way focus on science and thereby side-lining a wider range of concerns, it gives rise to claims of procedural or epistemic injustice (McLaren 2012). That is, claims to injustice may arise from citizens or stakeholders who feel that a risk governance process designed around the one-way provision of techno-scientific communication does not give them an opportunity to raise concerns arising on, say, ethical grounds (procedural injustice), or if the emphasis on correcting misunderstandings through techno-scientific arguments marginalises arguments based on local or lay knowledge (epistemic injustice). Practically too, attempts to close down risk governance to a narrative of hard science understanding (i.e. understanding based on scientific principles derived from disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology, and geology, presented as if there is complete agreement within the discipline and little remaining uncertainty) may act as a barrier to reaching solutions. This could happen if ‘hard science’ arguments create tension—and thus reduce the likelihood of different actors engaging in constructive debate or dialogue—by marginalising or ignoring the viewpoints of those who do not buy into the idea of science being ‘settled’ or whose concerns stem from, say, ethical, moral or values-based arguments. Indeed, a useful framework for evaluating how decision-makers and governors may respond to controversy is provided by Sundqvist (2014). Similar to Stirling (2008) on ‘opening up’ and ‘closing down’, Sundqvist suggests that the governance of controversy can be framed as either a ‘heating up’ (opening up the issue to dialogue and debate between decision-makers, scientists, stakeholders, and publics) or a ‘cooling down’ (allowing a particular course of action to take place through means of allaying or at least calming down concerns). It is too much of a simplification to categorise the national and regional government response to marine radiation in Fukushima as ‘cooling down’ and the more local response as ‘heating up’. After all, local fisheries cooperatives too are striving to restart the sale of fish. Many of those undertaking monitoring of fish stocks outside of the fisheries business (e.g. the UmiLabo citizen science group members and the Aquamarine Fukushima scientists supporting them) 9780367371753_C002.indd 63 09-04-2021 09:08:13 64 Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe are motivated to do so because they are personally proud of the quality and heritage of their area’s fish and want to support the rehabilitation of fisheries by demonstrating to consumers within Iwaki that local fish are both safe and delicious. However, the assumption underpinning the fuhyo higai approach that there is no cause for concern as to the safety of marine produce—and that not buying or consuming produce out of such concern is hindering the economic recovery of the region—parallels a ‘cooling down approach’. That is, it seeks to neutralise concerns by establishing a baseline position that Fukushima fish are safe for consumption. By contrast, governance of risk and uncertainty at the local scale could be seen as more of a ‘heating up’ (or at least cooling down after heating up) in that decisions over whether or not to proceed with trial fisheries for particular species are taken through a dialogic process, and the aim of engagement with consumers is geared more towards providing them with information to allow them to make their own decision on whether or not to consume local fish and seafood. Sundqvist argues that both ‘heating up’ and ‘cooling down’ framings can be successful in the right circumstances.Yet, what we can see in Fukushima fisheries is that the high-level narrative aiming towards ‘cooling down’ by presenting the science as somehow agreed or settled may be of limited value, or may even broaden scepticism, if those conveying the narrative are not trusted or if significant difference in perception of risk or uncertainty remains. One may question whether these two narratives can in fact work together to completely close down discussion on risk and safety around Fukushima and the sea. It is certainly true that there is potential for the high-level narrative on absolute safety and the local-level narratives of quality and transparency to work together and provide multiple pathways for citizens to buy into the safety of Fukushima fish. However, it is worth pointing out that many of the individual opinion-shapers informing the narrative of ‘Iwaki’ fisheries also have a close interest in the nuclear plant through their activities. For instance, manga artist Tatsuta Kazuto frequently brings the eating of Iwaki fish into his Ichi-Efu series, a memoir about the time he spent working at the nuclear plant post-disaster (e.g. Tatsuta 2016). The Encyclopedia of the 1F: A Guide to Decommissioning of the Fukushima Dai’ichi Nuclear Power Station, edited by sociologist Hiroshi Kainuma, juxtaposes the complexities and long-term challenges of decommissioning with guidance on restaurants serving local produce in nearby townships (Kainuma 2016). Such accounts, while not critical of local produce, nonetheless convey nuanced views on the speed and prospects of recovery on the Fukushima coast. In essence, while it is of course the case that there is significant pride among citizen activists in Iwaki fisheries and an aspiration for full revitalisation, it is also true that the Fukushima Dai’ichi Nuclear Power Plant and the continuing complexities around its management are not erased from this narrative. Thus, for the narration of conflicts related to water, an important lesson to draw is to consider what different communicating actors seek to achieve through their framing of techno-scientific risk and uncertainty. Even if conveyed by more empowered actors such as national or prefectural governments, narratives that seek to close down debate and discussion by presenting the underpinning science as somehow settled or agreed upon may backfire if they give the impression that those producing the 9780367371753_C002.indd 64 09-04-2021 09:08:13 Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries? 65 narrative have given insufficient consideration to uncertainty or indeterminacy. By contrast, even if they are still ultimately based on scientific understanding, narratives that give more situated and nuanced accounts of remaining uncertainties may offer a pathway towards governance that is able to encompass a range of perspectives on what is considered an acceptable level of risk.That is, narrating the process of data collection and analysis, and where the limitations and uncertainties are within this, stops short of telling consumers that their concerns are unfounded and instead leaves them to make their own decision on whether they think the level of risk is acceptable or not. This is especially important for water-related conflicts, where it may be very difficult, if not impossible, to claim that things can be known with complete certainty. The reason for this is that collecting data at sea is an especially costly process, requiring research ships (and crew wages) and technologically sophisticated equipment in the form of diving gear or remotely operated vehicles to collect samples from the seabed. Highly specialised skills such as competence in diving may also be required, and additionally, there may be issues pertaining to access to certain areas of water— this is particularly pointed for Fukushima, where access to the waters around the FDNPP has been strictly controlled. Moreover, the complexity of marine ecosystems—where the precise movements of currents and the species and material contained within them cannot be known completely—means that there are still limitations to knowledge about how contamination moves through the sea, and how it finds its way into fish and ultimately to humans. All of these factors mean that there are limits on who can collect data in a marine environment, how much data they can collect, and what they can claim based on the analysis of these data. It is because of this inherent uncertainty, and the issues around trust in the risk assessor and differing ideas on what constitutes an acceptable level of risk that it engenders, that the need for risk governance is all the more acute in water conflicts. Conclusions In this chapter, we have presented two different narratives that convey two different approaches to risk governance of marine radiation in Fukushima. One—the fuhyo higai/harmful rumours narrative—places an emphasis on assuring the safety of Fukushima produce based on a linear understanding of ‘risk communication’. The other—the Iwaki fisheries/Joban Mono narrative —appears to strive towards transparency in the knowledge-making process and the situation of post-disaster fisheries within a much wider social and environmental context. These narratives should by no means be considered polar opposites. For instance, the provision of environmental monitoring data (i.e. the basis on which claims to safety are made) is increasingly becoming part of dispelling ‘harmful rumours’. Likewise, it may well be that the ‘Iwaki fisheries’ framing emphasises respect for differing viewpoints and strives to allow citizens to come to their own informed decision on whether or not they feel the consumption of locally landed fish is an appropriate risk to take. But the implicit hope within this is that the consumption of local marine produce will increase. It is also imperative not to forget that radiation is a real and harmful phenomenon, 9780367371753_C002.indd 65 09-04-2021 09:08:13 66 Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe one which will continue to be an issue in the Iwaki waters for some time. Hence, a narrative emphasising dialogue and the human dimensions of recovery still has to be supported with scientific research and data on the radiation situation. Nonetheless, the case of Fukushima and Iwaki fisheries demonstrates that the framing and narration of a conflict can greatly influence not only the outcomes that are reached, but also the process taken to reach that destination. In particular, when it comes to governing conflicts over water with the inherent uncertainty this brings, we suggest looking at whether actors seek to ‘open up’ or ‘close down’ controversy through their narratives, which can give analytical insight into what they aim to achieve and how they seek to get there. In this account, we have not sought to offer answers or solutions to the framing of risk governance in post-disaster Fukushima and Iwaki fisheries. Nor have we sought to offer comment as to the safety or otherwise of the area’s fish and seafood. Rather, we have sketched out how two narrations and framings of a water-related conflict can lead to rather different courses of action and give rise to different sets of concerns, even if the envisioned end result of both narratives (in this case, the revitalisation of fisheries) is essentially the same. What may be a valuable next step is to refine the theoretical challenges we raise for water around narrating uncertainty and framing scale through application to other uncertain, value-driven water conflicts in different environmental and cultural contexts. Notes 1 Fuller discussions on the methodology used and the kind of analysis undertaken can be found in Mabon and Kawabe (2015). 2 ‘Landed’ in this context refers to the location of the port at which fish caught at sea are brought ashore—that is, where they are taken off the boat after fishing. For coastal fisheries in Fukushima, fish ‘landed’ at a Fukushima port will also have been caught in Fukushima waters, as fishing rights are divided up by prefecture. 3 The Becquerel is the unit of choice for measuring radioactivity in food as it gives a basic physical measure of the amount of ionising radiation released through radioactive decay per kilogram of produce. 4 It is worth noting that the provision of ‘evidence’ to support the claim that the produce is not harmful, in the form of online radiation monitoring data for various foodstuffs and locations, has started to form a part of the strategies for countering ‘harmful rumours’. Fukushima Prefecture is one such institution to have started providing such data in the name of dispelling ‘harmful rumours’. 5 Similar processes likewise take place within Soma-Futaba, but here we focus on the narrative that is emerging specific to Iwaki. 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Collins, S. Jones, B. Manyena, and J. Jayawickrama (eds), Hazards, Risks, and Disasters in Society, pp. 324–353. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Pellizzoni, L. 2003. ‘Uncertainty and Participatory Democracy’, Environmental Values, 12 (2): 195–224. Perrow, C. 2013. ‘Nuclear Denial: From Hiroshima to Fukushima’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 69(5): 56–67. Reconstruction Agency. 2013. Towards the Creation of ‘New Tohoku’ (The Interim Compilation of Discussions). Tokyo: Reconstruction Agency, http://www.reconstruction.go.jp/english/topics/2013/08/20130823_Towards_the_Creation_of_New_Tohoku.pdf (accessed 26 March 2019). Renn, O. 2008. Risk Governance: Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex World. London: Earthscan. Reuters. 2013. ‘Japan Olympic Win Boosts Abe, but Fukushima Shadows Linger’, Reuters, 9 September http://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-2020-japan-idUSBRE98806P 20130909 (accessed 26 March 2019). Riesch, H. 2012. ‘Levels of Uncertainty’, in Roeser, S., R. Hillerbrand, P. Sandin, and M. Peterson (eds), Essentials of Risk Theory, pp. 29–56. New York: Springer. Stirling, A. 2008. ‘“Opening Up” and “Closing Down”: Power, Participation, and Pluralism in the Social Appraisal of Technology’, Science,Technology and Human Values, 33 (2): 262–294. Sugiman,T. 2014. ‘Lessons Learned from the 2011 Debacle of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant’, Public Understanding of Science, 23(3): 254–267. Sundqvist, G. 2014.‘“Heating up” or “Cooling Down”? Analysing and Performing Broadened Participation in Technoscientific Conflicts’, Environment and Planning A, 46(9): 2065–2079. The Globe and Mail. 2015. ‘Canadian Researcher Targeted by Hate Campaign over Fukushima findings’, 1 November, The Globe and Mail (Online Edition), http://www. theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/canadian-researcher-targeted-by-hatecampaign-over-fukushima-findings/article27060613/ (accessed 26 March 2019). Tokyo Electric Power Company. 2014. FY2013 Earnings Results (1 April 2013–31 March 2014) Presentation Material. Tokyo: TEPCO, http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/corpinfo/ir/ tool/presen/pdf/140430_1-e.pdf (accessed 26 March 2019). Tatsuta, K. 2016. Ichi-Efu: An Account of the Cleanup at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (in Japanese). Tokyo: Kodansha. UmiLabo. 2018. ‘Iwaki Sea Survey Team UmiLabo’ (in Japanese), http://www.umilabo. jp/(accessed 26 March 2019). Wada, T.,Y. Nemoto, S. Shimamura, T. Fujita, T. Mizuno, T. Sohtome, K. Kamiyama, T. Morita, and S. Igarashi. 2013. ‘Effects of the Nuclear Disaster on Marine Products in Fukushima’, Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, 124: 246–254. Wynne, B. 1992. ‘Misunderstood misunderstanding: social identities and public uptake of science’, Public Understanding of Science, 1(3): 281–304. doi:10.1088/0963-6625/1/3/004 Wynne, B. 2006.‘Public Engagement as a Means of Restoring Public Trust in Science: Hitting the Notes, but Missing the Music?’, Community Genetics, 9(3): 211–220. Yoshida, N. and J. Kanda. 2012. ‘Tracking the Fukushima Radionuclides’, Science, 336: 1115–1116. 9780367371753_C002.indd 68 09-04-2021 09:08:14 3 ROOM FOR THE RIVER, NO ROOM FOR CONFLICT Narratives of participation, win-win, consensus, and co-creation in Dutch spatial flood risk management Dik Roth, Jeroen Warner and Madelinde Winnubst Introduction The Netherlands, a low-lying deltaic country, shaped historically by the combined influences of the North Sea and the transboundary rivers Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt in the west, and Ems in the north-east, is known worldwide for its flood protection infrastructure. With 17 million people living in a relatively small area (41,543 km2), the country is densely populated, especially the western conurbation, which is also the most industrialised. About 26 per cent of the country lies below sea level, while another 29 per cent is sensitive to flooding (Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency 2004, 2010). The west is the most flood-sensitive part of the country. Historically, specific institutional arrangements and practices of flood defence and water control developed through the so-called water boards (waterschappen). Originating in the Middle Ages, for many centuries these were key local water governance institutions. Before 1900, there were an estimated 3,500 water boards. Since then, their number has radically decreased, from around 2,600 in 1950 to the current 21 (see https://dutchwaterauthorities.com; accessed on 28 October 2018). The reduced number of boards and their decreasing importance as local institutions was the consequence of the establishment and growing power of the national water management agency (Rijkswaterstaat) from the late eighteenth century onwards (Toonen, Dijkstra and van der Meer 2006; van Heezik 2008). Since 1953, when a North Sea storm surge caused more than 1,800 victims in the southwestern part of Netherlands, the Rijkswaterstaat, which had developed into a hierarchically structured organisation, started making serious coastal defence works (the Delta Works programme) and, later, river dike enhancements. However, in the 1960s and the 1970s, interventions for diking along rivers and damming along the coast increasingly led to protests by concerned inhabitants: societal protest heralding the demise of uncontested power and authority through Europe had brought 9780367371753_C003.indd 69 09-04-2021 09:16:07 70 Dik Roth et al. about changes in the Dutch water world as well. Concerned citizens, professional groups (fishermen) and nature and environmental NGOs saw their property and values threatened. Claims of professional engineering skills and expertise no longer sufficed to maintain authority and legitimacy for policies, plans and interventions. In the 1990s, near-floods and a growing awareness of climate change spurred a move away from purely infrastructural flood protection towards combined spatialinfrastructural ones. Simply put, infrastructural flood protection here refers to the practice of diking to confine rivers within their beds, thus also reducing their space. Spatial measures increase the space for the river by, for instance, deepening the river bed, removing obstacles, relocating dikes, creating river bypasses, or preparing special areas for temporary water storage (calamity storage). These new approaches resulted in a policy line called ‘Room for the River’, which was implemented between 2006 and 2015 (van Stokkom, Smits and Leuven 2005). As ‘Room for the River’ created new linkages between land and water, making the latter flow rather than confining it and separating it off from human settlement, this policy posed new challenges for interaction with citizens affected by river interventions. In the past, water policies brought technical solutions devised and implemented top-down by the Rijkswaterstaat. There was little awareness of the importance of dealing with societal protest and conflict. This top-down tradition has also influenced the ‘Room for the River’ programme. Conflicts with citizen groups, caused by the new approaches, often arose because local inhabitants felt excessively or unnecessarily hit by planned interventions (Wolsink 2006; Warner, Edelenbos and van Buuren 2013a; 2013b). In this chapter, we discuss such conflicts against the background of the shifts from top-down to ‘stakeholder’ or ‘governance’ approaches to water management and the accompanying policy narratives. These shifts created new opportunities for citizens to become involved in planning and decision-making as ‘stakeholders’ (Warner, Edelenbos and van Buuren 2013a). However, the flipside is the depoliticisation of the issues at stake and the co-optation of critical citizens incorporated into ‘sounding-board groups’ (klankbordgroep) or similar arrangements for orchestrated participation. Thus, conflicts over water interventions tend to be ‘managed’ and concealed rather than faced and dealt with. To illustrate this, we use a historical approach, in which we discuss and compare experiences with three spatial-infrastructural interventions for flood risk management in the last two decades: the first, during the transition towards spatial policies that intensified water–land interactions; the second under the ‘Room for the River’ programme; and the third in the post-Room for the River period, under the recently developed Delta programme. Each of these programmes has a specific narrative which can be explained as ‘making meaning’ (Abma 1999: 12). Narratives may be ideological, prescribing how the world should be viewed. In other words, by narratives we mean an organised form of discourse (see Kaplan 1993). Narrative framing, then, is a strategy to fixate certain meanings by developing narratives with a view to making a particular discourse hegemonic (van Buuren and Warner 2010). 9780367371753_C003.indd 70 09-04-2021 09:16:07 Room for the river, no room for conflict 71 The chapter is structured as follows: after this introduction, we give a brief overview of the recent changes in Dutch flood risk management policies and of the policy narratives that have supported them. Next, we discuss three examples that illustrate various dimensions of the conflicts that emerged in the interventions based on the policy shifts towards spatial measures. We pay specific attention to the narratives used by parties in the conflicts to either support or contest these interventions. Thereafter, our analysis will compare the examples, noting similarities and differences in how conflicts developed and how these developments relate to the identified narratives and framings. We end with a short conclusion. From dikes to space: Dutch flood risk management policies at the crossroads Dike reinforcement: ‘battle against water’ This section discusses the important stages in flood risk management policy, of which the cases discussed below are representative. Until the mid-1990s, dike construction as primary flood defence was the dominant approach in the Netherlands (Enserink 2004). The age-old narrative of ‘battling against water’ meant separating water and land through dikes (Wiering and Immink 2006). For centuries, the main rivers (Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt) had been straitjacketed, but their infrastructure suffered from bad maintenance. Immediately after the 1953 storm surge flood, sea defence was prioritised over the quality of river dikes. Only in the following decades, with more intensive land use and increasing value of economic infrastructure, more attention was given to river dikes. The resulting dike reinforcement policy under the aegis of the Rijkswaterstaat was characterised by an authoritarian government style with little room for deliberation or citizen engagement (Pröpper and Steenbeek 1999). The Rijkswaterstaat distinguished different flood safety levels, anchored in law, for different regions (Enserink 2004). The probability norm for the river dikes in the Netherlands was one flood event per 1,250 years, based on an estimated (design) discharge of 16,000 m3/s for the river Rhine.1 River safety was largely viewed as a technical engineering problem, solvable by modelling combined with costbenefit analysis. The agency’s engineers used probabilistic arguments—the possibility of flood occurrence—using past events to predict future effects (Enserink 2004).While the water boards were in charge of implementing dike reinforcements, the provinces, as competent authority, had to weigh the different interests. Protests were organised by environmental organisations that acknowledged the values of natural landscape and cultural heritage. Citizens protested against the demolition of houses and loss of cultural and landscape values as a result of dike enhancements. This sharpened the polarisation between proponents of dike enforcement, particularly engineers propagating ‘safety first’, and its opponents, mostly citizens and environmentalists defending natural and cultural landscape values. As a result, the programmes were adapted, while the Rijkswaterstaat incorporated ecological concerns in its policy (Wiering and Immink 2006). 9780367371753_C003.indd 71 09-04-2021 09:16:08 72 Dik Roth et al. The spatial turn: making ‘room for the river’ and ‘accommodating the water’ High-water events in 1993 and 1995 demonstrated the susceptibility of river dikes to floods, for instance, through undermining of the dike by piping (Te Linde, Aerts and Kwadijk 2010), which necessitated the Rijkswaterstaat to act. While a crash programme of additional dike enhancements, the Delta Plan for the Large Rivers, was implemented in the late 1990s, discussion started on whether such measures were sufficient for the long-term. This discussion led to an apparent paradigm shift in flood risk management, also in view of climate change and its possible implications for river discharges (e.g. changing rainfall patterns, snowmelt). River widening was increasingly seen as an effective flood risk mitigation strategy (Wiering and Immink 2006). Whereas in the old paradigm, water management had been based on resistance through dikes, the new idea promised more flexibility and resilience against extreme discharges. Policy-makers changed from a probability approach towards a risk approach (Wolsink 2010). Space became the guiding principle in river management and land-use planning. These changes required the Rijkswaterstaat to change its tack, as land behind the dikes is needed for dike relocations, bypasses and water storage. This required institutional changes at all levels, including different forms of governance (Wiering and Immink 2006). The main policy instrument to realise this shift, the Room for the River programme (Ruimte voor de Rivier),2 aimed at improving safety against flooding of the Rhine and Meuse by accommodating a discharge capacity of 16,000 m3/s for the Rhine and 3,800 m3/s for the Meuse (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment 2012a, 2012b, 2012c).The second objective was improving the ‘spatial quality’ of the river landscape. The Rijkswaterstaat engineers, however, normatively prioritised flood safety over other river-related values and functions, such as landscape and biodiversity (Wiering and Arts 2006). Note that in water engineering, scientific and policy circles, there was an absence of full agreement on this shift towards spatial measures. Its efficacy was also questioned, among others by those who put their bets on much bigger ‘climate dikes’. As with earlier dike enhancements, the Rijkswaterstaat could not prevent citizen protests against interventions in the landscape behind the dikes, which were seen locally as disturbing existing communities, landscapes and rural livelihoods (e.g. farming and livestock enterprises). Although protesting citizens were not against measures for flood prevention, they often questioned the need to implement them in the way or at the location designated by the government. Thus, many protests were negatively characterised by a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude on the part of local stakeholders confronted with Room for the River plans. Protesting groups often questioned the axioms underpinning flood interventions, such as the design discharge norm of 16,000 m3/sec for the river Rhine. Some projects even had to meet a 18,000 m3/sec norm, which was not included in the legislation.3 These assumptions were the weakest part of the justificatory arguments framing the governmental plans for water interventions as necessary and effective. Protesters 9780367371753_C003.indd 72 09-04-2021 09:16:08 Room for the river, no room for conflict 73 argued that, even during the biggest ever quantitatively documented flood, in 1926, the discharge had reached only 12,600 m3/sec. In some cases (e.g. calamity polders and the river bypass Varik-Heesselt; see below), protesters pointed out that, given the current flood risk management policies and dimensions of the dikes in upstream Germany, such quantities of water can never reach the Netherlands. Other citizen strategies included publicly questioning the proposed economic or demographic growth model (e.g. the Kampen case; see below) or the measure itself, by presenting an alternative plan, hiring expert knowledge, mobilising politicians, inhabitants and the media, and forming alliances with government agencies and societal organisations. The Delta programme: ‘working together with water’ In 2008, the (second) Delta Committee, a political advisory committee, presented a vision for long-term protection of the Netherlands in a changing climate (Boezeman, Vink and Leroy 2013). Its advice, titled ‘working together with water’, suggests active cooperation between ‘us’ (citizens) and ‘water’ (sea, rivers). The national collective focus is stressed by framing flood safety as a public interest (Vink et al. 2013). Based on this advice, the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management established a new Delta programme.While Room for the River had a limited time frame (2000–2015), the time frame of the Delta programme is much longer (into 2050 and even 2200) (Boezeman et al. 2013) to make adaptation to long-term climate change effects possible. Contrary to Room for the River, the Delta programme was disconnected from the traditional political process. The Dutch Cabinet appointed a Delta commissioner to connect the different ministries, governmental layers, entrepreneurs, civil society, and citizens (Vink et al. 2013). The Delta Committee’s legitimising argumentation is that flood safety is too important for political bargaining and budgetary negotiations, requiring a depoliticised, topdown mode of governance (see Vink et al. 2013: 97,Table 1).To justify its long-term scope and depoliticized mode of governance, the Delta Programme refers to the climate scenarios of the Dutch meteorological expert centre Koninklijk Nederlands Metereologisch Instituut (KNMI), and to the international study Rheinblick 2050, stating that, in 2100, the possible range of design peak discharges for the river Rhine will lie between 17,000 and 21,000 m3/s. Water governance arrangements in the Delta programme framework are particularly directed at, and open to, governmental actors; planning is delegated to regional and local governments, which need to co-finance flood risk projects. There is a special budget for ‘co-linking’ (meekoppelkansen) to garner financial support from the region. The point of departure is that co-financing a river project gives the cofunder a voice in the final project plan, such as including a new harbour to generate new economic activities in the region. Acting boldly, the Delta programme started planning river projects without being supported by a legal framework, as the new dike and design discharge norms of the rivers4 still needed to be politically decided on in parliament. In the meantime, a Delta fund, a Delta Act and Delta decisions were instated. 9780367371753_C003.indd 73 09-04-2021 09:16:08 74 Dik Roth et al. Losing the political? Three cases of depoliticised flood risk management intervention As shown in this overview, whatever the governance arrangements, protection measures against flooding have been contested since the 1970s. Whether centring on dike reinforcement or including spatial measures, conflicts about river interventions abound. The past two decades have seen a gradual shift away from top-down planning towards a more participatory style of intervention including ‘stakeholder involvement’. According to a corporate brochure of the ministry responsible, creating room for the river is making ‘room for governance’ (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment 2012c). However, as we will argue, the flipside of this development is a trend towards depoliticisation of decision-making. For instance, it is up to experts and policy makers to determine what risks are acceptable, while societal support is sought by claiming considerable regional economic benefits from colinking. Stakeholder meetings are organised without clear rules, agenda or outcomes. Citizens are heard in special meetings, but objectives, responsibilities and scope for influence remain unclear. Who is in charge? The regional government because of its lead position in proposing river plans? Or will the Delta commissioner finally decide? The governance arena is increasingly difficult to grasp for citizens. Social scientists and development sociologists (e.g. Cleaver 1999; Harriss 2002; Mouffe 2005a, b) would explicitly recognise forms of protest, resistance and ‘counter-development’ (Arce and Long 2000) as relevant and functional forms of participation. However, policy-makers tend to be conflict-averse (see Shore, Wright and Però 2011). In The Anti-politics Machine, Ferguson (1990) makes the point of depoliticisation specifically for the workings of ‘development’ interventions, in which discourses of neutral and universal expertise hide the basically interested and biased character of development interventions. Mouffe (2005a: 9) has further developed such criticism of depoliticisation into a more fundamental criticism of the marginalisation of ‘the political’, the basic antagonisms that constitute societies. According to Mouffe, conflict and antagonism are inherently part of a democracy based on the plurality of values. The political arena is the place to come to terms with such antagonisms by establishing a hierarchy among political values (Mouffe 2005b). Concurring with Mouffe, we argue that giving room to ‘the political’ may be a more productive way of dealing with conflicts than assuming consensus or trying to enforce it through consensus-seeking processes that are not acknowledged by all contending parties. In the following sections, we discuss three interventions directed at the river Rhine and its branches, in which conflicts about spatial interventions emerged.5 The first one represents the period of transition from the ‘battle against water’ towards the ‘spatial turn’. It focuses on the Ooijpolder in Gelderland Province, where plans for calamity storage of water from the river Rhine led to massive protests by citizens’ organisations against the intervention. The second intervention, in the Room for the River programme, discusses conflicts developing around the construction of a bypass for the river IJssel (a branch of the river Rhine) in Kampen, Province of 9780367371753_C003.indd 74 09-04-2021 09:16:08 Room for the river, no room for conflict 75 Overijssel. It shows that ‘water conflicts’ are not necessarily about water alone. The third intervention concerns plans under the Delta programme for another river bypass for the river Waal (another Rhine branch), in Varik and Heesselt.6 Some inhabitants of these villages are organising themselves against these plans. As we will argue, taken together, these manifestations of spatial-infrastructural policies in the last two decades show two important things: first, they provide a relevant comparative understanding of the changing trends in river flood management and the consequences of these for water governance; second, they show the role of conflict, how conflict is dealt with, and the important narrative elements used to justify or contest interventions in relation to the interests and objectives of the actors involved. From dike enhancement towards radical spatial solutions: conflict about the Ooijpolder As noted, the Dutch flood management debate showed changes after two high-water events in the 1990s. Flood risk gained prominence again, the main argument being that rivers had historically lost their space while population and economic values behind the dikes had continued to increase. The old recipe for ‘fighting the water’, dike reinforcements, was increasingly seen as having reached its limits. Gradually, the climate change argument emerged and advanced as a legitimising narrative for the shift towards spatial measures (Vink et al. 2013). The new government (the Rijkswaterstaat) narrative started moving away from guaranteeing ‘safety behind the dikes’ towards stressing an omnipresent ‘residual risk’, even with well-maintained dikes. It stressed the need to move from resistance towards accommodation and ‘living with water’ (see Wiering and Driessen 2001; Wiering and Immink 2006). Thus, simultaneously with a crash programme for dike enhancement in reaction to earlier high waters (to deal with bad dike conditions and overdue maintenance), the Room for the River policy was conceived in 1996 to create more space for water to deal with residual risk. There was a major problem, however: the earlier government narrative of ‘sleeping safely behind the dikes’ had gradually made the Dutch less aware of flood risk and left them unprepared for small floods or disaster.7 The intended policy shift towards spatial measures and ‘living with water’ required a higher awareness of flood risks. Only broad acceptance of the flood risk narrative under construction would create legitimacy for the planned Room for the River interventions. In early 2000, therefore, the functionary responsible, Vice-Minister Monique de Vries, decided to use a rough remedy against this low flood risk awareness. During a meeting to present the Room for the River policy line, she also launched plans for the selection and establishment of so-called calamity polders.8 This concept was part of the new flood risk management narrative, legitimising a search for spatial solutions that were to affect many inhabitants. Contradicting the earlier policy—safety behind the dikes had been the main source of political legitimacy of the Rijkswaterstaat—the minister now openly stressed that absolute safety behind the dikes was impossible and that the ‘residual risk’ can no longer be covered exclusively by diking. Spatial solutions 9780367371753_C003.indd 75 09-04-2021 09:16:08 76 Dik Roth et al. were presented as unavoidable, and ‘calamity polders’ were posited as the safety valves to save densely populated and economically developed areas located downstream of these polders. Designation and redesign of a small number of strategically located polders as ‘calamity polders’ was assumed to make ‘controlled flooding’ of these polders possible, thus reducing uncertainty and insecurity by making evacuation and protection against damage in the calamity polders plannable (see Roth and Warner 2007, 2009). The plan for ‘calamity polders’ was widely covered in national and regional media, creating a stir among the population of the designated areas, particularly in the Ooijpolder, a scenic area with a 2003 population of around 13,000. As the plans caught them completely unaware, the inhabitants were furious and felt bypassed by the policy process. A wave of protests from citizens, Gelderland Province and municipalities, farmers’ associations, regional Chamber of Commerce, and employers’ organisations ensued. Water experts from Delft University were critical of the scientific justification for the plans and provided counter-expertise. Gelderland Province publicly declared its unwillingness to cooperate in implementing the calamity polders. Realising the conflict potential of the issue, the government decided to postpone its decision and instituted an expert commission, the Commission on Calamity Polders, appointed in 2001 to advise, among others, on the appropriateness of calamity polders as a solution, area selection and its consequences (Commissie Noodoverloopgebieden 2002). Notwithstanding the commission’s self-image of ‘rational experts’, the way it operated, created growing distrust among critics of the plan and rapidly turned the issue into a conflict in which the parties came to be at loggerheads. The commission had derisively labelled the initial protests as based on ‘emotion’, uncritically accepted climate-adjusted peak river discharge volumes9 as a point of departure for its work, limited its interactions with the general public to a number of organisations regarded as representative of society at large, and started propagating the idea of calamity polders as a kind of ‘airbag’ to cushion the river system from crashes. Unsurprisingly, in its 2002 report, the commission advised designation of calamity polders in three areas, including the Ooijpolder (see Roth and Warner 2009). With the Vice-Minister opting for ‘decisiveness’ (that is, implementation) on the basis of this report, calamity polders seemed to be in the can. However, a growing number of Ooijpolder dwellers began to realise that this was serious business. The designation of their polder for emergency storage meant property prices would plummet. Initially, protests therefore came from property owners, farmers and entrepreneurs, with support from a local branch of the RABO bank, where most inhabitants (especially farmers) had an account.The chairman of the expert commission also happened to chair the national RABO bank’s supervisory board. In the course of 2002, the local bank director took the initiative of inviting the chairman of the expert commission to come to the polder and explain the plan directly to the inhabitants. It is noteworthy that this had not been done earlier. The previous year, the communications section of the Rijkswaterstaat had prepared a ‘stakeholder analysis’ about the calamity polder issue. However, instead of bringing contrasting opinions around 9780367371753_C003.indd 76 09-04-2021 09:16:08 Room for the river, no room for conflict 77 the table, it was advised to turn ‘dangerous’ stakeholders—the unruly ones, who protested against the plans—into supporters of the plans by bombarding them with propaganda on the calamity polders (see Roth and Warner 2007, 2009).The information meeting with polder dwellers, where the idea of calamity polders had been propagated but no serious debate had been possible, had given opponents the final push to organise themselves as a platform against the plans of creating a calamity polder. The chair of the well-organised citizen group, Hoogwaterplatform (High Water Platform) explained the citizens’ mood:‘It [the meeting] was a shocker [for the citizens], its typical top-down approach … Until then, the possibility that the Ooijpolder might be designated as a calamity polder was withheld from them. Before, there had been neither commotion nor resistance.The publication of the commission’s report, which the regional newspaper paid attention to, and the important role of the local bank [that organised the information meeting] stimulated the citizens’ awareness of the plan.The chair [of the commission] was invited, a very kind man; there was no anger among the 400 citizens. The question arose: “what do they want?” The meeting made that very clear to the citizens.’10 The citizen group mobilised the citizens and organised counter-expertise on river engineering and hydrology, to critically review the plans and engage in debates with experts propagating the measure. A retired Delft professor of civil engineering,Wybrand van Ellen, dubbed the polder a ‘bathtub’ (Aarden 2003). Van Ellen stated that water retention in emergency areas is ill-conceived: In a delta like the Netherlands with many rivers, it is important that the river water is flowing rapidly to the sea. It is not useful to store it in water retention areas like emergency retention areas. Some eight- to nine-metre high dikes are needed near the pumping station at the entry of the polder to hold the water in the retention area.11 Around villages, the same high dikes will be needed, the so-called mini polders, resulting in a ‘bathtub’ effect in case of a high water period (see Figure 3.1). Technical and legal counter-expertise were also needed to develop alternative plans, as the Hoogwaterplatform wanted to avoid accusations of NIMBY-ism. At a later stage, as all attempts to start a dialogue had proved in vain, the group declared the Vice-Minister the enemy. Instead, the focus shifted to intensive contacts with politicians, providing them with regular updates on research and inviting them for a guided tour through the polder. Further, the group strengthened its transboundary alliance with the Germans. The Ooijpolder borders an area called Düffel in Germany; the two areas are actually one polder system. The Dutch planners had failed to share the calamity polder plan with their neighbours; neither the German regional government nor the inhabitants of the Düffel were pleased with the Dutch plans, which initially did not include a border dike to prevent calamity storage water from flowing into Germany! This created an opportunity for forging a transboundary alliance against calamity polders. The protests generated several critical research initiatives that gradually undermined the commission’s advice: inter-regional research between Gelderland 9780367371753_C003.indd 77 09-04-2021 09:16:08 78 Dik Roth et al. Illustration of the inlet of the proposed retention area of the village Millingen in the Ooijpolder. At a later stage, the water will flow into the village dike ring, the so-called bathtub effect. Source: Studio Nuijten, Kekerdom FIGURE 3.1 Province in the Netherlands and Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany; critical research by Delft University, commissioned by Dutch and German municipal authorities; and a critical study on effectiveness, cost and benefits of the calamity polder concept.12 The Hoogwaterplatform continued stressing that the inhabitants were willing to accept the plans on the condition that alternatives had been seriously researched and proven ineffective, and the calamity polder demonstrably proven to be the best solution. Eventually, this strategy proved effective; the tides turned against the commission. The demise of the calamity polder plan took place in 2005, when the Dutch Parliament adopted a motion demanding the transfer of the budget for calamity polders to the Room for the River programme. Kampen: river bypass as vehicle for urban planning These conflicts about plans for calamity polders, imposed on society in a top-down way, coincided with the planning of Room for the River projects, characterised by narratives of participatory planning and ‘governance’. It was expected that urban areas would show a larger support base for change in this way (van Drimmelen and van Buuren 2004). However, belying the dream of flood-safe urban development, the new interconnectedness of water and land-use planning generated conflicts of its own. Developments around the Kampen bypass illustrate how water conflict is often not only about water, but a convenient flashpoint for other contentious 9780367371753_C003.indd 78 09-04-2021 09:16:08 Room for the river, no room for conflict 79 issues. Although Room for the River was declared an administrative success (ten Heuvelhof et al. 2007; Rijke et al. 2013), several of its 34 projects were confronted with fierce opposition. Along the river IJssel, branch of the Rhine, a set of river interventions had to be realised to loosen the river’s bottleneck in urban areas by creating ‘opportunities for new urban functions and landscapes.’These interventions were presented as ‘a string of pearls’, one of which is the IJssel delta. The IJssel delta, in which Kampen is situated, spans an area of approximately 162 km2. It has a population of about 60,000. The region is vulnerable to flooding; Kampen is in fact flood-prone from two sides, Lake IJsselmeer and the river IJssel. Kampen’s built environment, which runs up into the floodplain, is considered a bottleneck for future river discharge (see Warner and van Buuren 2011). In 1995, Kampen narrowly escaped being flooded.Among alternatives to increase river capacity inventoried at the national level in 2001, a flood relief channel (bypass) seemed the most effective and cheapest alternative.Widening the river and lowering the floodplain level by 1–1.5m as a short-term measure, and a bypass as a long-term strategy to save the Kampen bottleneck from larger influx in the future, became the preferred solution. Laid down in a 2003 parliamentary decision, a spatial reservation was to be made there as a ‘climate buffer’, banning future development. The Kampen bypass will be the last Room for the River project to be finalised, probably by 2025, with costs now estimated at a staggering 426 million Euros. Kampen’s municipal administration felt it was carrying the costs of the bypass while missing out on the benefits, as the bypass will also protect many non-urban citizens. The bypass is projected in an area with many planned developments, including a motorway, a railway, housing, a river bypass, and nature. The provincial authorities sought ways to combine the bypass with urban expansion, upgrading the capacity of two motorways and a new railway to connect the north-east with the western conurbation, plus a new station. There were also plans for development of 300 hectares of ‘new nature’,13 for improving the regional agrarian structure and for strengthening infrastructure for tourism and recreation. In early 2005, the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning mandated Overijssel Province to develop an integrated ‘regional development plan’, including the bypass. After pro-project parties won the 2006 local elections, Kampen’s municipal authority joined the project enthusiastically. A regional development plan with so many land-use functions has to meet several opposing interests, which will obviously lead to conflict. A participatory process was started for organising a smoothly running project. In 2006, 100 participants from 32 organisations were involved in a massive consultation on the project. In an intensive process, five scenarios were developed by a small intergovernmental team (Van Buuren and Warner 2014). When farmers in Kamperveen complained about the plans, they were involved in the development of a new alternative. The inhabitants of the hamlet of Noordeinde in the neighbouring province of Gelderland, who feared being washed away in a flood event, were promised that the bypass would not cross their territory. The project manager sought to make the bypass inevitable by already starting to buy farmland from farmers known to be willing to sell, and 9780367371753_C003.indd 79 09-04-2021 09:16:08 80 Dik Roth et al. through upfront investments in an infrastructural ‘node’ (Grijzen 2010): the bypass would cross the railway line twice, necessitating a tunnel and a flyover. A 30 million Euro ‘node’ would enable a smooth crossing. Various trajectories and formats for the bypass were mooted, including an ‘open’ and a ‘closed’ model. An open, navigable bypass would be more dynamic, but would also require higher dikes and raise groundwater levels. It was therefore opposed by the regional water management board (Groot-Salland) and farmers in the region. In the end, a closed bypass was chosen. Among several conflicts, the conflict between flood security, nature and landscape values, agrarian interests and infrastructure was presented as solvable and conveniently backgrounded the ‘growth coalition’, a coalition of local and provincial governments, underlying the planning. The provincial authorities of Overijssel and the city of Kampen eyed the area for urban development and recreational navigation, which they felt could attract well-to-do residents. They were driven, among others, by the prospect of paying for the bypass from the rise in land value. Put simply, local authorities see growth as prestigious.The local and provincial governments negated the interests of those living in the area of natural beauty south of Kampen, where dairy farmers also operate. A municipal hearing in 2010 sought to put an end to the confusion. But while the formation of a ‘project core group’ in 2010 brought more clarity to the process, for those who would be affected by the plans, it also allowed opposition to harden (Grijzen 2010). An anti-growth coalition had formed early on, an unusual alliance consisting of nature conservationists, farmers, religious conservatives, and old-school socialists. Landscape conservationists resisted urban expansion across Zwartendijk, a village famous for its national cultural heritage and built in 1302 to save the country from the Zuiderzee floods.14 Zwartendijk also delimits the built-up area of Kampen town to the South. Their vehicle, the Werkgroep Zwartendijk (Working Group Zwartendijk), worried that dikes protecting the bypass would become so-called climate dikes. Climate dikes are higher and broader levees than what current necessity dictates, with a view to meeting future extremes, while also permitting urban development on top of them. They therefore opposed both the dike and the urban development. Lower levels of urban growth would obviate the need for building across the Zwartendijk barrier. Werkgroep Zwartendijk mobilised knowledge, including demographic projections that foresee a population slump in the region from the 2010s. They showed that the development plans were based on unrealistic projections that assume that housing supply generates demand. While scientific demographic prognoses predicted a slump, municipal authorities preferred to go with a privately developed demographic model, Primos, that also included ‘municipal ambitions’ in the (usually bullish) prognoses. The opposition, moreover, gained momentum when it transpired that the fifth alternative developed by an inter-governmental team may make the region safer except for Kampen. With the town embanked on all sides, water would not drain to the South but might rise fast to up to 2.7 metres, and thus claim many more 9780367371753_C003.indd 80 09-04-2021 09:16:08 Room for the river, no room for conflict 81 casualties after a dike break. Werkgroep Zwartendijk was informed about this scenario which was found in a report cited in the Environmental Impact Analysis (HKV 2005): 540 lives and 1.4 billion Euros could be lost, as against 100 fatalities and 400 million in losses without it (Sligter 2009). This boosted Werkgroep Zwartendijk’s opposition to the bypass, even allowing for a different urban expansion location. Displacing the ‘string of pearls’ as the central image, the Werkgroep Zwartendijk ran with the ‘bathtub’ moniker, coined by an affected local farmer, to support his conservation platform. Since the drafting of the report, the plans have changed substantially and their impact has been revised accordingly—the ‘bathtub’ label, however, stuck and changed the narration and dynamics of the conflict. The safety discourse boomeranged (van Buuren and Warner 2014), making the bypass difficult to accept (Figure 3.2). Another victory was won in an administrative lawsuit filed by Werkgroep Zwartendijk, in cooperation with, among others, another conservationist association (Vereniging Voor Natuurstudie en Bescherming IJsseldelta). The Council of State (Raad van State, the highest Dutch administrative court) quashed plans for new development in February 2015: the Council failed to see a pressing need for 1,300 luxury properties with 1,100 mooring places, dismissing the private report on development potential (Satink 2015). It also ruled that the bypass should not be made fully Kampen as a bathtub (c/o Werkgroep Zwartendijk). Source: Werkgroep Zwartendijk. http://www.zwartendijk.nl/bestanden/flyer.pdf (accessed 11 December 2018) FIGURE 3.2 9780367371753_C003.indd 81 09-04-2021 09:16:08 82 Dik Roth et al. navigable and claimed that it clashed with European ‘Natura 2000’ (nature conservation) regulations by disturbing bird habitats. Meanwhile, the political climate for urban expansion had changed. In 2016, the province of Overijssel and 10 municipalities including Kampen pledged not to build more than the projected housing development (RT Oost 2016). The speculative 40 million Euros to be made from housing projects according to 2007 projections had turned into a 43 million Euro loss by 2016.15 Kampen then looked into alternatives for a ‘bypass for the bypass’ that would still enable navigation. Tourism and economic development remain valuable to Kampen, but so are the birds and the landscape to conservationists. Any real alternatives? Contested plans for a river bypass in Varik-Heesselt Since 2010, when the Delta programme was started, the Delta commissioner worked in a multi-level governance setting on measures to further reduce flood risk beyond 2015, with a view to managing future climate extremes. The search for so-called promising river projects was delegated to regional governments, in this case the Gelderland Province. The bypass in Varik and Heesselt, the two wards of the municipality of Neerijnen along the river Waal, was considered ‘promising’ because of an estimated lowering of the peak discharge level by up to 50 cm. When some citizens discovered an outline of the plan on a local website, they organised themselves into a citizens’ action group called ‘Waalzinnig’ (‘Rhinediculous’).16 They questioned the need for the bypass and the grounds for using the 18,000 m3/s norm for the river Rhine, which was not yet required by law. They specifically questioned whether this discharge level could even enter the Netherlands at all, in view of the impact of German flood policy.17 Let’s consider the Delta Commissioner’s and the Minister of Water Management’s respective replies as disseminated through the news media. In a media interview, the Delta commissioner admitted that nowadays expropriation is difficult: [I have] no overriding authority, but people know that I will make the final proposal and I can organise it in such a way in The Hague [seat of government] that it [the bypass] will likely be accepted [as a Delta decision]. Sounds cool, huh? … Of course, there are opponents. A number of houses will need to go, but that would also be the case for dike reinforcement. (NRC 2014) The Delta commissioner has the institutional means to act. ‘There is an act, the Delta Act, there is a programme, the Delta Programme. There is money [the Delta Fund], we are taken seriously. Whatever we invent, can be implemented’ (NRC 2014). The former Minister of Water Management had a message for the citizens of Varik and Heesselt. She claimed to have learned from earlier experiences that once citizens understand why the bypass is planned and what its private consequences are, support will increase: ‘Citizens will need to trust the government in compensating the costs 9780367371753_C003.indd 82 09-04-2021 09:16:08 Room for the river, no room for conflict 83 for eventually moving out. But we will take the measures to increase the safety of four million citizens in the area’ (De Gelderlander 2014). The minister’s reaction is a follow-up of the government mantra that citizens will be safe behind the dikes. At the end of 2013, the province and the municipality invited 22 citizens to become members of a ‘sounding board group’,18 among other farmers and fruit growers holding land in the projected bypass area. According to the provincial project manager, they could discuss the plans and express their concerns, so their advice could be used in decision-making.19 In the sounding board group, proponents and opponents of the bypass were represented. During the process, most proponents changed position because of the safety issue: In case of a dike breach, the polder in which the villages Varik and Heesselt are situated, will rapidly fill up with water viz. the bathtub effect; consequently, residents won’t have time to evacuate. The members worked on three bypass scenarios. In the first one, the ‘compact scenario’, some 12 houses would have to disappear to make space for a deep and narrow (300 metre) bypass, also known as the ‘blue bypass’. Once in four years, on an average, water would flow through the bypass. In this area, there would be no room for housing and agriculture, but recreation and nature conservation could be developed. In the second, the ‘space scenario’, the width of the bypass would be narrow, in order to spare as many houses as possible. Later, the bypass could be widened up to some 800 metres. Once every 15 to 25 years, water would flow through the bypass. There are opportunities for housing (on mounds), sustainable agriculture, recreation and nature conservation development.The third, ‘functional’ scenario, for which some 30 houses would have to be removed, is a straight bypass with dikes and an inlet for giving space to the water. Once in four years, water would flow through the bypass. In the area, agriculture would be possible, but fruit trees would not survive.20 As a member of the sounding board, the chair of the resident group Waalzinnig criticised the three scenarios: In fact, these three scenarios are not meant to be real alternatives … The design is different, but the project remains the same … From a technical perspective, the first scenario … is not possible. If … implemented, the water level in the Waal will decrease significantly, at the cost of shipping. The third alternative cannot function even as a channel.21 In June 2014, the ‘promising’ bypass project was included in the ‘final preferred strategy’ of the Delta programme for the Rivers. The Gelderland provincial council’s white paper on regional development, Waalweelde West, was the forerunner in the list of proposed flood risk measures in this region. The village council opposed the bypass but had not been taken into account in provincial decision-making. Instigated by the village council, the responsible municipal executive councillor wrote a letter to the provincial delegate to express his concern. At the same time, the municipality was of the opinion that the planning process should continue (Brabants Dagblad 2014). In the fall of 2014, Waalzinnig commissioned Wageningen University’s Science Shop22 to critically review the legitimation of the 18,000 m3/s safety norm.23 As already 9780367371753_C003.indd 83 09-04-2021 09:16:08 84 Dik Roth et al. mentioned, among experts, the region is known as a ‘bathtub’ due to its deep polders and high dikes. Anticipating imminent flooding in 1995, 250,000 inhabitants were evacuated. Since then, dikes have been reinforced and groynes24 and other obstacles in river and flood plains removed. But according to the provincial delegate, both new dike reinforcements and a bypass are probably needed to guarantee the safety of the inhabitants. The citizens of Varik and Heesselt fear that they will be worse off: now it would take days to fill the bathtub with water, so inhabitants would have sufficient time to evacuate.With the bypass,Varik and Heesselt will be an island surrounded by dikes. It is feared that in a flood emergency, the bathtub’ created between the river dikes and the new dikes along the bypass could rapidly fill up with water (DG 2016a). The study conducted by the Wageningen Science Shop shows that first, there is no decisive scientific proof that the design discharge of 18,000 m3/s into the river Rhine in 2100 is realistic. Even with a much smaller water volume, parts of Germany will be flooded because the dikes are not dimensioned for such a water volume (see During, Pleijte and Vreke 2016). So, the water will not reach the Netherlands in the first instance. Second, the assumptions, on which the technical arguments underlying the design standard are based, are not made explicit and hence cannot be criticised. With respect to the norms and measures in the field of flood risk management, there is no coordination with Germany. Those who are affected do not play any role in decision-making.The chair of Waalzinnig explained: We asked Wageningen Science Shop whether it is able to scientifically underpin the legitimation of the plan for a bypass.We run a risk because the research must be independent, and outcomes might disappoint us. But we must not shirk from that risk … and we are of the opinion that if the bypass is the solution, we should bow to it. (DG 2016b) While the local media picked up the story, the national media did not pay attention to the issue, nor did the national government react to the criticism expressed, among others, in the Wageningen Science Shop report. The provincial delegate did: It is correct that we cannot prove that it [18,000 m3/s] might happen. But inversely, others cannot prove that it won’t happen. Our figures are based on assumptions which have not fallen out of the clear blue sky.The forecast will be sounder in the near future.The threat will not only come from Germany.Today, heavy rains are more common … We cannot wait to take a decision until the moment we are unsafe. We are absolutely safe now, but not in the medium to long-term. Accordingly, we have to decide in late 2017 or early 2018. (DG 2016a) From a river hydrological point of view, this is a foolish plan based on a tunnel vision, creating a risky ‘bathtub’ situation for the villages concerned, and contributing little to nothing to regional development. In February 2018, the steering 9780367371753_C003.indd 84 09-04-2021 09:16:08 Room for the river, no room for conflict 85 committee advised negatively on the bypass. Despite that, the province persevered in its support for the plans. In 2016, discussions about the bypass seemed to have totally stagnated, and a decision in favour of the bypass seemed likely. Waalzinnig had not been able to convince the more powerful governmental-administrative proponents. The Wageningen Science Shop report had caused some stir but did not become a game-changer. Members of the ‘sounding board group’ had their hands tied by the group’s narrowly defined role (discussing and co-designing the alternative bypass options). In 2017, nonetheless, the situation changed radically.The turning point was the mobilisation and active engagement of several independent critical experts: picking up on the critical Wageningen Science Shop report and adding their own incisive criticism to the plans. They started working out alternative combinations of diking and interventions in the flood plains of the river. After several attempts to marginalise and delegitimise such critical alternative initiatives, critics could no longer be silenced. As a result, opinions changed and the plan was finally voted down in the national parliament in June 2018. Analysing conflicts about spatial flood risk management policies: the consensus bias This section will briefly compare the three interventions discussed above, noting similarities and differences with regard to the nature of the conflicts, legitimising narratives that play(ed) a major role, the constellation of competing positions, motives and interests that have driven them, and the degree to which the existence of conflicting views was allowed into the process or suppressed. All three conflicts about river interventions (Ooijpolder, Kampen and VarikHeesselt) can be understood as arising from the fact that spatial flood risk management measures require land-use interventions in a densely populated country. Previously, infrastructural measures triggered conflicts about the impact of dike reinforcements on houses and landscapes adjacent to the dike. The shift towards spatial interventions has, however, a much wider impact on the river landscape, its inhabitants and other users. The leading narrative justifying such interventions is that dikes alone can no longer provide sufficient protection and cannot be endlessly enhanced. The climate change argument has strengthened this narrative since the mid-1990s (see Vink et al. 2013). The main institutional producer of this waterclimate-space narrative is the national water agency, the Rijkswaterstaat, backed by a wide variety of research institutes and consultancy firms whose livelihood is tied to floods. At the turn of the century, government communication on water safety was popularised, making use of slogans like ‘living with water’ and ‘working together with water’ (see e.g. Deltacommissie 2008). Such narrative framings of ‘the problem’ and, by extension, its solution, are crucial in gaining public acceptance of and support for interventions; together they stress the urgency of the environmental challenge, the incontestable character of the analysis, and the appropriateness of the solution—though overstating it can easily backfire (van Buuren and Warner 2014). Thus, narrative framings are deployed to 9780367371753_C003.indd 85 09-04-2021 09:16:08 86 Dik Roth et al. justify the intervention and, at the same time, legitimise the role of the government agency and the funding it receives. This narrative framing continued after a new institution, the Delta Commission, was established. Since then, narrative framing has been directed at various publics. Targeting the lower-level authorities, the need for jointly working on water is emphasised by delegating responsibilities and tasks, aimed at raising awareness among citizens about the long-term threat central in the communication strategy, based on climate scenarios from the Dutch meteorological institute. As a consequence of this divergence, alliances between lower-level governments and citizens were unlikely—as was the case in both the Ooijpolder and Kampen interventions. A key similarity in the three cases concerns the important role of expert claims and the attempts by critics to mobilise counter-expertise to delegitimise the government narratives underpinning the relevance, urgency, efficiency, and benefits of interventions. While citizens mobilising counter-expertise played a crucial role in the Ooijpolder and Kampen interventions from the beginning of the project, this was initially not the case in the Varik-Heesselt intervention. Due to the multilevel governance setting and depoliticisation of the policy process, citizens in VarikHeesselt had no formal role in decision-making. Instead, citizens were considered as a ‘support base’. In the final stage of the project, however, various experts fiercely criticised the underpinnings of the plan in a way that made it impossible for the proponents to sideline the criticism. They mobilised residents and formed a broad coalition, including nature conservation organisations and experts from universities. Another similarity in the three cases is the emergence of other issues or ‘development agendas’, included in plans to get support of lower-level governments or the public. In the Ooijpolder and Kampen interventions, the narrative of ‘room for the river’ also means ‘room for nature conservation and recreation’ (Ooijpolder), enabling ‘integrated regional development’ (Kampen) and ‘co-linking opportunities’ (Varik-Heesselt). This did not resonate well with inhabitants and landscape conservationists, the spoilsports who failed to acknowledge development opportunities. There are also differences between the three river interventions (Ooijpolder, Kampen and Varik-Heesselt). First, there are differences between the styles of planning of the interventions discussed above. In the Ooijpolder intervention, this style was unmistakeably top-down and hierarchical. The responsible government agency, the Rijkswaterstaat, did not see a need for involving citizens at an early stage, saw stakeholders as obstacles, and viewed communication with stakeholders as a one-way propaganda effort to make critics change their minds. In the end, the war was won by the well-networked Hoogwaterplatform, which cleverly decided to seek alliances and political support against calamity polders at all levels and even across national borders, rather than to engage in discussions with the Rijkswaterstaat. They meanwhile mobilised authoritative expertise to undercut the technical claims underpinning the necessity for the proposed water storage plan. By contrast, the Kampen bypass, spearheaded by local authorities, tried a very inclusive and elaborate participatory process, involving a variety of local groups. However, this involvement was set as the exercise of solving a conflict over space 9780367371753_C003.indd 86 09-04-2021 09:16:08 Room for the river, no room for conflict 87 faced with multiple development claims. The Working Group Zwartendijk, in collaboration with a conservationist association disputing the need and desirability of this development, was blindsided. They too uncovered that the axioms buttressing the intervention, of both flood safety and regional growth, were based on unrealistic scenarios. They managed to change the discourse and to win an administrative lawsuit concerned with curtailing developmental ambitions. Their anti-growth activism swaying the political tide was also helped in no small measure by the economic crisis forcing authorities to revise and downscale their plans. Finally, the Varik-Heesselt bypass shows a strictly hierarchical government style, based on depoliticised flood risk policy in which citizens do not have any influence. Citizen involvement was particularly directed at legitimising the plan for a bypass and giving inputs for its design, but stopped short at the question about its functionality, necessity and availability of real alternatives. Rather than including citizen values, the lower-level authorities marginalised the citizens’ critical comments. The role of the Delta Commissioner was key: he either invoked his authority at crucial moments during the planning process or was relatively invisible, avoiding direct contact with citizens. Here, too, citizens called on science and counter-expertise to criticise the assumed need for a bypass in their backyard. In all the cases, the critical expertise mobilised was not publicly available to citizens and sometimes even intentionally obscured.Technical consultants’ scenarios casting doubt on the safety impact of the river interventions were ‘buried’ in public reports and, in the Ooijpolder case, even initially denied. The consultants involved were in no mood to draw public attention to themselves, as that may disqualify them from obtaining future assignments. In the Varik case, the Wageningen Science Shop even met with initial university-imposed restrictions on publishing its critical study on the rationality of the safety assumptions. While the Wageningen Science Shop is still predicated on serving civil society, the university has increasingly become a ‘concern’, relying on paid public and private assignments. The aura of consensual decision-making, buttressed by economic interdependence, was not to be broken by enterprising critics claiming ‘voice’ in the policy arena. However, as evidenced by the parlimentary decision in 2018 not to implement the bypass plan, this strategy has clearly backfired. Conclusion The standard representation of latent or open water conflict by government agencies in the Netherlands is to deny such conflict. Despite well-intentioned decentralisation and participation efforts, the Netherlands water sector remains beholden to a technical discourse, bypassing debates over values, and relegating opponents to a powerless ‘sounding-board’ council. The attempt to include opponents was rarely pursued. Two out of three river interventions discussed here, Varik-Heesselt and Ooijpolder, were conducted in a top-down manner, underpinned by specific flood risk management policy. In the same interventions, top-down decision-making was justified by legitimising narratives characterised by highly paternalistic language. 9780367371753_C003.indd 87 09-04-2021 09:16:08 88 Dik Roth et al. The third river intervention, Kampen, a regional alternative to the bypass, was much more inclusive, but excluded alternatives based on values different than growth. In each case, local stakeholders feared the river intervention would create ‘bathtubs’ or otherwise reduce rather than enhance their safety. The ‘bathtub’ proved a powerful image in the narrative of the opposition, iconic for these conflicts that can tip the discursive balance. In each case, there was a lack of a debate on values. Opponents discovered semi-hidden information and access to ‘facts’, that is, expertise undermining the interventions’ guiding assumptions. Once outside the circle of water professionals, this expertise became ammunition in the ‘war’ against river interventions. As Varik-Heesselt is not yet at the final decision-making stage, there is still some scope for avoiding the frustrations experienced in the Ooijpolder and Kampen cases, confronting local worries head-on. The responses of the Delta Commissioner and the minister responsible, however, neither foreground the possibility of inclusive narratives nor betray a change of attitude in dealing with concerned citizens. The decision-making culture basically remains top-down and technocratic. All three Dutch river interventions discussed here, whether top-down or more participatory, were conflict-averse. Conflicts are elided from the process, hidden from view and covered by narratives of consensus. It is no coincidence that the Dutch selfimage of inclusive consensus-seeking, ‘poldering’, tends to take the political out of decision-making. Safety from floods is presented as so important that political quibbles should give way to decisiveness from the top down. As we have shown in this chapter, flood risk management, including river interventions like bypasses, is inherently about struggles over space between various, often diverging, interests, varying from public interest of flood safety (national and regional government), economic interest (the infrastructure and housing lobby) to private interest (citizens) and nature conservation interest (environmental organisations). Both flood risk management and land-use planning in the Netherlands are cloaked in technical rationality and therefore operate as an ‘anti-politics machine’ (Ferguson 1990; De Jong and Duineveld 2013). Notes 1 This means that river dikes were dimensioned for a once in 1,250 years flood probability, assuming that the river system should be able to cope with a (maximum) discharge of 16,000 m3/sec (cubic meters per second) for the river Rhine. 2 See https://www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl/english/ (accessed on 15 September 2015). 3 The design discharge was increased as a result of the high-water events in the 1990s and, later, in reaction to growing concerns about climate change. 4 Basically, the water volumes that the dikes should be able to contain, given certain risk standards.These are now to be complemented by norms on individual and collective risk exposure. 5 All three interventions have been researched by the authors of this chapter, using a combination of policy research, ethnographic methods, in-depth interviewing of a widely diverse range of respondents, and analysis of policy documents and media coverage. The Ooijpolder case study (situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands) was carried out from 2000 to 2005, the Kampen case study (situated in northern part of the Netherlands) 9780367371753_C003.indd 88 09-04-2021 09:16:08 Room for the river, no room for conflict 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 9780367371753_C003.indd 89 89 was conducted from 2004 to 2015, and the Varik-Heesselt case study (situated in the centre of the Netherlands) was carried out during 2014–18. All authors were engaged in the Ooijpolder case study, while Jeroen Warner studied the Kampen case, and Dik Roth and Madelinde Winnubst studied the Varik-Heesselt case. The plans for this river bypass were shelved in February 2018. After growing local protests and the mobilisation of critical counter-expertise, a steering committee, consisting of representatives of the province, water board, municipality, and ‘sounding board group’ (see below), advised negatively on the bypass plan. A final (national) government decision on the issue is expected in the course of 2018. Until the recent past (and even nowadays in some places), inhabitants of the riverine landscapes were better prepared: no expensive and vulnerable carpeting on the ground floor, hooks in the walls to lift furniture whenever needed etc. A polder is a flat and low-lying area surrounded by dikes and reclaimed from sea, floodplains or coastal marshes. The water level in the polder is controlled by pumping devices (originally windmill-powered). A ‘calamity polder’ is a polder located upstream of areas to be protected along the river, designated for temporary water storage during extreme discharges. The term ‘polder’ is also used as a verb, as ‘poldering’, a tradition of inclusive consensus-seeking in negotiations, with which the struggle against the water is often associated. Key issue was the assumption that a design discharge of 18,000 m3/sec or even higher could enter the Netherlands through the river Rhine, justifying the search for additional measures to deal with the ‘residual risk’. Interview with H.B.A.M. Sanders, Chairman of the Hoogwaterplatform (Kekerdom, 7 June 2005). Interview with Marieke Aarden, De Volkskrant, 27 December 2003. As the latter study was deemed too critical (and therefore endangered the plans) it ‘disappeared’ for several months. After its existence became known to the Hoogwaterplatform, the group had to invoke the Government Information Act to force the government to make it available. Since the 1990s, the regional development focus has increasingly extended to ‘nature development’: in contrast to conservation, natural values are designed and engineered into the river landscape in an attempt to ‘rewild’ the Netherlands. The Zuiderzee was an open and dangerous water body until it was dammed in the early 20th century. It is now known as IJsselmeer (Lake IJssel). http://www.deltaprofessionals.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Bypass-IJsseldeltapresentatie-Hein-Pijnappel.pdf (accessed on 19 June 2018). Waalzinnig is a pun on Dutch ‘waanzinnig’ (ridiculous); as the river Waal is a branch of the river Rhine, ‘Rhinediculous’ comes closest to its meaning. Interview with chair and member of citizens’ group Waalzinnig, 28 April 2014. A ‘sounding board group’ (klankbordgroep) is a consultation body, involving stakeholders and experts with no mandate, whose views will be ‘taken into account’. Interview with provincial project manager, Arnhem, 6 January 2016. Leaflet ‘“Bypass Varik-Heesselt”, a pre-exploration of the bypass near Varik-Heesselt: jointly running ahead for a decision for more room for the river’, 2014. Interview with chair and member of citizen group Waalzinnig, 28 April 2014. ‘Science Shops are small entities that carry out scientific research in a wide range of disciplines—usually free of charge and on behalf of citizens and local civil society … A Science Shop provides independent, participatory research support in response to concerns experienced by civil society’ (http://www.livingknowledge.org/science-shops/ about-science-shops/, accessed on 26 October 2018). 09-04-2021 09:16:08 90 Dik Roth et al. 23 The present authors were not part of the research team responding to this request, but two authors (Roth and Winnubst) were members of the supervisory team of the study. 24 Dam-like structures in the river, constructed perpendicular to the riverbank, to prevent erosion and check water flows. References Aarden, M. 2003. ‘Laat de Ooijpolder niet verzuipen’, De Volkskrant, 27 December 2003. Abma, T. 1999. ‘Telling Tales: On Narrative and Evaluation’, Advances in Program Evaluation, 6. Arce, A. and N. Long. 2000. Anthropology, Development and Modernities. London: Routledge. Boezeman, D., M. Vink and P. Leroy. 2013. ‘The Dutch Delta Committee as a Boundary Organization’, Environmental Science and Policy, 27: 162–171. Brabants Dagblad. 2014. ‘Bypass near Varik Heesselt Remains Promising’, Brabants Dagblad, 4 June 2014. Cleaver, F. 1999. ‘Paradoxes of Participation: Questioning Participatory Approaches to Development’, Journal of International Development, 11: 597–612. Commissie Noodoverloopgebieden. 2002. Gecontroleerd Overstromen. Advies van de Commissie Noodoverloopgebieden. The Hague: Projectsecretariaat Commissie Noodoverloopgebieden. Deltacommissie. 2008. Working Together with Water. A Living Land Builds for its Future. Findings of the Deltacommissie 2008, http://www.deltacommissie.com/doc/deltareport_full.pdf (accessed 26 October 2018). De Jong, H. and M. Duineveld. 2013. De ruimtelijke ordening als anti-politics-machine. Ruimtevolk. https://ruimtevolk.nl/2013/02/06/de-ruimtelijke-ordening-als-anti-politics-machine/(accessed 26 October 2010). De Gelderlander (DG). 2014. ‘100 Per Cent Safety is Impossible’, De Gelderlander, 15 April 2014. DG 2016a. ‘Higher Dike is Already Needed’, De Gelderlander, 14 June 2016. DG. 2016b. ‘The Little Bathtub of Varik-Heesselt’, De Gelderlander, 4 June 2016. During, R., M. Pleijte and J. Vreke. 2016. Legitimatie van de nevengeul voor de Waal langs Varik; Constructies van risico’s uit onzekerheden die redenen geven voor voorzorg. Achtergrondrapport, rapport 324 deel b, juni 2016. Wageningen UR: Wageningen. Enserink, B. 2004. ‘Thinking the Unthinkable – The End of the Dutch River Dike System? Exploring New Safety Concept for the River Management’, Journal of Risk Research, 7(7–8): 745–757. Ferguson, J. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grijzen, J. 2010. Outsourcing Planning:What do Consultants do in Regional Spatial Planning in the Netherlands. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Amsterdam. Harriss, J. 2002. Depoliticizing Development:The World Bank and Social Capital. London: Anthem Press. HKV Lijn in Water. 2005. Aandachtspunten Bypass Kampen. A report commissioned by Groot Salland Water Board, HKV, Pr1075.10, November 2005, HKV Lijn in Water, Delft. Kaplan, T.J. 1993. ‘Reading Policy Narratives: Beginning, Middles, and Ends’, in Fischer, F. and J. Forester (eds). The Argumentative Turn in Analysis and Planning, pp. 167–185. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, Programme Directorate Room for the River. 2012a. Room for the River. Safety for Four Million People in the Dutch Delta, http:// www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl/meta-navigatie/english/publications/(accessed 8 April 2014). 9780367371753_C003.indd 90 09-04-2021 09:16:08 Room for the river, no room for conflict 91 Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, Programme Directorate Room for the River. 2012b. Making Room for the Dutch Approach. Corporate Brochure Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management, http://www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl/media/82838/ factsheet making room for the Dutch approach.pdf. (accessed 26 October 2018). Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, Programme Directorate Room for the River. 2012c. Making Room for Governance, http://www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl/ media/82841/factsheet making room for governance.pdf (accessed 26 October 2018). Mouffe, C. 2005a. On the Political. Routledge: London. Mouffe, C. 2005b. The Return of the Political. London:Verso. Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. 2004. Dutch Dikes and Risk Hikes: A Thematic Policy Evaluation of Risks of Flooding in the Netherlands. Extended Summary. National Institute for Public Health and the Environment: Bilthoven, The Netherlands. Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. 2010. Correction Wording Flood Risks for the Netherlands in IPCC Report, http://www.pbl.nl/en/dossiers/Climatechange/content/correction-wording-flood-risks (accessed 26 October 2018). NRC. 2014. ‘That is Quite Something, a River in Your Village’, NRC, 30 August 2014. Pröpper, I. and D. Steenbeek. 1999. De aanpak van interactief beleid: Elke situatie is anders. Bussum: Coutinho. Rijke, J., S. van Herk, C. Zevenbergen, and R. Ashley. 2013. ‘Room for the River: Delivering Integrated River Basin Management in the Netherlands’, International Journal of River Basin Management, 10(4): 369–382. Roth, D. and J.Warner. 2007. ‘Flood risk, Uncertainty and Changing River Protection Policy in the Netherlands: The Case of “Calamity Polders”’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 98(4): 519–525. Roth, D. and J. Warner. 2009. ‘Rural Solutions for Threats to Urban Areas: The Contest over Calamity Polders’, Built Environment, 35(4): 545–562. RT Oost. 2016. ‘A Place for a Maximum of 600 Houses in Plan Reeve near Kampen’, RT Oost, 15 December 2016. Satink, M.. 2015. ‘De IJsselstad, de hoogwatergeul en het gewraakte dorp’, Reformatorisch Dagblad, 12 February 2015. Shore, C., S. Wright and D. Però (eds). 2011. Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power. New York: Berghahn Books. Sligter, A. 2009. ‘Bypass Construction at Kampen Dangerous’, De Volkskrant, 29 March 2009. Te Linde, A.H., J.C.J.H. Aerts and J.C.J. Kwadijk. 2010. ‘Effectiveness of Flood Management Measures on Peak Discharges in the Rhine Basin under Climate Change’, Journal of Flood Risk Management, 3: 248–269. ten Heuvelhof, E., H. de Bruijn, M. de Wal, M. de Kort, M. vanVliet, M. Noordink, and M. Böhm. 2007. Procesevaluatie Totstandkoming PKB Ruimte voor de Rivier. Utrecht: Berenschot. Toonen, T.A.J., G.S.A. Dijkstra and F. van der Meer. 2006. ‘Modernization and Reform of Dutch Waterboards: Resilience or Change?’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 2(2): 181–201. van Buuren, A. and J. Warner. 2014. ‘From Bypass to Bathtub: Backfiring Policy Labels in Dutch Water Governance’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 32: 1000–1016. van Buuren, A. and J. Warner. 2010. ‘Klimaatverandering en waterveiligheid, tussen ernst en enthousiasme. De discursieve framing van bedreigingen en kansen’, B&M, 37(1): 14–28. van Drimmelen, L. and M. van Buuren. 2004. Ruimte voor de Rivier als cultuurhistorie van de toekomst. Zoektocht naar de aard van een ontwerpopgave. Landschap, 21(1): 55–64, http:// www.landschap.nl/wp-content/uploads/2004-1_55-64.pdf (accessed 26 October 2018). 9780367371753_C003.indd 91 09-04-2021 09:16:08 92 Dik Roth et al. van Heezik, A. 2008. Battle Over the Rivers: Two Hundred Years of River Policy in the Netherlands. Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, The Hague. van Stokkom, H., A. Smits and R. Leuven. 2005. ‘Flood Defense in the Netherlands: A New Era, a New Approach’, Water International, 30: 76–87. Vink, M.J., D. Boezeman, A. Dewulf and C.J.A.M. Termeer. 2013. ‘Changing Climate, Changing Frames: Dutch Water Policy Frame Developments in the Context of a Rise and Fall of Attention to Climate Change’, Environmental Science and Policy, 30: 90–101. Warner, J., J. Edelenbos and A. van Buuren. 2013a. ‘Making Space for the River: Governance Challenges’, in J. Warner, A. van Buuren and J. Edelenbos (eds), Making Space for the River. Governance Experiences with Multifunctional River Flood Management in the US and Europe, pp. 1–13. London: IWA Publishing. Warner, J. and A. van Buuren. 2011. ‘Implementing Room for the River: Narratives of Success and Failure in Kampen, the Netherlands’, International Review of Administrative Sciences, 77(4): 779–801. Warner, J.F., A. van Buuren and J. Edelenbos (eds). 2013b. Making Space for the river. Governance experiences with Multifunctional River Flood Management in the US and Europe. London: IWA Publishing. Wiering, M.A. and B.J.M. Arts. 2006. ‘Discursive Shifts in Dutch River Management: “Deep” Institutional Change or Adaptation Strategy?’, Hydrobiologia, 56(5): 327–338. Wiering, M.A. and P.P.J. Driessen. 2001. ‘Beyond the Art of Diking: Interactive Policy on River Management in The Netherlands’, Water Policy, 3: 283–296. Wiering, M. and I. Immink. 2006. ‘When Water Management Meets Spatial Planning: A Policy Arrangements Perspective’, Environment and Planning C, 24: 423–438. Wolsink, M. 2006. ‘River Basin Approach and Integrated Water Management: Governance Pitfalls for the Dutch Space-Water-Adjustment Management Principle’, Geoforum, 37: 473–487. Wolsink, M. 2010.‘Contested Environmental Policy Infrastructure: Socio-Political Acceptance of Renewable Energy, Water, and Waste Facilities’, Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 30: 302–303. 9780367371753_C003.indd 92 09-04-2021 09:16:08 PART II Instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict 9780367371753_P002.indd 93 09-04-2021 09:14:49 9780367371753_P002.indd 94 09-04-2021 09:14:49 4 TOCKS ISLAND AND THE END OF THE BIG DAM ERA IN THE USA Gina Bloodworth Introduction In the arc of American water management, a huge turn of policy, mindset and actions took place in the latter half of the twentieth century. This generational upheaval forced a rethinking on the policy of building dams from an established narrative that building big dams universally promoted economic development, spurred progress, controlled nature, and brought water to the western U.S. desert. Now, as we enter the twenty-first century, large dams, once the dominant scheme of federal scale water management, are no longer seen as the easy solution for all problems related to economic development, water management and regional power generation. This transformation can be traced at the national scale by following changes in both federal dam-building agencies, and the legal framework before and after the landmark environmental legislation of the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). By examining water conflicts over dam-building that occur before, during and after this window of time, we can see fundamental change across the spectrum of governmental interaction with society in several ways. The rise of the American environmental movement during the decade of the 1960s and 1970s, in conjunction with a cluster of very divisive fights over the building of dams in specific cases reveals deeper societal changes taking place, part of which includes the rise of media as a tool in the arsenal of grassroots protests to reframe the narrative surrounding environmental conflicts. Specifically, one fight in the Delaware River Basin over the building of the Tocks Island Dam did more to tarnish the reputation of the previously hegemonic U.S. Army Corps of Engineers than almost any other water conflict, despite the Corps’ many efforts to utilise media to legitimise its agenda and prioritise the interests of this agency over the interests of local residents in the region. This chapter 9780367371753_C004.indd 95 09-04-2021 09:08:58 96 Gina Bloodworth deconstructs the role of newspaper coverage, propaganda and media manipulation by the dominant hegemon, as well as wealthy boosters and disenfranchised stakeholders, all to dominate the narrative surrounding the building of the Tocks Island Dam on the Delaware River and either control or suppress public opinion regarding the project. Interviews, archival research and content analysis within a mixedmethod case study reveal a nuanced, complex unpredictable dynamic between large bureaucracies, special interests and grassroots activists in settling or derailing water conflicts. This particular water project centred on using media to either control or shift the narrative of the project. Media was first used by the Corps to set the narrative regarding this dam project as unstoppable progress, then by boosters to amplify and restructure the narrative as regional economic growth; however, grassroots protesters managed to reframe the narrative as environmental destruction and needless federal spending that would oppress local citizens. The focal point of this case study sits in the backyard of the densely populated East Coast of the U.S. The Delaware River Basin is spread between the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and serves the most heavily industrialised and intensely populated area of the United States; this includes the metropolitan corridor of New York City, Trenton and Philadelphia. For its small size, the Delaware River Basin has a disproportionately large impact as nearly 20 million people obtain all or part of their water supply from the basin. In the upper reaches of the watershed where the river flows southeast, it forms the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York, while in the middle reaches of the watershed, the river divides the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and the river itself flows through a steep narrow valley creating this political border. The topography of the valley is quite rugged relative to the urban areas nearby. At the historic Delaware Water Gap, the valley is a U-shape with Kittatinny Mountain rising 1,100 feet on the New Jersey side of the river. On the Pennsylvania side, a belt of farmland rises gently away from the shore then abruptly changes to the 500-foot bluff that marks the beginning of the Poconos plateau. In this valley, planners envisioned building a dam on the Delaware River, utilising an existing island (Tocks Island) in the middle of the stream as part of the site location. Had the project succeeded, the Tocks Island Dam would have been the eighth largest project the Corps ever attempted to build.1 The plan included damming the river to create a deep thin reservoir, stretching nearly 40 miles in length; this would flood the valley by the building of a dam approximately 160 feet in height. For more than three decades, this dam was the main water management plan for the Delaware River, and the keystone of a comprehensive basin development scheme that included 10 smaller dams to be built along the tributaries. But the Tocks Island Dam alone would flood more land and hold back more water than all 10 of the small dams combined and was the lynchpin for the entire scheme. In 1962, Congressional funds had been authorised, to the preeminent public water works agency—the United States Army Corps of Engineers (hereafter, the Corps) to build the Tocks Island Dam.2 To the surprise of many, nothing went as planned. Rapidly expanding costs, difficulty in purchasing lands within the flood zone, changing laws, lawsuits, injunctions, 9780367371753_C004.indd 96 09-04-2021 09:08:58 Tocks Island and the end 97 and escalating grassroots protests all played a part in the chaos that ensued. As the conflict became more heated, various stakeholders vied to control the narrative, and portray the project as either inevitable progress or needless federal destruction of local culture and natural beauty. Eventually, this dam project became a regional environmental fight of swelling proportions, and the entire project was put on hold by the Corps. By 1975, what had at first seemed like an unstoppable federal force, was re-cast as the Goliath, brought to its knees by a coalition of small and outnumbered protesters fighting like David to slay the bureaucratic giant, whose water project got foisted upon them by decision-makers without names, in offices far away, with no real connection to the lives and interests of the ‘little guy’ on the Delaware River. This image of ‘big government’ versus ‘small but determined protesters’ came about in no small part because of the media war that erupted between protesters and supporters of this massive project.The Tocks Island story is one in a specific cluster of water conflicts, in a unique window of time that marked a turning point in federal water policy—the transition from the previous dam-centric era of federal water projects in America to the more eco-centric era of environmental protection. The previously unquestioned narrative of dams as progress, taming nature and improving the public good, now suddenly had to withstand growing questions and scrutiny as societal values changed. Situated in a unique position in both time and geography, the Tocks Island Dam project on the Delaware River provides a long window of examination before, during and after environmental legislation took hold in the 1970s. Its location, unlike most other water conflicts over dam projects, in a populated area within reach of the densely urbanised Eastern Seaboard, also provided an opportunity for media to become a prominent tool, utilised in different modes, by various stakeholders vying to control the narrative of this project, and thus its ultimate fate. A mixed-method qualitative analysis examines how the Tocks Island Dam project fell apart after three decades of controversy, dissent, coalitions, propaganda wars, legal manoeuvring, lawsuits, and chaos; in this fight, conflicting alliances continually fought to reframe the narrative of the dam project as either inevitable or inept. Using data from 16 interviews of Corps employees, archival and legal records, and three tiers of media coverage (local, regional and national) by more than a dozen newspapers, allowed for triangulating between three different but overlapping directions of research: legal trajectory, media analysis and geography. This research provides a contextual understanding of how the Delaware River became the nexus of conflict between water management plans, changing social values and regional cultural identity, and an illuminated look at how media can be used to shape the narrative of environmental conflicts. Water conflicts can reveal the topographic lines of social and environmental tensions that often lie unseen in a region until a conflict erupts. This intersection between geography, law and media requires crossing disciplinary boundaries to examine data from various formats in new and inventive ways. But the reward is connecting deeper threads of social issues and complex environmental conflicts related to natural resources. A few intrepid geographers have cut a path before this study, but the lack of robust interdisciplinary examination is a more telling trend (see Blomley 2001). This case study argues that proximity to media outlets worked 9780367371753_C004.indd 97 09-04-2021 09:08:58 98 Gina Bloodworth both to coalesce and encourage grassroots protesters on the one side, and to control the narrative on the other side of this complicated war of perception between those who held structural power and those who did not in the Delaware Valley. Background of federal water conflicts For most of the twentieth century in America, two hegemonic technocratic federal agencies, the Corps of Engineers (Corps) and the Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) dominated the narrative regarding water policy. These agencies amassed power, money and technical expertise and were instrumental in promoting, administering and sculpting the agenda of dam building, without resistance. But, by the end of the 1970s, that unchallenged dominance faded. After a series of much-publicised dam-centric water conflicts, each agency suffered major loss of credibility and trust; they were also forced to incorporate transparency, public input and environmental considerations in the decision-making process. At the early stages of this arc, dam-centric water conflicts in the Colorado River (e.g. Glen Canyon Dam) in the West, as well as the Tennessee River (Tellico Dam) in the East resulted in dams being built, but under increasingly tense political and environmental contention/protest3 (Palmer 1986). At the other end of the policy arc we see dam-centric water conflicts that resulted in dams not being built on the Delaware River (Tocks Island Dam) in the East and the Verde River (Orme Dam) in the West.4 While each of these cases has their own stories with different alliances, and tools of resistance, a pattern clearly emerges on the side of the federal government. Large technocratic agencies had to reform and readjust in response to rapidly changing social, environmental and societal changes; and in so doing, these individual water conflicts resulted in the aggregate outcome of destabilising the federal dam-building agenda that had gone unquestioned for generations. Esprit de Corps In order to understand the enormity of structural power that the Corps wielded, one must examine the breadth and strength of its bureaucratic rise. The origins for the controversy over the Tocks Island Dam project can be seen in the policies, culture and water management objectives from preceding decades, and how those policies failed to reflect societal changes during the same time period. Some entrenched decision-making styles and cultural qualities of the Corps included a proclivity to seek solutions for difficult choices through elaborate technical analyses and planning processes, and an organisational identity as the tightly controlled, even militant ‘can do’ agency of public works in water management. These and other operating styles were set down as fundamental operating principles at the Corps from its inception. The early Corps leadership borrowed heavily from French training and favoured a planned economy where the army-guided construction and science was the methodical tool of a centralised government (Shallat 1994: 2). This philosophy infused into the Corps deeply and its self-image as an elite cadre of scientific and 9780367371753_C004.indd 98 09-04-2021 09:08:58 Tocks Island and the end 99 government planners echoed far into the twentieth century, and also emboldened the Corps with values such as a flair for monumental construction that empowered the nation-state.5 These dominant cultural qualities made change within the bureaucracy difficult, irrespective of the direction of desired change. Its original mandate in the 1790s revolved around building fortification, but quickly expanded into the realm of water management with the landmark Gallatin report, in 1808, that stressed the need for national roads and improved waterways as part of its assessment for ensuring cohesion of the young United States—both of which were delegated to the Corps, although the improvements to waterways became its signature duty (USACE 2003). By 1824, this included a survey of all roads and canals of national importance and established the Corps’ role in the improvement and maintenance of inland waterways (Cech 2010: 222–232). The Corps secured authority to regulate construction activities along navigable rivers in the 1899 Rivers and Harbors Act (1899). And, by WWII, Congress again expanded the Corps’ activities to include improving levees and channels along rivers, as well as draining swamps and wetlands. There weren’t many places left, or many water tasks that didn’t fall under the purview of the Corps, and its range of activities is breath taking: the Corps dams rivers, straightens rivers, deepens rivers, ripraps rivers, builds bridges across rivers, builds locks and dams in rivers, builds hatcheries, breakwaters and piers along rivers and beaches (Reisner 1986). In fact, the Corps employed so many people pursuing so many divergent types of work that, by 1962, its various activities would sometimes cancel each other out. For instance, the Corps dams control flooding while its stream-channelization and wetlands drainage programmes cause floods. The cascading impacts of such massive reworking of natural systems cannot be ignored. By draining wetlands so they may then become cultivated fields, the Corps essentially subsidises intensive agriculture which increases soil erosion that then pours sediments into the nation’s rivers, which the Corps then must dredge more frequently than before. With a mere 215 military engineers in the highest ranks of leadership, the Corps required more than 40,000 civilian employees for these various projects across the nation by the mid-1950s. In summary, by 1962, the Corps dominated water politics in the East; it controlled the fate of most navigable waterways and wetlands, having grown in stature as legislation continually expanded its mission and responsibilities. At the height of its power, the Corps had an internal culture derived from elite sensibilities, militant professionalism, centralised planning, and a tradition of monumental projects. And in 1962, the focus of its bureaucratic weight, power and ingenuity was aimed at building the Tocks Island Dam, in the Delaware Valley. The Corps held very instrumental views of dominating and re-plumbing the waterways as its standard culture, but the nation was changing rapidly and its values also changed. The rise of recreation and the environmental movement both occurred while the Corps continued in its inflexible and often arrogant attitudes regarding nature. Constrained in its traditions, the Corps somehow missed this rapid evolution of ideas, values and changes in society happening all around it, and this myopia would come back to haunt them. 9780367371753_C004.indd 99 09-04-2021 09:08:58 100 Gina Bloodworth The rise of recreation and environmentalism While the Corps exploited and developed water resources in previous generations for the central purpose of economic growth and expansion, the post-WWII generation may have been the first generation to seek recreation as a priority in water use. Mutually reinforcing trends of agricultural and industrial development transformed America’s economy, lifestyle and culture. This meteoric ascent on the world scene produced the wealthiest generation of Americans yet as WWII ended (Nye 1998: 187). The post WWII generation ate better, worked less, lived longer, and enjoyed more free time than any previous generation. This generational evolution is crucial to revealing why the timing of our particular case study made it so powerful; it likely impacted the ultimate outcome of this conflict as much as the pro-active strategies of grassroots protesters or its advantageous geographic location. Suburbs sprouted like mushrooms in fields all across the countryside, and car sales soared. For people who had just one generation ago lived in rural landscapes or in large cities, the suburban migration created a paradox: suburban expansion scarred the landscapes as it obliterated and then transformed vast stretches of countryside; it simultaneously encouraged those same people who now lived in growing material affluence to seek out nature in ever larger numbers. With more free time, more financial stability and more mobility, recreation became an American passion—and a substantial portion of that took place outdoors. Demand for outdoor recreation boomed in the decades after the Second World War and the Corps was slow to become aware of this national trend. When it did encourage recreation, ‘multi-use’ became the industry buzzword as the Corps expanded its efforts in response to a perceived national need.6 The ability to repackage water storage projects from that of navigation or flood control, to include recreation could, in one fell swoop, raise the exalted position of dambuilders from technocrats to techno-wizards and simultaneously help sugar-coat the exponential rise in costs of large public works projects. So, at a time when ‘driving for pleasure’ was the top-ranked recreational activity nation-wide, the new currency of persuasion in the realm of water resources and public works projects became the word ‘multi-use’.7 In the Corps’ efforts to build this project, Tocks Island Dam, what began with the logic of flood control swirled from its original purpose to include ever-expanding uses including water supply, hydroelectric power generation and eventually recreation, all under the wide umbrella of a ‘multi-use’ dam project. As projected costs increased, more uses were promoted to help sell the value of the project to the public. But the Corps had not understood that new recreation lovers would bring different ideas about the values and purpose of water management, dams and reservoirs, and for that matter all public lands; this included opportunities to hike, camp, swim, boat, and watch wildlife. Thus, water resources became valued for aesthetics, and other noneconomic attributes. By contrast, the Corps viewed those resources in terms of consumption: industrial development, flood control, irrigation, and hydroelectric power generation. 9780367371753_C004.indd 100 09-04-2021 09:08:58 Tocks Island and the end 101 It is worthwhile to consider this conundrum more deeply, as the evolving environmental ethic had its own blind spots. An entire generation of people awakened to non-consumptive uses of water resources and the need to protect those resources at the very same time that rapidly rising water use and resource consumption per capita was made possible by the development of those same resources.8 This obvious conflict never surfaced in the public debate, and remains an unsettled question lurking at the heart of many environmental issues. Most Americans express strong values for protecting the natural environment, and yet they appear to divorce the destruction of that environment from the processes required to support their commoditised, consumptive lifestyles.Vast dams and reservoirs were needed to spin the washing machines and sprinkle the lawns of the sprouting suburbs that were left behind during the summer recreational migration to quiet lakes and isolated streams people loved. In 1962, people were only beginning down the path of suspicion that all was not quite right in the natural environment or even that the natural environment should rank as a priority in and of itself. But by 1975, a central value that united protestors became the tragic loss of one of the most beautiful pieces of nature left untouched by industry, urban development and suburban sprawl, should the Tocks Island Dam be built on the Delaware River and, in the process, flood the scenic Delaware Valley. Thus, the time frame of the project spans this rapid transformation of social understanding and the evolution of environmental concerns. This changed the rules of the game and brought concerns about how water projects impact the environment to the forefront of social debate. Changing the rules of the game In this same time frame from 1962 to 1975, landmark environmental legislation changed the landscape of federal agencies forever, in the form of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) signed into legislation in 1970 and the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Federal agencies were required by the NEPA to create what is known as an environmental impact statement (EIS) before beginning a public project; the EIS is essentially a listing of all potential negative environmental impacts a proposed project might create. Requiring the EIS before a project begins, rather than revealing or enumerating negative impacts after a project is complete would, in theory, make environmental disregard much less likely. More importantly, the NEPA became a testing ground for multiple environmental controversies and provided an unanticipated venue for judicial review across the entire nation. One of the first environmental impact statements ever produced came from the Corps’ plan to build the Tocks Island Dam. Consisting of only seven pages, this enraged many as an arrogant disregard of both the law and environmental concerns. The Environmental Defense Fund filed a lawsuit for non-compliance mere days after the EIS was submitted. Thirty years in the planning, the Tocks Island Dam included a price tag larger than $90 million, filled 11 volumes of surveys, plans and documents; thus, the Corps had difficulty explaining the thin seven pages of potential 9780367371753_C004.indd 101 09-04-2021 09:08:58 102 Gina Bloodworth environmental impacts such a massive project might generate. Forced by the courts to make a serious effort to comply with the law, the Corps appeared oblivious to both the damage to its reputation and the image its insolent attitude caused. The Corps spent more than two years compiling its next EIS, which numbered more than 6,000 pages—in what might be considered either pugnacious retaliation, or overblown attention to detail, in light of increasing scrutiny the agency now faced. Ironically, during the time lag this first major delay generated as the Corps prepared its amended EIS, another piece of landmark environmental legislation was passed, the Endangered Species Act. By 1973, this new law required that no federal money shall be spent on a project if an endangered species (or its habitat) is reduced by the project. This set off an entirely new round of energetic citizens, agencies and scientists conducting studies to determine whether any endangered species existed within the proposed project area, filing injunctions, and examining the Corps’ every move. Again, the rules of the game changed, and the Corps was slow to adjust. Had the project come to fruition even one year earlier, we would very likely be diagnosing how the dam came to be built, rather than how it did not get built. So, due to the timing of this project, it became a social, legal and bureaucratic fulcrum around which generational priorities changed and values morphed. Land acquisition As plans moved forward for the Tocks Island Dam project, the Corps faced the daunting process of acquiring land from people who already lived in the Delaware Valley. The large tracts of public land in the West allowed for rather simple and truncated negotiations, if any at all. But land in the East was privately owned for the most part and had been densely populated compared to the relatively vast and empty American West. Acquisition was to start in the Delaware Water Gap at the bottom end of the future reservoir site and spread each year, up the valley until the sixth year of land acquisition when land would be acquired at the top end of the reservoir site in Milford, PA—just as the dam was filling up with water. During the selling process, the property owner could continue to live on the premises for one year after purchase, receive salvage rights to move the dwelling to another location, or if the property was not within the flood zone, take a life tenancy option which allowed living in the home for up to twenty-five years. (TIRAC 1966: 1)9 The ambitious scope of plans for the Delaware River Basin becomes more apparent when one realises how much private property was involved.Within the Delaware Valley, the Corps of Engineers would ultimately need to acquire approximately 112 square miles of land which already existed in an intricate patchwork of ownership and land-use tenure; it was the first ever federal land acquisition for primarily recreation purposes, and the first involving such large amounts of predominately privately owned land. 9780367371753_C004.indd 102 09-04-2021 09:08:58 Tocks Island and the end 103 And while those in favour of creating a recreation area touted the valley as a wilderness area that needed protecting by the federal government, the region was hardly empty. The acreage contained 7,344 separate tracts of land in 22 municipalities in three different states. Estimates and figures varied, but the ‘wilderness area’ actually contained 2,400 to 2,600 homes (including seasonal homes), 25 summer camps and sportsmen’s clubs, 100 to 125 farms, 100 to 200 non-farm businesses and dozens of public buildings including at least seven churches and three schools. Also sprinkled throughout the valley were 5,000 graves and numerous historical buildings (Albert 1987, 1988). This seemingly orderly process was to plague the Corps relentlessly throughout the entire decade and engender some of the bitterest resentment among local residents and anti-dam activists. A patchwork of private holdings that would eventually become flooded to create the reservoir posed more than an obstacle to process—it tested the Corps’ abilities in public relations, negotiations with individuals, and need to balance landscape changes with public acceptance, tests the Corps failed at in many ways. Before Congress had yet to appropriate any funds for land acquisition on the project, the Corps notified 208 landholders by letter that their properties were being considered for the initial year of purchases for the Recreation Area. Revealing a worse miscalculation of the need for public agreement, the Corps published a map of lands needed in a local newspaper even before notifying the actual landholders that their land would be needed.To make matters worse, not everyone wanted to sell. This information did not sit well with a local resident, Nancy Shukaitis, who would become one of the most effective grassroots protesters and organisers against the Tocks Island Dam.10 Shukaitis began as a middle-aged housewife, who resided in the zone of acquisition for the reservoir, but grew into a powerful voice of indignation, protestation and ultimately a force for change in both the Corps, and in Congress. She went to Washington several times to oppose the dam and recreation area at congressional hearings and pleaded for public hearings to be held in the Tocks Island region—a virtually unheard of practice in Washington at that time.11 She continually pointed out how many voices had been excluded from the decision to build this dam, fought tirelessly to change the culture of exclusion that holding public hearings in Washington D.C. created, since people actually impacted by the proposed action could not travel to be heard. And she ultimately organised property owners in the area to become the Delaware Valley Conservation Association (DVCA), a conservation-based protest alliance, headed by her, to give a united argument against land acquisition. Shukaitis and the DVCA started a publicity campaign to counteract the pro-dam contingent; its members began giving speeches, writing letters, placing ads in local newspapers, and lobbying various government officials—including President Johnson, to whom the DVCA also sent a petition with 2,000 signatures. While the Corps of Engineers represents a behemoth governmental bureaucracy with its own culture, it is important to note the power of a few very angry, motivated individuals to coalesce into a movement of protest.These two entities exemplify two sides of the Tocks Island Dam conflict—massive and impersonal government agencies and grassroots protesters. Each of these groups used the media in complex ways. 9780367371753_C004.indd 103 09-04-2021 09:08:58 104 Gina Bloodworth Media wars Even before Congressional authorisation of the Tocks Island Dam project, a sophisticated media campaign went on beyond the reach of average citizens. The Tocks Island Dam in the eyes of the Corps clearly centred on flood control and drinking water. But those uses did not suffice to sway the U.S. Congress to fund the project. Only a concerted and well-funded media campaign aimed at legislators pushed recreation onto the front lines of discussion about Tocks Island. After Congressional authorisation, when many local citizens began expressing concerns about the project, the media became a tool of dissent as well. A series of protest events were planned in order to encourage media attention towards what was happening in the valley. As early as 1959, different local, regional and national interests relished the idea of a national recreation area in the East. The National Park Service (NPS) portion of the Corps’ Delaware River Basin Report first mentioned the possibility, suggesting that Tocks Island Reservoir could become the most significant non-urban recreational area in the East (USACE 1957). It further recommended that the federal government should fully develop the Tocks Island Reservoir and Recreation Area (USACE 1957). The Corps’ report acknowledged the need for any project to have broad national or regional significance in order to qualify for federal funds, thus the wording appeared to be an implied suggestion that Tocks Island should have a recreational area attached to it. For those boosters of the dam project who anticipated an economic boom in the region, the dry bureaucratic wording in Corps reports did not do enough to paint an exciting and rosy picture of opportunity, so they formulated a glamourous pro-dam media campaign. Among the private groups that began to organise behind the push for recreation at Tocks Island was the Water Research Association of the Delaware River Basin (WRA/DRB) who lobbied for the industrial interests within the basin; it was a pro-dam citizens’ group, with very select citizens that included representatives from various power companies, chemical firms, petroleum firms, and other elements of industry (Reich 1976). Within its first year, this well-funded organisation developed a mobile exhibit that travelled to various locations, published six widely disseminated newsletters, two pamphlets, two television commercials and a filmstrip; its members spoke at various locations around the basin and testified at Senate hearings.12 During Congressional debates on the Delaware River Basin Compact, WRA/DRB publicity efforts promoting the Tocks Island recreation areas continued unabated; the WRA/DRB gave speeches and held conferences extolling the virtues of recreation in the region.13 They created a series of pamphlets in 1959, 1960 and 1964 that highlighted the benefits of recreation in the Delaware River Basin in a determined push for recreation as a part of the Tocks Island Dam.14 Showcasing glossy pages, bright photos and the practised persuasion of professional production, the pamphlets looked much more enticing than the 11-volume comprehensive technical report from the Corps. The WRA/DRB pamphlets spoke of the potential for recreation in the basin as ‘clothed in the national interest’15 and describes recreational benefits: 9780367371753_C004.indd 104 09-04-2021 09:08:58 Tocks Island and the end 105 … excellent for such activities as bathing, fishing and boating … the banks could be developed in such a fashion as to satisfy the broadest range of outdoor recreational interest, with picnic grounds, sites for group camping, cabins and cottages, trails flanked by rare and attractive phenomena, scenic drives, and parking areas overlooking the water and surrounding formations. (WRA/DRB 1959: 21) Compare the persuasive lure of development and recreation in the first WRA/ DRB pamphlet, to that of Tocks Island as a piece of a larger rational multiplepurpose plan for the entire basin. Of prime importance is water; man can survive without food longer than without water.What is true of the individual is true of his civilization. History has proven that civilizations perish, dwindle, or migrate because of lack of water, which in most instances occurs when the demand exceeds the supply. This does not happen all at once, but is in nature a slow process; however, if the impending disaster is evaluated and provided for, the loss of growth and development can be prevented. Lest we forget—the water resources problems of the future loom large indeed. (USACE 1960: 6) The Corps expressed the dire need for water, and a militant call to control nature, namely, the Delaware River. Shortages of water had to be avoided, and natural disasters had to be averted by subjugating the flow of the Delaware River to the needs of civilization. The lobby’s pamphlet speaks of a happy valley and cottages on the shores of Tocks Island Lake. The WRA/DRB acknowledged no upper limit to hyperbolic propaganda— calling the proposed recreation area ‘Central Park for Megalopolis’ and anticipating extremely optimistic estimates of more than 10,000,000 yearly visitors, from nearby urban centres of New York City, Trenton and Philadelphia—filled with people ‘deprived’ of recreation; they gave speeches, sponsored conferences, fed information to the news media and even produced a documentary film, all before the Corps plans had even been implemented. While pressing for the expanded recreation area around the Tocks Island Lake and reservoir in the highest echelons of power, the WRA/DRB also involved itself at the local scale. Charles Bensinger, president of the WRA/DRB at the first public informational meeting in Bushkill, Pennsylvania in 1964 commented: As Colonel Yates [District Engineer for the Corps] has explained, the Tocks Island dam and reservoir project is started and, undoubtedly, will continue on the schedule developed by the Army Corps of Engineers. As far as you the residents of this Bushkill area are concerned, this means only one thing. By the date or dates mentioned by the Colonel, you will have to move.The decision this faces you with can be very simply stated: Do you the residents of this 9780367371753_C004.indd 105 09-04-2021 09:08:58 106 Gina Bloodworth area wish to move together to a new town, that is, do you wish to relocate as a unit? Or do you prefer to each move individually to whatever city or town or village that you choose? The decision facing Bushkill, therefore deals with the matter of relocation. (Bensinger 1964) Clearly, the impression given was that there existed no alternative, no possible compromise and no real choice among the residents of this small community. The government had decided to build a dam, and the residents merely needed assistance in adjusting to this new reality. Certainly, the Corps thought this since they too produced a pamphlet to that effect16 and distributed it all over the valley. The Corps sought to use media, namely in the proliferation of pamphlets showing an architect’s rendering of the project in its completed form, to create the narrative of this project as a complete and non-negotiable decision regarding the Delaware River. Either through arrogance, or the presumption of total power, this strategy of media saturation ultimately backfired for the Corps; they created ever more optimistic renderings of the Tocks Island reservoir as the voice of protest became stronger and more threatening. This disconnect ultimately portrayed the Corps as either a bullish bureaucracy using its full might to set the agenda, and force a project into existence, simply by producing enough designs of it as a fait accompli, or an out-of-touch and unresponsive bureaucracy steamrolling over people on the ground who did not want this project. On the side of the economic boosters, it appears that the underwriters saw no irony in their brochure’s claims that developers would overrun the area, unless the government stepped in to create a recreation area—that was presumably lobbied for by the WRA/DRB specifically because it would bring untold riches resulting from a massive influx of tourists, and the ability to industrially develop the area based on new sources of water. WRA/DRB pamphlets contained nothing about conservation issues, or the preservation of local culture, history or rural economy. Underlying conflicts of interest inherent in the motives of the NPS, which clearly had a mandate to protect lands set aside for National Parks and Recreation Areas, and those of the WRA/DRB who wished very much to gain from development potential in the Delaware River Basin (DRB) made this an unexpected and odd alliance. That collective expecting to gain included three of New Jersey’s largest power companies: Public Service Electric and Gas, Jersey Central Power and Light Company, and the New Jersey Power and Light Company (Pocono Reader 1956: 11). This carefully timed minor media blitz apparently did not filter down to the level of the average citizen. Thus, it is more likely that the strategic publicity campaign aimed its sights on the Congress. So, two diverging forces emerged, the optimistic supporters aligned with the Corps, and the disenchanted local population, who felt excluded and manipulated by the intensity of the Corps’ actions and expectations, in combination with an inability to meet with or talk to any of the decision-makers in Washington D.C. The aggregation of these efforts had a galvanising effect that generated excitement, and presumably public support, for water-development in the Delaware River Basin, as well as growing resentment.That same year, Congress created the Delaware 9780367371753_C004.indd 106 09-04-2021 09:08:58 Tocks Island and the end 107 Water Gap National Recreation Area (DWGNRA) and appropriated $34 million to acquire 46,675 acres of land with another $18 million to build recreational facilities (DWGNRA 1965). Since the Corps was already acquiring land for the dam and reservoir, it was now tasked with the acquisition of the added land that would then be used as a buffer of recreation land above and surrounding the top of the reservoir water line, in a cigar-shaped oval of real estate. Sunfish pond With the addition of this recreation corridor, the scale of the project jumped from large to grandiose. A dam on the Delaware made dubious economic sense from a purely water-supply or flood control perspective; it was the recreation element that helped create a favourable cost-benefit ratio.The dam theoretically protected a downstream floodplain of approximately 10,000 acres. But because of the added watersupply storage capacity, the Tocks Island Reservoir actually flooded 30 per cent more land than it protected. So, more than any other of the multi-use claims, recreation made Tocks Island credible—and eligible for federal funding. But Tocks Island had a tremendous cash flow problem due to its size and escalating cost estimates. The top of Kittatinny ridge would overlook the Tocks Island Reservoir, thus making the top of the ridge a prime location for pumped storage. Pumped storage uses a power company’s off-peak generating capacity to pump water from a lower reservoir to a higher one.Then, during peak power demand, that same water can be returned to the lower reservoir, utilising gravity, via turbines that harness the falling water to generate electricity. However, the consortium of electric companies17 which had contrived for nearly a decade to build such a project, underestimated the aesthetic value of their chosen location to the local residents. Sunfish Pond, the location in question, is a 44-acre glacial lake that overlooks the Delaware Valley, and is also one of the last places in New Jersey not accessible by car. The Appalachian Trail also happens to skirt the western edge of the lake.18 The scheduled demise of the pond went largely unnoticed until two citizens from Warren County, New Jersey began separate efforts to save the pond. Glenn Fisher, an employee of the Soil Conservation Service, had travelled across the country as part of his work of performing soil testing, and had seen local protests against other dams in the West. When he realised that Sunfish Pond was to become part of the Tocks Island project, Fisher began writing letters to local newspapers and government officials in an attempt to alert the public to this impending loss. Casey Kays, a resident of Hackettstown, New Jersey had been a long-time hiker and nature lover who also began writing letters and informing hikers along the Appalachian Trail of the Corps’ plan to transform Sunfish Pond. A chance meeting connected the two men, and in 1966, they formed the Lenni Lenape League (LLL) that merged their campaigns—which included letter-writing campaigns and collecting signatures on a petition by standing at Sunfish Pond along the Appalachian Trail. With early success, the LLL decided to plan a protest march up to the pond where they collected over 600 signatures from hikers along the Appalachian Trail. 9780367371753_C004.indd 107 09-04-2021 09:08:58 108 Gina Bloodworth Letters began raining down onto the offices of government officials at all levels, as the ‘Save Sunfish Pond’ campaign developed steam. For people who supported the dam, this campaign created a crisis of consciousness. Numbered among the dam supporters were many who did not care about the dam but saw the recreation area as a valued addition to the region. But supporting the dam meant supporting the pumped storage advocates, thus supporting industrial development and the destruction of Sunfish Pond and perhaps damaging a piece of the Appalachian Trail, which sharply conflicted with the values of those conservationists who thought creating the DWGNRA would be deterring development. Suddenly, conservation organisations with no stated opinion on the subject began to look carefully at what was happening in the Tocks Island region. As tensions rose and dissent grew, the Corps acting either with calculated deliberation, or clueless indifference, put out a second pamphlet, again attempting to portray the dam as inevitable.19 Tocks Island was already gaining a reputation as a bottomless money pit. By 1966, the project was behind schedule. Unhappy citizens had filed a lawsuit, and now a small protest over Sunfish Pond had erupted. These setbacks did not stop the steam-roller of support for the project at the highest levels of government though, and the array of money, interest and power allied in the effort to create the Tocks Island Dam and Reservoir and the DWGNRA could easily be characterised as stellar. The collection of interests included: the Corps, the U.S. Congress, the individual states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and the Water Resources Association of the Delaware River Basin (WRA/DRB.) In 1966, Tocks Island Dam appeared to be a ‘done deal’ that people would simply have to accept, like so many other bumps on the road to progress. But the fight was not over yet. Sunfish media blitz By serendipity, perseverance and a great boost from media coverage, the campaign took on undreamed-of proportions over the four years between 1966 and 1970. In June of 1967, the LLL organised another protest hike; this one brought the unexpected appearance of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. A New Jersey native who had childhood memories of the pond, Douglas made quite a splash at age 68 hiking up to Sunfish in decidedly un-judicial attire. Supreme Court justices simply did not participate in activist protests. The appearance of a Supreme Court justice and over a thousand other hikers made newspaper headlines throughout the valley the next day. Suddenly little Sunfish Pond had a big new advocate with a public face that galvanised interest all over the basin about its fate. Emotions ran high on both sides, and long-time foes from PA and NJ traded allegations and insults.20 Again, papers across the region caught this fiery exchange. Negative headlines again did nothing to inspire confidence within the Delaware Valley about the political viability of the Sunfish portion of the Tocks Island project. In response to a deluge of letters, by December of 1967, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall declared that the federal government would do everything possible to save Sunfish and pressed for modifications of the storage design in order to avoid harm to the little glacial lake. 9780367371753_C004.indd 108 09-04-2021 09:08:59 Tocks Island and the end 109 A third pilgrimage to Sunfish in 1968 drew at least 2000 hikers; meanwhile, the New Jersey legislature responded to calls for a public inquiry into circumstances surrounding the sale of Sunfish to the power companies in 1954 and whether the state could buy the property back. In late May of 1968, on the eve of the planned protest hike, the New York Times declared its support for the two bills then under discussion in the New Jersey legislature that would repurchase Sunfish Pond, exerting still more pressure from the media concerning ‘a small but irreplaceable natural asset, which for that reason alone, deserves preserving’ (New York Times 1968).With ample descriptions of the pine and hemlock forests, date and time of the hike, as well as directions to the meeting place, the editorial mourned the ‘total desecration of this legacy from the glacial age’ (ibid.). Thus, with the aid of the New York Times and flawless weather, the 1968 pilgrimage to Sunfish Pond attracted many people who had never heard of Sunfish Pond before, new soldiers in the growing army to ‘Save Sunfish Pond’ (ibid.). In corridors far beyond those of the New Jersey Statehouse, the fight to save Sunfish became a cause célèbre as Sunfish Pond took on talismanic qualities for urban-dwellers who sensed the loss of something more than just a pond and some trees—the last tangible wilderness in an overdeveloped region—the urbanised Eastern Seaboard. A compromise was reached in 1968 that gave Sunfish Pond back to NJ in trade for 100 acres of nearby land. Use of Sunfish would be avoided by raising the height of one of the Tocks Island projects’ upper reservoirs to gain potential for power generation; in October, the DRBC officially amended its comprehensive plan concerning pumped storage facility development to preserve Sunfish Pond (DRBC 1968). For those in support of pumped storage, and Tocks Island, this compromise was assumed to be the end of the fight. Unexpectedly though, the fight over Sunfish pond worked like a champagne cork—releasing pent-up emotions that spilled over into the public debate and flowed in unpredictable directions. Bumper stickers, fliers, posters, and lapel pins transformed from ‘Save Sunfish’ to ‘Save the Delaware’ slogans. Suddenly, what began as scattered protests by individuals, became scattered groups such as the LLL and the DVCA, and ultimately it all coalesced into a movement against this project. Squatters and hippies! The most surreal turn of events in the Tocks Island fracas originated from within the Corps itself, and both its origin and outcome centred on the use of media. The Corps accumulated a stockpile of empty houses and buildings in the valley as it acquired land in the flood zone. However, legal delays, protests and rising costs kept delaying the start of construction on the dam. Under pressure to cut costs, the Corps offered these buildings for rent, on short-term lease, through classified ads in regional newspapers—including the widely read New York City paper, the Village Voice. Presumably, the rental income would offset the loss of local tax revenue, thereby salvaging some goodwill with local communities. Instead, what resulted was a multifarious collection of rent-paying tenants and squatters that occupied former 9780367371753_C004.indd 109 09-04-2021 09:08:59 110 Gina Bloodworth farmhouses.Via word of mouth, and largely unknown to the Corps, more and more hippies and naturalists streamed into the Delaware Valley.The most prominent of the new residents in the valley, the Cloud Farmers commune, started in New Jersey in Sussex and Warren Counties, and eventually moved across the Delaware River to settle on the Pennsylvania side of the border. To understand the magnitude of the confusion the Corps unwittingly unleashed on itself, here is Albert’s description of the scene: In 1970, the Corps allowed the leases on the New Jersey properties to expire. Many of the houses, however, had no lease, and rent was rarely paid on those that did.The Cloud Farmers and other New Jersey hippies were then evicted by the New Jersey State Police, and the dwellings were demolished. Meanwhile, squatters had completely taken over the lower Valley in Pennsylvania near Wallpack Bend. About two dozen houses and the historic Zion Lutheran Church, located on a hill overlooking the valley, was renamed the ‘Church of Ecology’, and marijuana grew in its cemetery. Scattered among the houses were tent camps, Indian tepees, homemade structures, and a variety of innovative homes, including one geodesic dome built on a raft in the Delaware River. (Albert 1987: 136) The situation with the squatters would not be easily resolved. Once settled, many pursued a dream of environmental agrarian utopia with no technology, no government intervention, and no intention of leaving this beautiful bit of remote countryside, tucked away in the backyard of the Eastern Seaboard.21 One could imagine nothing more foreign to the entrenched culture of militaristic engineering structural bureaucracy in the Corps than hippie squatters. A perfect distinction in archetypes could be drawn. The Corps represented the establishment, order, the taming of resources through technological dominance, big government, bureaucratic unity, and the elegant expression of man’s power through civil engineering; hippies and environmentalists represented complex, changing political and social values, flight from urban decay, wholesale rejection of big government, and an awakening concern for environmental sustainability. If the rigidity of the Corps and its highly evolved operating procedures did not accommodate the variety of local citizens and circumstances previously in the valley, it had no contingency plans whatsoever for squatters and hippies! By 1972, the Tocks Island project when closely examined proved to have more than a few gaps and inconsistencies. And yet, the Corps bureaucracy was so large and slow moving that it appeared to be unaware yet of just how far awry things were going. Most of the Corps’ decision-makers worked in offices in Philadelphia, Trenton and Washington D.C., where life was calm. Meanwhile, the eyes of the region were now focused on the Delaware River and many people who had taken no notice of the impending dam and reservoir were suddenly looking at every detail of planning and implementation. Then a final media event signalled the beginning of the end for the ill-fated Tocks Island Dam project. In a desperate attempt to rid themselves of the hippie 9780367371753_C004.indd 110 09-04-2021 09:08:59 Tocks Island and the end 111 squatters, the Corps pressured New Jersey to send its national guard out to evict the squatters. And when they did this, the media was there to capture it—police in full riot gear, batons and riot shields, tossing out barefoot women and children into the February snow. When that fateful moment wound up in the Philadelphia Enquirer Sunday Magazine, the tide of public opinion turned irreparably against the Corps, and Tocks Island Dam.22 Evicting squatters created a storm of negative publicity. The Corps described the situation as ‘deteriorating’ in a 1973 Pocono Record interview (Drachler 1973: 11), a statement that could be seen as merely a phlegmatic understatement, or as a reflection of a profound lack of understanding about what was happening on a daily basis in the valley. Adding to their sinking reputation, in its accelerated bulldozing of buildings to prevent the squatters’ return, the Corps made some irretrievable mistakes. One house not yet purchased by the Corps was destroyed accidentally, old buildings on the National Historic Register were mistakenly demolished, and the 200-year old Zion church was gutted (Haefele 1980; Albert 2002; Feiveson 1974). After the church incident, the DVCA, the Sierra Club and the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG) obtained a restraining order to stop all further demolition. The Delaware Valley had become a battle zone. Extended press coverage of squatter activities, court fights, evictions, flattened buildings, all worked strongly against the Corps’ credibility, raising very large doubts about the Corps as a whole and changed the narrative from unquestioned progress to environmental destruction and local oppression. If a large bureaucracy like the Corps of Engineers could not handle the land acquisition process and a band of ‘flower children’ then how could it be trusted with complex projects or complex environmental problems? Even dam proponents were left scratching their collective heads at the chaos and anguish in the valley, with not even a shovel of dirt yet moved, and more than $250 million already spent. In Washington, things were changing fast as well. Not only was the Tocks Island project becoming unwieldy and outmoded, but in many senses, so was the Corps of Engineers.The greased grooves of political machinery that carried the Tocks Island project to the eve of its creation had now been slowed to a halt, and suddenly every aspect of the project was laid open to inspection. Close attention by the public or even Congress to every detail of planning and execution was unfamiliar territory for the generation of decision-makers and engineers within the Corps whose careers had been rooted in the culture of the expert. For more than a hundred years, projects went through elaborate incubation, planning and execution stages with virtually no outside intrusion, scrutiny or public input. In the end, the project’s benefits did not hold up to the increased scrutiny of its fiscal, human and environmental costs, and the project did not succeed. Conclusion By 1973, one of the Corps’ strongest allies in Washington, the Congress, was reacting to changing values in the rest of society that would make the rarefied atmosphere in which the Corps operated ever harder to maintain. At this point, multiple 9780367371753_C004.indd 111 09-04-2021 09:08:59 112 Gina Bloodworth scales of agitation collided, and the Tocks Island project happened to be sitting in the middle of this path. National interest in protecting the environment had been gathering steam over the previous decade. The passage of NEPA, and the Endangered Species Act, rather than stemming this tide, seemed to give it a burst of energy. Locally, concerns about the imminent destruction of Sunfish Pond galvanised scattered citizen groups across the valley and the entire region, which now scrutinised every aspect of the Tocks Island project with a new vision of saving the entire river and watershed. Decades of rankling over big government and big corporations created natural enmity within the valley when individuals found the fate of their future tied to far away legislators and large utility corporations with no public face. And the seemingly unstoppable Corps of Engineers now had to rethink its fundamental assumption of unquestioned instrumental power. More stakeholders than ever imagined had joined the fray over the dam on the Delaware River, and in reaction to this, the delicate alliance between the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York began to fray. Tocks Island transformed from a large-scale public works project in 1962 to a seemingly intractable environmental conflict by 1975. In the end, the Corps along with the governors of all the states in the Delaware Valley agreed to shelve the project indefinitely.To be rid of the embarrassment, the Corps (faced with land acquired, but no project to complete) deeded all the acquired lands over to the National Park Service, which then created the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (DWGNRA) that is still there now. Today, the Delaware River remains the only river east of the Mississippi without a dam on its main stem, and the DWGNRA, wild and scenic, is visited by more than 10 million visitors each year. For the Corps, this time period was nothing short of soul searching. The ‘old guard’ of elite technocrats literally spent entire careers on this one 30-year project and then saw it all come unravelled, as institutional power structures seemed unable to respond to changing circumstances. Now, the Corps has a ‘new guard’ of employees that includes more diverse viewpoints, as well as public input, but these changes did not come voluntarily, and still have not infiltrated up to the highest ranks of decision makers within the Corps. In the end, what can be learned from this most unexpected outcome of a most unexpected environmental conflict? When only one actor controls the narrative of a conflict, this can and often has suppressed or ignored the voices of other stakeholders, and different priorities that do not fit within the dominant narrative. This case reveals how expanding numbers and types of grassroots protests changed the previously unquestioned narrative surrounding this dam and reservoir project. Most of the stakeholders relied heavily on media as a tool to control the narrative, in the hopes of controlling the fate of the project. The Corps used brochure publications to promote the narrative of progress, power and expertise. And in the face of growing public resistance to the project, the Corps simply pushed out more and more media to reinforce its power and vision. The stakeholders, who resisted, used media to widen public awareness and change the narrative from that of progress to that of oppression and destruction. 9780367371753_C004.indd 112 09-04-2021 09:08:59 Tocks Island and the end 113 Can we say that what happened in the Delaware River at Tocks Island provides a road map to other future environmental conflicts? Case studies often reveal patterns in either process or outcomes, leading to a re-thinking of accepted wisdom. But can we translate this particular outcome in the Delaware Valley to other environmental conflicts? Can we always expect that stakeholders who resist a project can utilise media, or protests, or any tool of resistance to predictably alter the narrative, and ultimately the fate of future environmental conflicts? This case study can set the groundwork for formal comparative analyses on a larger scale of the attributes that most impacted the outcome of this environmental conflict, but no two conflicts are exactly the same. In America, this conflict was part of a cluster of dam fights that, in the aggregate, changed the entire direction of federal water policy, and foretold the end of the Big Dam era, but nobody saw it coming. Future research should seek to understand patterns related to the main attributes that controlled the process and outcome of this conflict: geographic context (including sense of place), political/legal infrastructure, array of stakeholders, and tools for framing of the narrative. In this particular case, one hegemonic agency set and controlled the narrative on dam building for several decades. That agency was then forced to change by combined changes in the legal and social landscape, in combination with grassroots protests, and media coverage that changed the narrative of the entire project. In countries with different political and legal traditions, this might never occur. In regions that are isolated from urban areas, or have restrictions on media freedoms, this same scenario likely could not unfold in the way that it did within the Delaware Valley. In situations where public input is consistently incorporated into decision-making, the conflict itself may have been avoided in the early stages of planning. In situations where the narrative is not dominated by the priorities of narrow powerful interests, conflict might result in shared compromise and/or a wider toolkit of acceptable options for conflict resolution. In the realm of environmental conflicts, circumstances vary so widely that several facets of the process remain unpredictable. Notes 1 Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area boundary within the DRB is available at https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 87 (accessed on 10 December 2020). 2 Architect’s Development Plan for Tocks Island Dam, with Powerhouse and Intake Facilities and a Visitor’s Center with Semi-circular Gardens is available at https://etda. libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 124 (accessed on 10 December 2020). 3 See Morgan (1971), Stine (1993), and Wolf (1996), for more complete histories of both water development and the Corps in America. 4 For more details on dams that did not get built, see Albert (1987) and Espeland (1998), Miller (1993) and Sax (1972). 5 See USACE (2003), Shallat (1994) and Cech (2003) for a fuller account of the infusion of French values into the early Corps of Engineers and the ensuing cultural competition between the French and British governmental traditions. Shallat notes that competition became so entrenched that the army ordnance board rejected British equipment for inferior French designs, just because they were French. 9780367371753_C004.indd 113 09-04-2021 09:08:59 114 Gina Bloodworth 6 Personal correspondence with NPS and Corps personnel, summer 2003. 7 U.S. Outdoor Recreation Review Commission as cited in Yaffee (1994). 8 For an in-depth treatment on the rise of suburbia, see Jackson (1985), Rome (2001) and parts of Lindstrom (2003). 9 Each of these options could occur at the discretion of the federal government, not the land owner, and each option had penalties associated with it. 10 Interview data (Activist-1 2003) 11 Interview data (Activist-1 2003) 12 See Bensinger (1964), Dressler (1964) and Feiveson, Sinden and Socolow (1976). 13 Interview data (DRBC-2 2003). See also, Albert (1987). 14 “WRA/DRB pamphlet showcasing the potential for recreation, and its strategic location, relative to the surrounding major urban areas” is available at https://etda.libraries. psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 125 (accessed on 10 December 2020). 15 Interview data (DRBC-2 2003). See also, Albert (1987). 16 Pamphlet Produced for the Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia District Office, is available at https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 126 (accessed on 10 December 2020). 17 That collective comprised three of New Jersey’s largest power companies: Public Service Electric and Gas, Jersey Central Power and Light Company, and the New Jersey Power and Light Company (Pocono Record 1956: 1). 18 For hikers of the Appalachian Trail, Sunfish Pond is often noted as one of the loveliest spots, with the most scenic overlooks, between Georgia and Maine. 19 The second pamphlet produced for the Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia District Office, is available at https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 127 (accessed on 10 December 2020). 20 Former governor from New Jersey, Robert Meyner, and Pennsylvania State senator Warren Dumont Jr. clashed as Dumont alleged that the sale of Sunfish was highly secretive and suspect and state officials had been too cooperative with the power companies, while Meyner took exception to the allegations, and spit a few others back at Dumont. See Albert (1987). 21 Photo of Commune in the DRB from the Sunday Magazine of the New York Times, October 1971 is available at https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 195 (accessed on 10 December 2020). 22 Photo of evicted squatters as the struggle in the DRB became a regional news item— again (Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, October 1973) is available at https://etda. libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 200 (accessed on 10 December 2020). References Albert, R.C. 1987. Damming the Delaware: The Rise and Fall of Tocks Island. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Albert, R.C. 1988. The Historical Context of Water Quality Management for the Delaware Estuary. Estuaries, 11(2): 99–107. Albert, R.C. 2002. ‘In-Tocks-Icated: The Tocks Island Dam Project’, Cultural Resource Management, 25(3): 5–7. Bensinger, C.R. 1964. Remarks, Public Information Hearing. Bushkill, PA.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Blomley, N. 2001. The Legal Geographic Reader: Law, Power and Space. Malden: Blackwell. Cech, T.V. 2010. Principles of Water Resources: History, Development, Management, Policy. 3rd ed. New York: Wiley & Sons. 9780367371753_C004.indd 114 09-04-2021 09:08:59 Tocks Island and the end 115 Cech,T.V. 2003. Principles of Water Resources: History, Development, Management, Policy New York: John Wiley & Sons. DRBC. 1968. Resolution No. 68-12, Trenton: Delaware River Basin Commission. DRBC-2. 2003. Delaware River Basin Commission [Interview] (22 and 29 June 2003). Dressler, Frank. 1964. ‘Remarks’. Bushkill, PA: Public Information Hearing, p. 4. Drachler, Steve. 1973. ‘Gov’t Plans for Squatter Removal Not Final’, Pocono Record Newspaper, p. 11. DWGNRA. 1965. Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, HR 89, PL 89–158. Haefele, Mina (ed.). 1980. Richard C. Albert ‘Haefele Correspondence’. Trenton: Unpublished Notes from Dick Albert’s File Box. Espeland, W.N. 1998. The Struggle for Water: Politics, Rationality and Identity in the American Southwest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Feiveson, H. 1974. Politics and Analysis in the Tocks Island Dam Controversy. Arlington: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers National Archives Series II 64-C-1. Feiveson, H.E.A., Frank W. Sinden and Robert H. Socolow (eds). 1976. Boundaries of Analysis: An Inquiry into the Tocks Island Dam Controversy. Cambridge: Ballinger. Jackson, K.T. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier:The Suburbanization of the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lindstrom, M.J. 2003. Suburban Sprawl: Culture, Theory, and Politics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Miller, M.C. 1993. Flooding the Courtrooms: Law and Water in the Far West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Morgan, A.E. 1971. Dams and Other Disasters: A Century of the Army Corps of Engineers in Civil Works. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. New York Times. 1968. ‘Opinion’, Editorial. New York Times, 24 May. Nye, D. 1998. Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energy. Cambridge: MIT Press. Palmer, T. 1986. Endangered Rivers and the Conservation Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pocono Reader. 1956. ‘Consortium of Power Companies Support Tocks Island’. Pocono Record, 21 April. Reich, Michael. 1976. ‘Historical Currents’ in H.E A. Feiveson, Frank W. Sinden and Robert Harry Socolow (eds), Boundaries of Analysis: An Inquiry into the Tocks Island Dam Controversy. Cambridge: Ballinger. Reisner, M. 1986. Cadillac Desert:The American West and its Disappearing Waters. New York:Viking. Rivers and Harbors Act. 1899. 33 U.S.C. 401,Vol. 401. Rome, A. 2001. The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sax, J. 1972. Water Law Planning and Policy. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. Shallat, T. 1994. Structures in the Stream: Water Science and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Austin: University of Texas Press. Stine, J.K. 1993. Mixing the Waters: Environment, Politics and the Building of the TennesseeTombigbee Waterway. Akron: University of Akron Press. TIRAC (Tocks Island Regional Advisory Council). 1966. Memo No. 3, The Corps Land Acquisition Procedures, p. 1. Philadelphia. USACE 2003. The History of the Army Corps of Engineers. Office of History, USACE: University Press of the Pacific. USACE 1960. Report on the Comprehensive Study on the Water Resources of the Delaware River Basin, p. 6. (House Document 522). Washington, DC: United States Army Corps of Engineers. 9780367371753_C004.indd 115 09-04-2021 09:08:59 116 Gina Bloodworth USACE 1957. Delaware River Basin Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Wolf, D.E. 1996. Dams and Other Big Dreams: The Six Companies Story. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. WRA/DRB. 1959. Water for Recreation: Today and Tomorrow. Trenton: Delaware River Basin Commission. Yaffee, S.L. 1994. The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl: Policy Lessons for a New Century. Washington, DC: Island Press. 9780367371753_C004.indd 116 09-04-2021 09:08:59 5 WHEN OIL MEETS WATER Debating the hydraulic fracturing energy–water nexus in Colorado Adrianne Kroepsch Introduction In 2011, Time magazine named hydraulic fracturing ‘the biggest environmental issue of the year’ in the United States—more concerning than even climate change (Walsh 2011). Time, which is published in New York City and has the highest circulation of any weekly newsmagazine in the world,1 went on to describe why the extractive technique deserved such national notoriety. Water pollution, the magazine argued, was one of the practice’s most serious potential externalities. Time’s mention of hydraulic fracturing as a potential threat to water supplies was one of many made in the U.S. media that year, spurred in part by the rousing documentary Gasland, which focused Americans’ attention on the oil and gas energy–water nexus like never before (Vasi et al. 2015). Known as ‘fracking’ for short, hydraulic fracturing involves injecting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the depths of an oil or gas well in order to crack open low-permeability rocks that would not otherwise surrender their hydrocarbons. In recent years, hydraulic fracturing— paired with horizontal drilling—has contributed to an unprecedented energy boom in hydrocarbon-rich regions such as the U.S. state of Colorado, where this research is focused. It has also generated intense public concern over the possibility of water pollution by industrial error or oversight—via surface spills of hydraulic fracturing fluid, leaky well construction or the improper disposal of wastewater. Indeed, in 2011, hydraulic fracturing could have been called the biggest environmental issue of the year in Colorado as well, with water pollution as its most contested potential flaw. Media attention to hydraulic fracturing and related water quality concerns spiked in major Colorado newspapers in 2011 (Figure 5.1), reflecting both a very real extractive surge underway in the state and the fact that this boom was national in scope and attention. Colorado has seen many oil and gas surges over the decades, each with its own environmental implications (Ladd 2005). 9780367371753_C005.indd 117 09-04-2021 09:09:26 118 Adrianne Kroepsch But those booms did not gain the sustained scrutiny of local, state and national news outlets and policymakers. By 2011, however, this most recent extractive boom had a high-profile media following and was the subject of daily media debate. Geography served as its most effective publicist: drilling rigs had drawn nearly as close to New York City, the nerve centre for the U.S.’s national news organisations, as they had to Denver—making this boom as newsworthy to Time and other members of the U.S. prestige press as it was for the Rocky Mountain news dailies. New York City’s influence on the media agenda could be felt correspondingly, as could Eastern states’ hydrologic presumptions. Because extractive activities were encroaching upon New York City’s watershed, where rain is plentiful and water quality concerns rank higher on the policy agenda than water quantity concerns, the topic of water pollution dominated the fracking debate nationwide (Vasi et al. 2015). But water quality is not the only important hydrologic uncertainty associated with the practice of hydraulic fracturing. As drought conditions set in across several Western states in 2012, the hydraulic fracturing debate took on the water quantity anxieties of the U.S.’s arid half and, with them, new narrative dimensions that are the subject of this study. ‘Forget the histrionics over water quality’, a Colorado resident wrote to the Boulder Daily Camera in 2012, as the state swung from one of its wettest years on record to one of its driest. ‘Just where are all these millions of gallons of water needed to frack gas wells coming from? … This is the arid West, also in a drought, not Pennsylvania where it rains twice a week.’The letter was one of many inspired by the convergence in time of two factors: a very bad drought year and a rise in hydraulic fracturing on the semi-arid grasslands outside of Denver in response to $100 per barrel oil prices. In 2011, the two largest companies drilling in northeastern Colorado announced plans to drill and hydraulically fracture 300–500 wells per year for the foreseeable future (Proctor 2011). They would require water to do it—water from Colorado’s hardest working river system, the South Platte. By 2012, however, several South Platte River Basin cities faced watering restrictions and some farmers were watching their crops die (Lynn 2012). Questions began to arise. Just how much water would the oil and gas companies need to achieve their ambitious plans? Where would they get it? And what would that mean for other water users? The case study presented here takes up these questions as it investigates the water policy narratives generated by the growing water demands of a powerful industry— the oil and gas industry—in a river basin known for being semi-arid, hydrologically unpredictable, and crowded with water users. Political ecologists define environmental narratives ‘as convenient yet simplistic beliefs about the nature, causes, and impacts of environmental problems’ (Forsyth 2008: 758).This analysis launches from Hajer’s (1995) definition of environmental policy narratives in particular, which he defines as political devices that seek to achieve discursive closure on a policy problem, and which may include metaphor, analogy, clichés, appeals to collective fears or senses of guilt, and/or the assigning of blame and responsibility. Discursive data are drawn from local media coverage, participant observation, and interviews with energy and water stakeholders. 9780367371753_C005.indd 118 09-04-2021 09:09:26 When oil meets water 119 Colorado’s hydraulic fracturing debate is important because it illustrates the symbolic power of water in controversies over other resources, such as energy. Policymakers and the public are beginning to appreciate the many ways that energy and water resources are intertwined. As awareness of the so-called energy–water nexus grows with climate change-related hydrologic unpredictability and water scarcity, many expect that energy policy decisions will be increasingly fought via their consequences for water (Averyt et al. 2013; Freyman and Salmon 2013; Kenney and Wilkinson 2011). Colorado’s debate is also instructive for what it reveals about the role of narrative at the energy–water nexus. Specifically, this debate is being propelled by two questions: (1) how much water is the oil and gas industry using, and (2) at whose gain and whose loss? As water and energy stakeholders have debated these questions in the media via differing volumetric and competition framings, they have also attempted to frame hydraulic fracturing water demands as harmful or benign. A close analysis of these narrations suggests, however, that they are characterised by significant uncertainties, and that these uncertainties risk exacerbating conflicts over both sets of resources during drier future times. The remainder of this chapter explores these narrations. It first provides necessary background information on the energy–water nexus, the South Platte River Basin, plus study methodology, and then it delves into an analysis of the two major framings at play in the media debate. The energy–water nexus Energy development has long been tied to water resources, but widespread recognition of energy systems’ reliance upon water is a relatively new thing. In the U.S., as in many countries, energy and water resources have historically been planned and managed separately in resource-specific policy silos, as well as within different levels of government. Energy and water policy are typically disconnected as a result, unequipped to consider the many interdependencies that exist between energy and water resources and infrastructures. Awareness of energy systems’ hydrologic vulnerabilities has been on the rise in recent years, however, spurred by water-related energy crises such as the 2011 drought in Texas, which hamstrung water-cooled power plants and hydraulic fracturing activities alike (Meldrum et al. 2013). The energy–water nexus has become the focus of a fast-growing body of academic and policy literature in the U.S. On the water-for-energy side of the nexus, studies estimate the water needs of various electricity pathways and scenarios in order to identify hydrologic vulnerabilities and opportunities for achieving sustainability goals (see for example Averyt et al. 2013; Macknick et al. 2012). In broad lifecycle terms, electricity generated from hydraulic fracturing-produced natural gas ranks lower on water consumption than electricity generated from coal, nuclear, biofuels, and even concentrated solar power (e.g. <100 gal/MWh versus a range of 350–1,100 for the latter electricity pathways; see Meldrum et al. 2013). Given the intensity of conflict over hydraulic fracturing water demands, that low ranking may seem surprising. But it is precisely why hydraulic fracturing merits closer examination. By operating at a lifecycle scale, the existing energy–water nexus literature 9780367371753_C005.indd 119 09-04-2021 09:09:26 120 Adrianne Kroepsch has difficulty engaging with local-level water politics. Water is, of course, more than simply a liquid input into energy systems, more than a volume that can be abstracted from its local and social contexts—what Linton (2014) has called ‘modern water’. Water is an intensely symbolic and politicised resource—particularly in the American West, but also in other arid environs underlain by hydrocarbon deposits, such the oil and natural gas fields of South Africa, Ukraine and Australia (USEIA 2011). A full accounting of the hydraulic fracturing energy–water nexus requires engaging with the local impacts of hydraulic fracturing water use and the ways they are understood, described and debated.2 The South Platte river basin No river basin in Colorado has more water demands upon it than the South Platte. At 3.5 million people, it is the state’s most densely populated area, and at $6 billion in farming revenue, it is the state’s most agriculturally productive region (HDR 2015). Like all rivers in Colorado, most of the South Platte’s waters originate in mountain streams as snowmelt. The river’s average annual volume is highly variable and averages 1.4 million acre-feet (AF).3 The river’s flows are also supplemented by an average of 230,000 AF annually with water from other river basins, including the state’s largest trans-basin diversion, the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. The volume of water withdrawals from the South Platte doubles the river’s actual flows on an annual basis, reflecting its over-allocation and the use and re-use of return flows in the system. The river basin also happens to be one of Colorado’s most prolific zones of oil and gas extraction, particularly in recent years, as high oil prices and the paired technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have enabled record production. The recent shift from drilling vertical wells to horizontal wells (of up to two miles in length) matters for water resources because the latter require more hydraulic fracturing stages.4 As the number of hydraulic fracturing stages increases, so does water consumption. In 2013, Noble Energy, Inc., one of the largest operators in Colorado, estimated that a typical vertical well requires approximately 360,000 gallons of water for drilling and hydraulic fracturing, whereas a long horizontal well could require as much as 8 million gallons (Goodwin et al. 2013). The number of horizontal wells drilled in the South Platte River Basin grew from 19 in the years prior to 2009 to a total of 4,459 between 2009 and 2014 (COGCC 2016). Theoretical and methodological framework This study employs the tools of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate the ways that energy and water stakeholders are debating the use of Colorado water for hydraulic fracturing in local media. It draws from media because of the press’s ability to trigger public debate and shape its terms by establishing the ‘universe of discourse’ for citizen discussion (Blumer 1946: 191). In order to contextualise media discourse, the study also draws upon participant observation and in-depth interviews. In particular, the analysis compares media representations of hydraulic 9780367371753_C005.indd 120 09-04-2021 09:09:26 When oil meets water 121 fracturing water demands with water regulators’ everyday lived experiences of managing hydraulic fracturing flows during an energy boom, as described in in-person interviews and field tours. CDA’s primary goal is to ‘question the role of discourse in the production and transformation of social representations of reality, as well as social relations’ (Carvalho 2008: 161). CDA demands that scholars consider the broader social and political context from which discourses arise, as well as the ways discourses influence the evolution of social and political issues (Fairclough 1995). A key component of CDA is also the study of discursive strategies—defined as interventions into the construction of reality and meaning by social actors that aim to achieve a certain effect or goal (Carvalho 2008). One of the most significant discursive strategies at play in environmental policy discourses is that of framing environmental issues in order to promote a particular problem definition (Entman 1993).The process of framing occurs by selection and composition, where selection involves including or excluding particular information from one’s narration of a problem and composition involves arranging narrative elements in a way that produces a certain meaning (Entman 1993). For the purposes of this study, frames are conceptualised as building blocks of narrative. Stakeholders’ water framings lay the groundwork for policy narratives that convey a moral judgment about their water use (Jones and McBeth 2010). To investigate the hydraulic fracturing discourse in Colorado, three major state newspapers were sampled from before the recent drilling boom began to the end of 2015 (1 January 2007–31 December 2015). News articles and opinion pieces5 were collected from The Denver Post (via ProQuest), the Boulder Daily Camera (via ProQuest) and the Greeley Tribune (via the newspaper’s online archive). These three newspapers represent the full range of political orientations toward oil and gas development in the South Platte River Basin: while no community is a monolith, in broad terms, Greeley tends to support oil and gas activity and has generally conservative politics; Boulder passed a local moratoria against hydraulic fracturing and has generally liberal politics; and Denver, the state capitol, is the headquarters for state politics and hosts a mix of opinions. The terms ‘fracking’ or ‘hydraulic fracturing’ and ‘water’ were used as search queries (Cotton, Rattle and Van Alstine 2014). Retrieved articles were further narrowed so that the final sample included only those that substantively engaged water resources issues. The final sample was coded for the following elements, identified through prereading a sub-sample of articles: (a) a topical focus on water quality and/or quantity, (b) the varying use of numbers to quantify and frame hydraulic fracturing water demands, and (c) the use of water competition frames that portray energy companies and other water users as being in a water rivalry. Analysis followed Carvalho’s recommendations for critical reading of the media in its broader societal contexts: considering the time element of media discourse (changes in the frequency of coverage of an issue by news organisations); comparing discourse between sources (between news outlets, as well as between media and other texts); and interrogating the history of media discourses (how representations of reality in the press are reproduced or contested by subsequent representations) (Carvalho 2008: 171–172). 9780367371753_C005.indd 121 09-04-2021 09:09:26 122 Adrianne Kroepsch In addition to the media sample, participant observation was conducted at 12 water-related public meetings in the South Platte River Basin between late 2013 and early 2015 to gather background information and gauge water users’ sentiments about hydraulic fracturing water demands.To engage lived experience at this energy–water nexus more thoroughly, a total of 39 in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a range of South Platte water stakeholders between late 2014 and early 2016. Interviewees included energy companies (specifically, oil and gas operators drilling in the South Platte River Basin) (15); water regulators (9); major water brokers,6 water hauling companies, and municipal water providers (9); and farmers and agricultural irrigation ditch cooperatives (6). Interviews were transcribed and coded by hand using bottom-up, thematic coding focused on the two questions driving the media debate. Media and interview data were then compared (Table 5.1). Results The presentation of results begins with an overview of Colorado media coverage of water issues associated with hydraulic fracturing. It then specifically considers the two unknowns steering the public debate about water quantity—how much water is the oil and gas industry using? at whose gain and loss?—and the framing contests they have inspired. Lastly, in-depth interview data are presented to show how data and transparency issues limit public discourse about this new energy–water nexus. Media coverage of the hydraulic fracturing debate Media coverage of the hydraulic fracturing energy–water nexus grew significantly in Colorado in 2011 and focused almost entirely on water quality issues (Figure 5.1). Several national and local factors contributed to the spike in attention and its water quality emphasis. In 2009, two Colorado lawmakers introduced federal legislation that would require public disclosure of all hydraulic fracturing fluid chemicals. By 2010, the popular documentary Gasland had further boosted hydraulic fracturing-related water pollution concerns and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had launched a study on the topic (Vasi et al. 2015).The oil and gas industry TABLE 5.1 Media Sample by Newspaper, News Market, and News and Opinion Coverage Newspaper The Denver Post Daily Camera Greeley Tribune Total Primary News Market Statewide Boulder County Weld County News Articles Opinion Pieces Total 45 (54%) 12 (20%) 39 (46%) 48 (80%) 84 60 86 (75%) 143 29 (25%) 116 115 259 Source: Compiled by the Author 9780367371753_C005.indd 122 09-04-2021 09:09:26 When oil meets water 123 responded in 2011 by setting up a voluntary chemical disclosure programme. Policy and news agendas were similarly busy at the local level in Colorado. In 2011, the state oil and gas regulators launched their own hydraulic fracturing fluid disclosure rulemaking. In 2012, they followed with statewide groundwater monitoring rules. It was at this point that Coloradoans’ expansion of hydrologic concerns—from water quality only to water quality and quantity—began. In Colorado, the issue of water quantity emerged in the press coverage of hydraulic fracturing in 2011 and gained traction as an environmental issue in 2012, as drought set in (Figure 5.1). The first feature story on the industry’s water demands appeared in the Denver Post in late 2011. The article explored decisions made by several cities in the South Platte River Basin to lease excess water to oil and gas companies and raised questions about how much water the energy boom would require. As the 2012 drought year took shape, hydraulic fracturing water demands began to receive even more attention. In early 2012, state regulators released the first official estimate of the oil and gas industry’s water usage (CDWR et al. 2012). By summer, a prominent environmental group had published a report questioning the state’s estimates (Belanger 2012), and letters-to-the-editor lamented municipal watering restrictions and inquired about the oil and gas industry’s water sourcing practices. These news and opinion items, plus others, brought to the fore of media discourse the framing contests over water volume and competition to be analysed in detail below. Media attention to this energy–water nexus was relatively short-lived, however, seeing a peak in 2012 and 2013 and fading away in 2014 and 2015. Colorado’s hydrologic conditions were a likely driver. Most of 2012 and 2013 were extremely dry, but that hydrology shifted in late 2013, as heavy flooding heralded the beginning of a brief wet cycle that carried on through 2014 and 2015 and led to periodic ‘free river’ conditions during which water supply exceeded all demands in the basin. Media coverage of water quantity issues dropped in the same timeframe, suggesting that media attention to energy–water nexus issues tracks water scarcity and, more broadly, that hydrologic conditions serve as an important background influence on water policy discourse. Volumetric framing: what are the magnitude and significance of this new water use? When state energy and water regulators released the first official estimate of hydraulic fracturing water use in early 2012, they tallied the oil and gas industry’s demands at 13,900 AF in 2010 and projected a total of 18,700 AF of demand by 2015 (CDWR et al. 2012). Because they were the first to formally gauge that volume, and because the acre-foot unit is largely meaningless to the public, they also had the first opportunity to frame that volume’s salience and meaning. They chose to do so by contextualising it in relative terms and at a statewide scale. From a statewide perspective, the oil and gas industry’s water demands are minuscule, amounting to less than 0.1 per cent of annual water diversions from streams. State energy and water regulators concluded as much in their memo and in later media stories, further framing their point by comparing hydraulic fracturing water demands to those of other major categories of water users in Colorado. Said one deputy state 9780367371753_C005.indd 123 09-04-2021 09:09:26 124 Adrianne Kroepsch Media Coverage of Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Issues: Focus on Water Quality vs. Quantity 100 90 80 70 60 Quantity 50 Quality 40 30 20 10 0 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Frequency of coverage of hydraulic fracturing and water resources issues in The Denver Post, Greeley Tribune and (Boulder) Daily Camera from 2007–2014, with water resources issues divided between water quantity and quality. Source: Compiled by the Author FIGURE 5.1. engineer to the Greeley Tribune in 2013, for example, ‘Only 14,000 to 15,000 acrefeet of water is used for fracking. About 16 million acre-feet are diverted each year for use in the state. Of that, 14 million acre-feet is for agriculture. That’s about 86 per cent of the water. Just one-tenth of 1 per cent is diverted for hydraulic fracking’. Energy and water regulators’ framing of the oil and gas industry’s water demands as merely a drop in the bucket at a statewide scale carried an implicit message with it—that this new water use was too small to argue about. It is not clear whether state officials intended to advocate for the industry with that framing, or whether they were merely hoping to avoid conflict. Either way, their efforts in narrative gate keeping by way of the 0.1 per cent framing backfired by inspiring stakeholders of all kinds to modify or challenge the figure (Table 5.2). Oil and gas industry members exaggerated it by speaking of their water usage without reference to an absolute volume of any kind, calling themselves ‘just the noise of Colorado’s water use’ in a 2012 Daily Camera story and other articles. In response, some members of the press, the public and the environmental community began challenging the state and industry framings with their own. In June of 2012, the environmental policy group Western Resource Advocates (WRA) published a report that questioned and reframed the state’s accounting (Belanger 2012). WRA argued that regulators’ figures were too small and came up with their own estimate of 22,100–39,500 AF for annual oil and gas industry demands. WRA argued that the state’s estimate had not included water needed for the drilling phase of oil and gas well development and had also not accounted for the full range of water demand per well, which varies by length, geology and other factors (Belanger 2012). More importantly, WRA challenged regulators’ relative, statewide framing by pointing out that extractive activities are not spread out evenly 9780367371753_C005.indd 124 09-04-2021 09:09:27 When oil meets water 125 across the state. Colorado is home to seven different river basins. Since 2010, only one of those river basins—the South Platte—has claimed 59 per cent of the state’s oil and gas well starts and 90 per cent of the state’s water-intensive horizontal wells (COGCC 2016). By framing water demands at a statewide scale, regulators and industry members skirted the uneven distribution of hydraulic fracturing water demand on the ground, as well as the question of whether those water demands might have acute local impacts. WRA pushed that point in its quantification of the issue by insisting that the oil and gas industry was using 22,100–39,500 AF of water in the overdrawn South Platte River Basin alone. With its estimate, WRA also moved beyond the acre-foot metric by reframing their hydraulic fracturing water volumes in units to which Coloradoans could easily relate: households (enough for 66,400–118,400 homes), cities (enough for Lakewood, the state’s fourth-largest city) and counties (enough for Douglas County, one of the state’s most water-stressed). Other critics took the framing contest further still by talking about hydraulic fracturing water use in gallons, an even more relatable and fine-grained unit. A spokesman for the group Food and Water Watch described the industry’s water use this way in a 2013 Boulder Daily Camera op-ed: ‘It takes 2–5 million gallons of water to frack a well. Each well can be fracked multiple times. Multiply that across the 45,000 wells in Colorado and you get a sense of the sheer volume of water’.The framing strategy used here is misleading for its own reasons. Colorado is indeed home to more than 45,000 oil and gas wells, but many of them were drilled long ago. Only 3,707—a still significant, but much smaller multiplier—are recent horizontal wells that require 2–5 million of gallons of water for hydraulic fracturing (COGCC 2016). Taken together, these many divergent numerical representations aim to sum up how much water the oil and gas industry is using in Colorado, as well as to frame the significance of that volume and its potential impacts. Stakeholders who support TABLE 5.2 Prevalence of Volumetric Water Framing within Articles Concerned with Water Quantity Issues (N = 83) Framing How much water is it? Frequency Volumetric Framing (n = 79 of 83) Units/Scale Used n = 79 articles gallons % of statewide water diversions qualitative descriptor only (e.g. ‘enormous’) acre-feet other (e.g. cities, reservoirs, tanker trucks) # of individuals or homes 34 (43%) 20 (25%) 15 (19%) 13 (16%) 9 (11%) 6 (8%) Source: Compiled by the Author 9780367371753_C005.indd 125 09-04-2021 09:09:27 126 Adrianne Kroepsch oil and gas development, or who wish to avoid conflict over it, frame the volume of hydraulic fracturing water demand with scales, units and comparisons that make it sound as inconsequential and harmless as possible, from less than 0.1 per cent of statewide diversions to nothing more than ‘noise’ in Colorado water use. Stakeholders who oppose oil and gas development frame their competing volumes with scales, units and comparisons that make it sound consequential and harmful, from enough water to sustain a city to a ‘sheer volume’. Competition framing: who wins and loses relative to this new water use? Just as soon as the contest over water volumes began in the Colorado media, water stakeholders and local journalists began unpacking those figures in order to sort out what categories of water—in other words, whose water—comprised them. In so doing, they invoked a second frame that has become equally prominent in narrations of hydraulic fracturing demands. That frame portrays the South Platte River Basin as an open marketplace in which energy companies and other water users compete against each other in a zero-sum match for water supplies, and it is leveraged to identify winners and losers relative to the oil and gas industry’s new water demands (Table 5.3). Such framing dramatically mischaracterises the way that water resources are actually managed in Colorado—which is by seniority in time, putting new-arrival energy companies in a junior position behind existing agricultural and municipal water users.7 The inaccuracies of the frame are precisely what make it instructive, however. The misconception that water provision is a zero-sum game waged by the energy sector against existing water users reflects both water’s role as a symbolic resource to be leveraged in energy conflicts and the ways that shortcomings in transparency limit narrations of this energy–water nexus. Among the water-quantity-focused news and opinion items in this study’s media sample (N = 83), nearly two-thirds of stories (61 per cent) framed the hydraulic fracturing energy–water nexus in terms of competition between energy companies and other water users. Farmers were most frequently cast as contending with the oil and gas industry for water (41 per cent of water competition stories), with cities at a close second place (35 per cent) (Table 5.3). But that is where the similarities between farmers and cities largely end in the hydraulic fracturing media discourse. Interestingly, while both farmers and cities were framed as being threatened by energy companies’ new water demands, cities were often portrayed in the media as figuring out how to leverage the boomtime water competition in their own favour; farmers, on the other hand, were more likely to be described as victims of a thirsty new industry. ‘If this water is going to go into oil and gas wells, there’s going to be a loser’, argued a WRA water expert in a 2012 Denver Post story. ‘Where’s this water going to come from? Municipalities? Agriculture?’ The answer was from both, but only cities would gain public scrutiny for the water deals they struck with the oil and gas industry because only cities publicly reported the volumes and revenues associated with their water sales. 9780367371753_C005.indd 126 09-04-2021 09:09:27 When oil meets water 127 A well-known county commissioner from the South Platte River Basin illustrated the divergent characterisations of cities and farmers in a single remark made to the Denver Post in 2011. ‘It’s up to each municipality to see how much available water they have to sell’, he opened. He closed, ‘We must ensure that we don’t jeopardize our agricultural heritage’. What this local official and other stakeholders omitted is the fact that both categories of water users—municipal and agricultural—have been actively engaged in hydraulic fracturing water sales. Indeed, farmers who own saleable water in close proximity to drilling activity have been negotiating short-term water sales much like those that cities have been pursuing (Table 5.3). A brief wet period from late 2013–2015 aided both municipal and agricultural stakeholders in their water marketing efforts, but farmers and cities were also selling water during the dry year of 2012 and summer 2013. Only the municipal transactions became a subject of public debate, however. ‘What’s wrong with this picture’, wrote a frustrated Boulder resident in a letter to the editor of the Daily Camera in spring 2013. ‘We are being asked to conserve water because of an almost certain drought, yet there are hundreds of gas and oil wells being fracked right east of us … How about imposing water restrictions on gas and oil companies?’ Such complaints appeared in local media throughout the dry years of 2012 and 2013, as opponents of hydraulic fracturing challenged their cities’ water sales to the oil and gas industry. Farmers’ water transactions, conducted in the private sphere, did not receive the same level of attention. The disparity in public attention, and the divergent casting of cities as winners and farmers as losers relative to hydraulic fracturing water demands, are important for what they reveal about the effects of transparency on media discourse. As publicly held entities, city water utilities felt compelled to report their hydraulic fracturing water sales in response to public inquiries, though they did so only in annual aggregate terms (the city of Greeley’s water utility earned $4.2 million in dry 2012, for example). The terms of farmers’ water sales, on the other hand, remained off the open record because they were conducted as private transactions between companies and/or individuals. Because there is no public reporting requirement for private water transactions, farmers’ water sales went unnoticed and un-discussed. TABLE 5.3 Prevalence of Competition Framing within Articles Concerned with Water Quantity Issues (N = 83). Framing Who loses? Competition Framing (n = 51 out of 83) Stakeholders Cited in Competition for Water Farmers Municipalities Environment Downstream states Frequency n = 51 articles 21 (41%) 18 (35%) 10 (20%) 2 (4%) Source: Compiled by the Author 9780367371753_C005.indd 127 09-04-2021 09:09:27 128 Adrianne Kroepsch The limited data provided by city water utilities were enough to spur debate among those cities’ residents. Protestors appeared at public meetings in several South Platte River Basin cities, and at least one city council passed a ban on hydraulic fracturing water sales (Anas 2013). In these public venues, as well as in the media, opponents of hydraulic fracturing urged that oil and gas extraction be reconsidered precisely because of its water demands and asked whether energy development was a responsible use of the state’s water. ‘What happens when the water use for manufacturing and natural gas extraction compete with the farmers and population centers’, asked a Greeley resident of his city’s local paper in 2012, for example. ‘Greeley’s forefathers were visionaries who obtained and protected water. Are we being good stewards of our resources?’ Comparing narrations: media representations, everyday accounts The two framing contests examined thus far reflect important discursive aspects of water conflicts. First, the struggle to calculate the volume of hydraulic fracturing water demands and frame their significance reflects the power of numbers in discourse. In the early stages of a policy debate, it is common for stakeholders to attempt to quantify the size of the issue at hand, and to launch a statistical scrimmage in the process. Because numbers carry such rhetorical power in public debates, any quantification of an issue is usually challenged with rival numbers and interpretations (Best 2004). The result is a proliferation of numerical representations in the public discourse, each conveying a different message about the significance of the issue at hand. Second, the framing of cities as winners and farmers as losers reflects the zerosum assumptions that often accompany water conflicts (Fischhendler 2015), as well as the tendency for narrations of environmental conflicts to organise stakeholders into the familiar categories of victims, villains and heroes (Jones and McBeth 2010). In broad cultural terms, the against-all-odds farmer in the arid American West fits neatly into the victim category when a zero-sum water frame is applied (Ward 2005), but a close look at the South Platte reveals that such tidy archetypes do not hold across the board. Energy companies have found willing water sellers in both the municipal and agricultural sectors, even during dry years. While the first set of frames (on volumes) overcomplicates the hydraulic fracturing energy–water nexus debate and the second set of frames (on competition) oversimplifies it, the questions driving these framing contests—how much water is the oil and gas industry using? and whose water is it?—are important.They also have yet to be effectively answered in the South Platte River Basin, as revealed by in-depth interviews with state water regulators responsible for the day-to-day supervision of water distribution in the basin. From their vantage point at the river’s key monitoring posts, these regulators described a more complex and uncertain energy–water nexus than that portrayed by stakeholders in the media. Specifically, water regulators’ stories of overseeing boom time water demands revealed systemic energy–water nexus data disconnects that have prevented a thorough accounting of the oil and gas industry’s water use. To explain, energy 9780367371753_C005.indd 128 09-04-2021 09:09:27 When oil meets water 129 companies have several choices of legal water sources in Colorado, each with its own unique hydrologic and governance considerations (Table 5.4). State water regulators are charged with tracking all diversions of water from the state’s rivers, and with ensuring that all water uses are lawful. Every drop of water in the South Platte River Basin must be counted and managed according to Colorado water law, which is based on seniority and time and which assigns specific place, use and volume requirements to water. In interviews, regulators described the challenges of keeping up with energy companies’ quickly evolving buying strategies, and water purveyors’ quickly evolving selling strategies, in order to ensure their legality. ‘We have some real concerns that we don’t know where all the water is coming from’, said one South Platte water regulator. TABLE 5.4 List of Legal Water Sources for Hydraulic Fracturing Use in the South Platte River Basin, as Derived from CDWR et al. (2012) and Interviews with Water Stakeholders and Energy Companies Type of Water Short-Term Sources Water transported from outside the state Treated or raw water from a municipality Effluent from a municipality Legal Limitations None, so long as water carries no legal obligation to Colorado or state of origin Original water right must be decreed for industrial use, plus use to extinction (in other words, no requirement for return flows) Original water right must be decreed for industrial use, plus use to extinction (no requirement for return flows) Surface water from a landowner (e.g. Original water right must be decreed for industrial a farmer) or from an irrigation use, plus use to extinction (no return flows) ditch company If groundwater and surface water systems are connected, depletions from stream must be Well water from a landowner replaced with legal water from one of the other categories Pumping limits of no more than 1% of the supply Deep non-tributary groundwater per year Can be leased from owners of individual CBT shares, Surface water from the Coloradobut must be used within CBT’s service area along Big Thompson Project (CBT) the South Platte River Long-Term Sources New diversion of river water under No speculation allowed; water must be put to a new water right beneficial use from a single, defined location Water right must be changed to industrial use if not Purchasing an existing water right already; gain only the historic non-consumptive flows so that historic return flows continue Source: Compiled by the Author 9780367371753_C005.indd 129 09-04-2021 09:09:27 130 Adrianne Kroepsch These monitoring concerns reflect a classic energy–water regulatory disjuncture that has been made particularly acute by the quick onset of the oil and gas boom. When the boom heated up along the South Platte in 2010, state oil and gas regulators were not accustomed to managing an industry with such persistent water demands. By the same token, state water regulators were not accustomed to monitoring the shifting and short-term water demands of oil and gas companies.8 To better track water use, oil and gas regulators began asking for more information, but the data they gathered did not help water regulators. Oil and gas regulators asked only for the volume of water used for each hydraulic fracturing job and how much of it was recycled; they did not demand any information on the water’s source, and they gave energy companies 60 days to report the volume. Water regulators, charged with tracking all diversions from the river in real time, were no better off. To get the information they needed, water regulators took to reading oil and gas regulators’ 48-hour hydraulic fracturing notices and calling the energy companies on the phone to ask where they were getting their water. They also set about developing and disseminating protocols that set standard notice, water measurement and water accounting procedures for the oil and gas industry. Because of these monitoring efforts, water regulators say monitoring and reporting have improved. But they also acknowledge that their system is not yet perfect. Furthermore, the hydraulic fracturing water data that water regulators do capture cannot be aggregated and analysed, since it blends in with all of the other diversions categorised as ‘industrial’ in the river basin. Fully closing these data gaps—in monitoring and in analysis—would require state-level rule changes, which do not appear to be happening. Ultimately, a full accounting of how much water is being used for hydraulic fracturing in the South Platte River Basin and whose water it is will require improved coordination between energy and water regulators. Conclusion Colorado’s hydraulic fracturing debate has, thus far, been one of duelling estimates that aim to answer the questions of how much water the oil and gas industry is using and at whose loss or gain. Energy and water stakeholders frame the answers to these questions in ways that contribute to broader narratives about the local impacts of hydraulic fracturing water demands. By casting hydraulic fracturing water demands as less than 0.1 per cent of statewide water use or enough for a new city, and by portraying Colorado water use as a zero-sum game with clear winners and losers, South Platte River Basin stakeholders have narrated hydraulic fracturing as being either harmful or harmless, worthy of contesting or not.These framing contests have alternately overcomplicated and oversimplified the debate over this new energy–water nexus. In the process, water has become a symbol and a political vehicle through which to fight or defend this form of energy development. The oil and gas industry’s use of water remains a strategic discursive front for stakeholders of all kinds, in Colorado and elsewhere (de Rijke, Munro and Zurita 2016). 9780367371753_C005.indd 130 09-04-2021 09:09:27 When oil meets water 131 Two important factors have been operating in the background to structure these framing struggles and the narrations to which they contribute: data availability and transparency, plus hydrology. Fundamentally, narrations of Colorado’s hydraulic fracturing energy–water nexus have been shaped more by the absence of information than by its presence. The dearth of relevant data affects the stories told. State water and energy regulators’ estimate of hydraulic fracturing water use as being less than 0.1 per cent of statewide demand ignores the fact that most of these new water demands are localised in the South Platte River Basin, as well as the complicated data-gathering disjunctures that exist between energy and water regulators on the ground. These information gaps make the oil and gas industry’s local water impacts difficult to track, aggregate and interpret with precision. Without more data, better data and publicly available data, Colorado’s public discourse remains at the surface of this important new energy–water nexus—steered by slivers of information, such as municipalities’ annual water sales, that provide only partial glimpses into a complicated set of water transactions and regulatory activity. In the long run, as climate, hydrology and energy systems change in unpredictable ways, the data disconnects and uncertainties at this energy–water nexus are more likely to ensure that water conflicts come into being than otherwise. Short of a more detailed and transparent accounting of how water moves in the South Platte River Basin, stakeholders will continue to contest volumes, winners and losers based on incomplete data. Stuck on these unknowns, policy questions that require forward-thinking—such as what effect the boom/bust nature of hydrocarbon production will have on other water users or how lessons from present-day hydraulic fracturing activity might shape long-term energy and water resource planning in Colorado—remain outside of media and policy agendas. Unfortunately for public discourse, the prospects for improving transparency on water quantity issues appear dim in Colorado. Great strides have been made in transparency measures oriented toward water quality, in the form of state-level hydraulic fracturing fluid chemical disclosure rules and groundwater quality monitoring rules adopted in 2011 and 2012, respectively. But calls for more transparency on the water quantity side of the hydraulic fracturing issue made by environmentalists, academics and even investor groups have gone largely unheeded (Belanger 2012; Jaffe 2014; Webber 2012). The contingencies of nature have also worked to shape media attention to, and narrations of, this new energy–water nexus. As drought conditions lifted in late 2013 and a brief two-year wet cycle began, local news and opinion coverage of the water quantity questions surrounding hydraulic fracturing diminished considerably (Figure 5.1).Water’s temporary abundance rendered an already non-transparent energy–water nexus even more invisible, and even less likely to see the kind of sustained public attention necessary for improving energy–water nexus coordination. The climate will not always be so kind, however. And if the future holds both a sustained drought and an oil and gas production boom, this time more closely synchronised, the public discourse may gain one more threshold question to drive 9780367371753_C005.indd 131 09-04-2021 09:09:27 132 Adrianne Kroepsch future narrations of hydraulic fracturing water use: how have regulatory coordination and transparency at this energy–water nexus improved since the last extractive boom? Notes 1 Time reports as of 2014 that it has a circulation of 3.3 million and a readership of 20–25 million. 2 Here, local is intended to mean the scale of the oil field, which is a portion of the South Platte River Basin and which contains many communities. The ‘local’ stands in contrast to relatively abstract lifecycle or statewide framings of energy development. 3 An acre-foot is the amount of water that takes to flood an acre of land to one foot in depth. It is the common unit of water volume in the American West and translates to approximately 326,000 gallons or 1.2 million litres. 4 A ‘stage’ is a single round or phase of fracturing and longer wells require more of them. 5 These included opinion editorials, columns, in-house editorials, and letters-to-the-editor. 6 Water brokers are entrepreneurs who work to connect water sellers with water buyers and arrange for water transactions. 7 In Colorado, like in other western states in the U.S., water rights are allocated via a ‘first in time, first in right’ principle. For a full explanation of Colorado’s Prior Appropriation Doctrine and water administration system, see Jones and Cech (2009). 8 A hydraulic fracturing team needs water at a well pad for only a few days and then moves on to another well pad, while an irrigator uses water throughout a growing season and stays in one place the entire time. 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Lynn, Steve. 2012.‘Drought-afflicted Farmers Make their Case for Water’, Denver Business Journal, http://bizwest.com/drought-afflicted-farmers-make-their-case-for-water/ (accessed on 13 August 2015). Macknick, J., S. Sattler, K. Averyt, S. Clemmer, and J. Rogers. 2012. ‘The Water Implications of Generating Electricity: Water Use across the United States based on Different Electricity Pathways through 2050’,Environmental Research Letters,7.doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/045803. Meldrum, J., S. Nettles-Anderson, G. Heath, and J. 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Johnson, and Hui Fen Tan. 2015. ‘No Fracking Way!’ Documentary Film, Discursive Opportunity, and Local Opposition against Hydraulic Fracturing in the United States, 2010 to 2013, American Sociological Review, 80(5): 934–959. doi:10.1177/0003122415598534. Walsh, Brian. 2011.‘People Who Mattered: Mark Ruffalo,Anthony Ingraffea, Robert Howarth, Time’, http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101745_ 2102309_2102323,00.html (accessed on 13 August 2015). Ward, Ian. 2005. ‘Drought, News Media, and Policy Debate’, in L.C. Botterill and D.A. Wilhite (eds), From Disaster Response to Risk Management. Netherlands: Springer. Webber, Michael. 2012. ‘Will Drought Cause the Next Blackout?’, Daily Camera, http:// www.dailycamera.com/ci_21147584/webber-will-drought-cause-next-blackout (accessed on 13 August 2015) 9780367371753_C005.indd 134 09-04-2021 09:09:27 6 WATER AND CONFLICTS AROUND RELIGIOUS HERITAGE Oscillations between centre and periphery? Vera Lazzaretti1 Introduction In the very centre of Banaras lies the Well of Knowledge, a water place that was once crucial to the representation of the city as one of the most important Hindu pilgrimage destinations of North India. Banaras is the name residents use for their city, officially known as Varanasi, in Uttar Pradesh, India and the Well is located in the middle of the old part of the city, in a compound that also contains two major shrines. One is the famous temple of Vishvanath, a form of the god Shiva as Lord of the Universe, which is the main pilgrimage destination in the city, and the other is the imposing Gyan Vapi mosque.The latter is often referred to as the Juma masjid, namely the mosque for the Friday (juma) congregation and, is thus, arguably, the main Islamic shrine of the city. Between them lies a large open space (maidan), which hosts various minor Hindu shrines and the arcaded pavilion where the Well of Knowledge is found inside a sculpted enclosure. The two main shrines—the mosque and the temple—have a controversial history, and the whole compound is today highly security-sensitive. Despite its prominent position, though, the Well, in recent times, has gone almost unnoticed. In this chapter, I explore multiple disputes that take place around this compound by focusing on the Well. In particular, I look at ‘oscillations’ between centrality and peripherality of the role of the Well and its water in the narration of this site of religious heritage. Like cultural anthropologists, I conceive of heritage as always in the making, rather than as a given. The process entails a selection and shaping of fragments of culture that are transformed into valuable goods, recognised by some as heritage (Bendix 2009). Heritage inherently involves power because its forms are shaped and managed by powerful actors. It often, if not always, entails disagreements and discrepancies between those powerful actors and heritage ‘bearers’ or practitioners 9780367371753_C006.indd 135 09-04-2021 09:09:52 136 Vera Lazzaretti themselves (Hafstein 2009). Heritage sites and practices, thus, are almost invariably contested, especially because aspiration to heritage is always an attempt to ‘craft a universalizing narrative’ (Di Giovine 2015), or a historical truth that excludes alternative perspectives. The site of religious heritage that I address is not one that has been recognised by the ‘authorized heritage discourse’ (Smith 2006) represented by the bodies and legislations of the international heritage enterprise, such as the UNESCO; but rather, it belongs to the rich variety of ‘unofficial heritages’ (Harrison 2013: 14–15). Disputes around heritage are observable everywhere; however, the socially diverse and heterogeneous context of South Asia is a fertile ground for contestations over the forms the past is given, and sites of religious heritage are increasingly the canvas on which powerful forces wish to draw and display their own idea of what heritage ought to be. By drawing on textual analysis, archival material and ethnographic research, I first trace the development of a mainstream narrative that depicts the Vishvanath temple and Gyan Vapi mosque compound as a site of inter-communal conflicts. I then highlight the role that the Well of Knowledge has been made to play in such a narrative. In so doing, I look at ways in which the purposes of various powerful crafters of the narrative at times overlapped and put water at the centre of it. During colonial times, in particular, attempts to re-define the Well and its water helped sustain the idea that the area should be exclusively Hindu and in need of protection or at least separation from the Muslim other. In a later section, I document ways in which events since the 1980s have pushed water to a rather peripheral role and led to a situation in which the Well has been ignored in the reshaping of the compound. This transition, I argue, arises from state-imposed security arrangements and more recently from an emphasis on urban development and ‘beautification’—both variations of the mainstream narrative that depicts the site as a conflicted space. For some time, the Well was not only peripheral but also hidden from view, and progressively less accessible. The mainstream narrative, with its variations, has been instrumental in obscuring the subtle disputes that unfold around the Well and are, in this case, exclusively within the Hindu domain. These disputes inherently challenge unitary representations of Hinduness and heritage advocated by Hindu nationalists. Since 2017, however, physical changes to the boundaries of the site have again exposed the Well and its inner disputes to public view. Drawing on recent research at the site, I conclude by suggesting that the role of the Well of Knowledge might well oscillate back to the centre and regain a prominent role as this site of religious heritage continues being remade in a form currently crafted by the Hindu nationalist forces governing both India and the state of Uttar Pradesh. Minor water places and conflicts Some conflicts over water have international resonance and attract the attention of scholars of various disciplines (for example, Homer-Dixon 1999; Mehta 2005; Spronk and Flores 2007; Asthana and Shukla 2014), as well as the contributions of 9780367371753_C006.indd 136 09-04-2021 09:09:52 Water and conflicts around religious heritage 137 activists, NGOs and public intellectuals. This is especially the case when they turn into violent disputes with international relevance and reach the public domain (for example, Peluso and Watts 2001; Collier and Hoeffler 2005). As far as sacred water places are concerned, the fact that they often serve both ritual and practical functions makes them prone to conflicts. In South Asia, for example, rivers are core cases in which to investigate diverse epistemologies and conflicts over the uses of water. There are also, however, a variety of disputes that rarely reach the public domain, and which develop over other water places which could be called minor. Their vast implications and unexpected complexity have only begun to be explored (Joy et al. 2008). The case of Banaras is a telling example: in the scholarship focused on the city, we find a vast production about the river Ganga, including mythological explorations, environmental studies and comparisons of different knowledge systems (for example, Darrian 1978; Alley 2002; Madan 2005; Doron, Barz and Nelsen 2014). On the contrary, only very few scholars have concentrated on other, less prominent, water places or water structures of the city.2 Also, the shrines of Banaras, with their history of construction and reconstruction, have been the subject of an overwhelming scholarly production,3 while sacred water places, although found in great numbers and constitutive of the urban landscape (Singh 1955), have been almost completely ignored, making the water perspective a somewhat fresh approach to the city. Minor water places, though, constitute multi-faceted realities, and attempts to shape or appropriate their often ‘only’ symbolic meanings and ritual functions are likely to be contested. In the case of the Well of Knowledge, the particular power of water lies in its ‘symbolic capital’ (Fontein 2008). Over time, compilers of Sanskrit glorifications, various Brahman ritual specialists, sovereigns, colonial officials, and the post-colonial state with its various agencies have drawn on it to shape a mainstream narrative of conflict. At the same time, an exploration of the Well of Knowledge and its ‘spatialities of power’ (ibid.: 751) is central to understanding those inner disputes that would otherwise be overwhelmed by that narrative. Minor water places, more generally, may well have the capacity to illuminate nuances of conflicts and the layers of their narration. A conflicted space: the Vishvanath temple–Gyan Vapi mosque compound Before dealing with the Well of Knowledge itself, in this section, I highlight the various phases, means and voices through which the compound in which the Well dwells has been narrated as a conflicted space over the centuries. The present Vishvanath temple was constructed only in the second half of the eighteenth century with the sponsorship of Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore, who was a well-known and active patron in this period of construction activities in the city (Gutschow 2006). During such a period, various social forces and patrons participated in the reworking of the city’s built fabric and image. The new class of 9780367371753_C006.indd 137 09-04-2021 09:09:52 138 Vera Lazzaretti landlords, bankers and merchants that emerged in the eighteenth century, together with regional sovereigns, the local rajas (kashi naresh) and the colonial administration, acted as the principal forces in the ‘resurrection’ (Desai 2007) of Banaras as a Hindu sacred centre, a tirtha (Bayly 1999; Dalmia 1997). Patronage for the construction or reconstruction of buildings—in particular, shrines, monasteries to host pilgrims, ritual spaces, and indeed, water bodies—and the promotion of selected religious gatherings and festivals were seen as pious activities that helped consolidate power and display wealth (Freitag 1989; Desai 2017). Meanwhile, members of the Brahman élite searched for places mentioned in the earlier Sanskrit glorification literature, and sometimes ‘re-discovered’ them, as described by colonial reports (for example, Sherring 1868: 105–106), helping to link the newly built landscape to the textual sacred space. Colonial reports with their orientalist gaze also helped reinforce the idea of Banaras as an ancient, eternal and exclusively Hindu sacred abode. The sponsorship of the Vishvanath temple represents the peak of reconstruction activities in Banaras (Gutschow 2006) and was the result of a series of attempts to rebuild the temple in one of its supposedly ‘original’ locations. For many, in fact, at that time as well as today, the ‘real’Vishvanath temple dwells precisely where the Gyan Vapi mosque is located. At this very site, in fact, the Mughals had sponsored the building of a previous Vishvanath temple in the sixteenth century (Desai 2017), but that had been destroyed by Aurangzeb in 1669 (Khan 1947: 55)—apparently for political reasons rather than bigotry (Asher 1992; Eaton 2001). Even though evidence about the Gyan Vapi mosque’s patron and date of construction are lacking (Asher 1992), Aurangzeb is widely believed to have had it built, partially with the debris of the dismantled temple. This narrative around the temple and the mosque is supported by numerous colonial reports (for example, Nevill 1909, Muthiah, K.S. & Co et al. 1911). The reconstruction of the temple in its current location resulted from claims on the area by Hindu regional patrons, who, in the course of the eighteenth century, had demanded the destruction of the mosque for a new Vishvanath temple, but instead were granted a portion of land close to it (Motichandra 1985: 229–230; Desai 2007: 2). These claims, at that time, contributed to the narration of the area as a site of contestation, but also grounded the more recent demands from Hindu nationalists.The latter, as we will see, asserted similar claims over the mosque during and after the Ramjanmabhumi movement and the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in 1992.4 That the British attitude towards competing claims of religious communities was aimed at a form of neutrality is testified to by examples of equal patronage of both Hindu and Muslim shrines (Medhasananda 2002; Desai 2007). The various demands over contested areas by Hindus were rarely openly supported by the colonial administration, whose main concerns were security and communal harmony, especially during religious festivals, and the development and sanitising of the city. However, it has been highlighted that the passive and non-interventionist attitude of the colonial administration towards regional patrons and their sponsorship of new 9780367371753_C006.indd 138 09-04-2021 09:09:52 Water and conflicts around religious heritage 139 temples next to the historical mosques of the city, which represented then its major architectural heritage, resulted in the ‘juxtaposition’ of possibly competing religious spaces (Freitag 1989; Pandey 1990; Desai 2007). Indeed, the proximity of mosques and temples has often resulted in violent outbreaks and confrontations and has been presented since colonial times as supposedly self-evident proof to sustain variations of a diffused narrative of temple desecrations performed by the Mughals to the detriment of Hindus (Desai 2017). Certainly, it remains the basis of the frequent invitations by Hindu nationalists to ‘return’ sacred places to their ‘original’ Hindu owners—invitations that have repeatedly targeted, among other shared religious sites, the Vishvanath temple and Gyan Vapi mosque compound. In our case, colonial narratives seemed to corroborate Hindu claims over the area and reinforce the narrative of a historically disputed area. As will be better seen in the next section, colonial endorsement of the Hindu cause in the disputed area also occurred through re-definitions of the Well. Despite colonial administrators’ aspirations to neutrality, in fact, their interests and need to, for example, secure, develop and sanitise the city, overlapped with the purposes of Hindu patrons and local élites who claimed a unilateral memory of the past and wanted it to be manifested in the city’s material fabric. The well of knowledge in the narration of a conflicted space Having outlined the construction of the narrative of the area around the Vishvanath temple and the Gyan Vapi mosque as a contested site, in this section I illustrate how the Well and its water have been invested with meanings and used in this narrative. I show how the symbolism and rhetorical potential of the Well and its waters were mobilised to shape the area as a progressively more exclusively Hindu domain; in particular, the merging of the Well with the deity Vishvanath is underlined. I also look at how the Well became the focus of an independent and specific ritual arena, which itself contributed to the progressive Hinduisation of the area. Water will appear as having been a crucial element in the process of identity definition and heritage making by the majority religious community. Later, however, the centrality of water will be seen to be only temporary. Indian historical sources about water places and architectures speak of the inextricable connection of water with sacred space: according to textual sources on arts and architecture, and as testified to by inscriptions related to the construction of water structures, any new shrine has to be built where water dwells, because water is a crucial element for worship and leisure (Kramrisch 1946; Jain-Neubauer 1981). Water does, in fact, provide the theoretical and geographical foundation for sacred places, which are called tirthas, a term that indicates the act of crossing and that literally means ‘ford’ (Eck 1981). The few sacred places of Banaras mentioned by major early texts of the Brahmanic tradition were indeed associated with water (Lazzaretti 2017). The Well of Knowledge itself has been identified as a tank (vapi) which existed well before Vishvanath emerged as the patron deity of the city in connection with the area 9780367371753_C006.indd 139 09-04-2021 09:09:52 140 Vera Lazzaretti under investigation. Scholars of the earlier textual tradition have pointed out that the twelfth-century Tirthavivechanakanda of Lakshmidhara (Bakker and Isaacson 2004) locates the city’s first known major divine form, Avimukta, next to a water place. Avimukta occupied the role of main deity most likely from around the Gupta period and is said by the text to have been next to a water place, called a vapi, and both have been tentatively located by Bakker (1996, 2008) in the area under investigation. It is conceivable that the vapi predated the shrine and may even have been the reason for its establishment in that location. The relationship between Avimukta and Vishvanath is still to be fully understood; however,Avimukta, a form of Shiva associated with death and liberation, was replaced from around the twelfth century by a new form of Shiva as the Lord of the Universe (Vishveshvar or Vishvanath). This apparently sudden emergence of Vishvanath was clearly sanctioned by the thirteenth- to fourteenth-century Kashikhanda (henceforth KKh),5 a glorification which acted as a sort of re-projection of the city’s sacred geography around Vishvanath as its new centre (Smith 2007). At that time, the vapi became known as Jnanavapi, the Well of Knowledge, and was absorbed into the Vishvanath tradition, a process that would likely have helped to legitimise the emerging deity: as I have discussed elsewhere (Lazzaretti 2017), the Kashikhanda details the newly conceived mythological origins of the Well as now linked to Vishvanath. The text also describes the qualities of its water, which is seen as bestowing knowledge, wisdom and liberation from rebirth; a series of ritual uses are prescribed by the text (KKh 33.1–52 and 34). With its specific divine qualities, the Well is often identified in the same chapters of the Kashikhanda with Vishvanath himself, and indeed is said to represent the water form of the deity—a theme that would be further developed in the period between the destruction of the Mughal Vishvanath temple by Aurangzeb and the construction of the new Vishvanath temple. Crucial to our analysis is the fact that, in that period, the water of the Well was again mobilised to keep alive the memory of the main shrine, thus playing a central role in the narration of the contested space and the definition of its boundaries. After the destruction of the Mughal Vishvanath temple, the Well was, in fact, seen as the refuge of the homeless deity. Legends still well-diffused during colonial times speak of Aurangzeb’s desire to destroy the linga—the visible ‘sign’ of Shiva’s presence—and the subsequent ‘escape’ of the deity Vishvanath into the water. Several writers reported what they had been told by local priests and residents of the area. James Prinsep, the noted scholar, artist, pioneering cartographer and Assay Mint Master in Banaras included the ‘Gyan-Bapee Well’ in his famous collections of drawings (1833); in the description of the site that accompanies the lithograph, he reports a version of this legend: This spot is rendered more sacred in the eyes of the Hindoos from the fact that the lingum of the original Vishveshvar having, upon its demolition by the Emperor Aurangzeb, spontaneously cast itself, as it is believed, into the well: it was very probable thrown by the priests to preserve it from profanation. (ibid.: 71, Cf. Sherring 1868: 53–54) 9780367371753_C006.indd 140 09-04-2021 09:09:52 Water and conflicts around religious heritage 141 Being perceived as the refuge for the threatened divine image and by hosting the linga in its water, the Well came to be seen as the new divine abode, in a way replacing the destroyed shrine. As testified by pilgrims’ accounts analysed by Desai (2007 and 2017), devotees kept coming to the area to worship the Well and the back wall of the mosque.These were seen as receptacles of the divine power of Vishvanath and as substitutes for him in his temporary absence. Narratives that depict the Well as the refuge of the deity still circulate today: as I have been told by some of my interlocutors, many believe that the ‘original’ linga even now resides in the sacred waters, while the deity installed in the new Vishvanath temple is only a replica. After the construction of the new Vishvanath temple at the end of the eighteenth century, the colonial administration undertook extensive works on the city’s waterscape, often with the help of Hindu patrons. For a few years (1823–1829), a Committee for Local Improvement was established (Medhasananda 2002) to promote a more sanitised city and also to implement a ‘reordering of water control’ (Mosse 2008): in the case of Banaras, this included the reclamation of some of the rivulets and lakes of the city to enable space for urban development. Diverse epistemologies of water overlap during this phase of reshaping of the urban waterscape (Lazzaretti 2017), and indeed the reconfiguration of the Well of Knowledge during the first half of the nineteenth century can be seen as resulting from the overlap of efforts to materialise Brahmanic textual traditions in the city’s fabric with the colonial will to reshape water structures. Apart from becoming a temporary replacement for Vishvanath, the Well, in fact, began to acquire a more specific and independent role in the city’s sacred geography. Its pavilion, already mentioned in the KKh as a site for the performance of rituals connected to urban pilgrimage, is more specifically described in a local textual tradition of the sixteenth century (Kashirahasya) as the place where the most famous local urban pilgrimage should begin and end.6 The Well flourished, along with the importance of the group of ritual specialists in charge of it and its pavilion—the Vyas family7—and in the nineteenth century, the area was central to the practice of any local pilgrimage, as reported by Kedarnath Vyas and by other pilgrimage practitioners. Less than a century after the new Vishvanath temple was constructed, major works at the Well took place in 1828 and the construction of the monumental pavilion around it that we see today was apparently sponsored by Baija Bai of Gwalior (Sherring 1868: 53–54). I hypothesise that the Well was previously a larger pond, most likely accessible to devotees from both religious communities, but that it was at that time covered and reduced to the smaller structure that we see today. Steps leading to water are still visible through a grate on the pavement of the pavilion, and the configuration of the paving slabs also seems to suggest the presence of an earlier wider water place, similar to others found in the city. Moreover, several interlocutors recall the memories of their ancestors, who referred to the Well of Knowledge as a larger water place. In the words of Kedarnath Vyas, for instance, this intervention was made in order to let Hindu pilgrims sit and rest, for the performance of rituals, and indeed to promote the ritual role of the Well. 9780367371753_C006.indd 141 09-04-2021 09:09:52 142 Vera Lazzaretti The monumentalisation of the Well, and the apparent redefinition of its ritual uses, was most likely co-promoted by the colonial administration, and according to the records of the Committee for Local Improvement, it was well received, both as a measure for the management of a contested space and as a decisive improvement in the urban environment (quoted in Medhasananda 2002: 437).The Well was considered dirty and unhealthy because of the fervent activities of the large crowds of worshippers. The idea of the Well as a polluted water place in need of sanitation and regulation had in fact long been well-diffused. According to Ralph Fitch, in the second half of the sixteenth century, the large number of flowers thrown into the waters were the cause of the problem. He describes in archaic English a step-well next to the main deity, whom he calls Ada, possibly as a result of misunderstanding the name Hara, one of the common names of Shiva: Moreouer, they haue a great place made of stone like to a well with steppes to goe downe; wherein the water standeth very foule and stinketh: for the great quantitie of flowers, which continually they throwe into it, doe make it stinke. There be alwayes many people in it: for they say when they wash themselues in it, that their shines be forgiuen them, because God, as they say, did wash himselfe in that place. They gather vp the sand in the bottome of it, and say it is holy. They neuer pray but in the water, and they wash themselues ouerhead, and lade vp water with both their handes, and turne themselues about, and then they drinke a litle of the water three times, and so goe to their gods which stand in those houses. […] There come fiftie and sometime an hundred together to wash, to wash them in this well, and to offer to these idols. (Ryley 1899: 104–105) Even after the monumentalisation of the Well, Sherring (1868: 54) claims that the water is in a constant ‘state of putrefaction and emits a most disgusting stench’; but he praises the beauty of the recently built pavilion. Havell (1912: 180–181) speaks of the wells of the city in general and describes the ‘inconceivable foulness caused by the decay of floral offerings constantly thrown’ into the sacred water places which make them ‘anything but attractive to Europeans’. However, he does recognise that: ‘In the last few years a great good deal has been done for the sanitation of Banaras’, and quotes as an example of this, the monumentalisation of the Well of Knowledge. As witnessed by Prinsep (1833: 71), planks were placed across the top of the Well itself after the building of the pavilion, perhaps to prevent flowers and other offerings from falling in. Later, it was equipped with iron bars instead, according to Kedarnath Vyas, serving to stop the occasional suicides of liberation seekers. At some later time, a cloth was spread across the top to collect the offerings of flowers, fruits and coins and, until today, the water of the Well is not immediately visible to visitors. It became further secluded after the building of the pavilion when, as explained by Kedarnath Vyas, his ancestors arranged for access to the Well to be denied to Muslims, who apparently had previously used the water for ablution before entering 9780367371753_C006.indd 142 09-04-2021 09:09:52 Water and conflicts around religious heritage 143 the mosque. Such attempts to redefine access to and uses of the waters of the Well are also seen in the long history of legal battles over spatial demarcation in which the Vyas family has been involved for generations. Through court actions, they have had a crucial role in shaping the area as a ritual arena for pilgrimage, independently of the major shrine of Vishvanath, with which they may well have been, in a sense, in competition.8 As the starting point and final destination of any local pilgrimage performed in the city, the Well thus acquired a crucial, independent role in the revitalised Hindu sacred geography. This role, in which its waters are now not only symbolically but also spatially appropriated, clearly contributed to reifying boundaries and the shaping of a more exclusively Hindu ritual sphere around the Well and its pavilion. The reconfiguration of the Well is an example of the ways in which textual, ideal and imagined sacred space were projected onto the urban fabric (Gaenszle and Gengnagel 2008), which was ‘co-produced’ as well by the colonial intervention. The case of the Well of Knowledge clearly speaks of power dynamics and intricate mechanisms of tradition-making linked to water systems and water places (Cf. Mosse 2003). Along with their transmission of narratives about the Well’s water as the refuge of Vishvanath, the participation of the British in the spatial reshaping of the area seemed, tacitly or otherwise, to endorse Hindu claims over it.The very idea that the area was contested and was in need of regulation, contributed naturally enough to promoting the sorts of security concerns that would soon become pervasive. From centre to periphery: water neglected amidst security and development In this section I detail changes to the area since the 1980s. In this period, we see the Well progressively fall into a peripheral position, at least until very recently. Instead of being central to narrations that depicted the Vishvanath temple and Gyan Vapi mosque compound as a site of inter-religious conflicts, it became the arena for subtler and, up to very recent times, mostly hidden disputes. These take place solely within the Hindu domain and, as described below, revolve around contrasting conceptions of Hinduness and heritage. Two new themes provide variations on the mainstream narrative of the area as a conflicted space. These are, firstly, concerns about security, and secondly, the bombastic emphasis that both national and state governments have placed on development and ‘beautification’. Security concerns Security had been a concern in the Well of Knowledge area at least since colonial times, as we have seen above. Around 1980 though, communal tensions throughout India increased due to a number of factors, which extend from government policies about reservations of jobs and educational opportunities for underprivileged sections of society to changes in the social base of the political forces that gave rise 9780367371753_C006.indd 143 09-04-2021 09:09:52 144 Vera Lazzaretti to the BJP (Jaffrelot 1999). In Banaras, a series of communal riots were narrated by some in such a way as to reinforce the stereotypical portrait of the Muslim community as a homogeneous, backward and bigoted one (Raman 2010). The tense climate had repercussions for the management of public spaces and may well have contributed to changes in the administration of the city’s main religious compound that took place in 1983. In any case, at that time, the management of the Vishvanath temple was taken over by the state government from the local Brahman family which had long been the ritual authorities and had taken care of the shrine. The Kashi Vishvanath Temple Trust (henceforth KVTT) was established to administer the area and this whole transition was justified by the need for better and secure management.9 We might assume that the removal of the local ritual authorities irretrievably altered balances and relationships within the compound. The matter is yet to be critically explored but members of the displaced family report that they have been fighting the decision in the courts since it was made.10 The Well of Knowledge, however, was not immediately affected by the change in management. It continued to be run privately by the Vyas family, which has had control of the rituals, offerings and pilgrim inflow of the area up to very recent times. Further concerns for security developed during the communal tension that culminated in the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya in December 1992. Claims were also made at that time over the Gyan Vapi mosque by supporters of Hindutva, who targeted it as the next place to be ‘freed’ from Muslim presence.This further strengthened the image of the area as a space in need of better management and, as a consequence, a progressively stricter security plan was implemented, firstly to protect the mosque, and later to manage the whole area around the two shrines. The whole compound transitioned from being an open, shared and public space to being a cordoned-off, highly regulated, over-crowded, and now solely religious compound. Today, security forces strictly control the access of devotees through checkpoints (Lazzaretti 2020). Despite the above described Hinduisation of the Well and the reification of boundaries in the area during the nineteenth century, the wide maidan around the Well and the mosque had continued up to this time to be, as recounted by my interlocutors, a wide open and public space (mostly, they use the term khula in Hindi, or free in English) in the middle of a particularly intricate and congested area of the city. It was used for crossing the neighbourhood, as a place for leisure and domestic activities and as a playground frequented by children, apparently without fear of communal clashes. Many shopkeepers in the temple bazar around the compound explain that, despite being devotees of Vishvanath, they have given up visiting the shrine because they are unhappy with and nervous about the security procedures, and describe their feelings towards the whole management as anger (gussa ata hai). The place, they say, has become only for pilgrims from outside the city, and does not appeal to locals anymore. Even the bazar, they say, has suffered from the securitisation of the area and become focused on pilgrims, who, in any case, are hardly in the mood for shopping because their movements are highly restricted, and they have to leave their belongings in lockers outside the compound. 9780367371753_C006.indd 144 09-04-2021 09:09:52 Water and conflicts around religious heritage 145 As described by my interlocutors, soon after the events in Ayodhya, the mosque was ‘caged’ or fenced in, apparently to protect it. Access to it is still strictly controlled by the police, checked and sometimes refused, especially to Muslims from outside the city, as reported by the mufti-i-shahar Abdul Batin Nomani, leader of the local Muslims and imam of the Gyan Vapi mosque, and by its local frequenters. Until 2017, an uninterrupted view of the mosque, and more generally into the maidan and the Well of Knowledge, was only possible from inside the compound itself. Even restricted views of the mosque from points on the compound’s boundaries were often obstructed, most likely by shopkeepers, residents or the police. At the same time, the maidan and the in-between space where the Well dwells, have come under progressively stricter security arrangements and access procedures have made it difficult for groups of pilgrims to reach the Well’s pavilion for the performance of rituals. As a consequence, most pilgrimage groups now begin and conclude elsewhere (Lazzaretti 2015), and the Well has become more and more peripheral.The low-ranking Brahmans who distribute sips of holy water and collect offerings on behalf of the Vyas family are usually still in attendance, but as the maidan has progressively become a no man’s land, pilgrims are often directed solely towards the temple by the police. Many who pass by hardly even know about the existence of the Well of Knowledge. Development and ‘beautification’ A growing emphasis on ‘beautification’ and urban development has also had recent repercussions for the Well which, at the time of writing, remains peripheral, but could well be poised to return to centre stage once again. An increasing emphasis on development has been put on the city and the area under investigation, especially after the 2014 election victory of the Hindu nationalist coalition, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister. Modi chose Banaras as a symbolic seat of power when he stood for parliamentary elections from it, and urban development and ‘beautification’ for this iconic city have, since then, been a focus of his cultural and development agenda. The expansion of the Vishvanath temple domain, the city’s core pilgrimage destination, and various ‘beautification’ schemes linked to it, however, had already been entertained by state governments in the past, but never amounted to much. Many residents speak of decades of rumours about such plans. The KVTT has made sporadic attempts to acquire adjacent properties, with the ultimate aim of creating a unique temple-focused compound, where, according to the Trust’s previous officials, rest houses for pilgrims and a traditional Sanskrit school would be created, together with a new access path to the compound.11 During my stays, the Vyas family has increasingly complained of attempts by the Trust and by others to purchase their house and the properties close to the Well’s pavilion in the targeted area for acquisition. The expansion scheme began to be implemented more aggressively only after the BJP’s Yogi Adityanath came to power as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 9780367371753_C006.indd 145 09-04-2021 09:09:52 146 Vera Lazzaretti March 2017. Before long, many houses around the compound were purchased by the KVTT and, more recently, by the UP government itself, and then demolished. The government plans seem to promote a rather sanitised, manufactured and uniform vision of the heritage site, resembling in many ways a theme park ‘partially made up of ancient materials but heavily restored and refurbished to suit modern ideas about the past’ (Herzfeld 2006: 132). In her study of the Akshardham complex in Delhi, Brosius (2012) points out that religious theme parks are an increasing phenomenon in South Asia, and they can be seen as the materialisation of ‘a desire for a culture of civility, order and security’ (ibid.: 209). As spaces in which spiritual feelings are sublimated through visual consumption and performance, theme parks nod to the ‘auto-orientalist’ gaze that middle-class Indians cultivate to look at themselves (Mazzarella 2003: 138). The production of theme parks, nonetheless, entails the replacement of densely populated urban areas with imposing large spaces (Herzfeld 2006: 132). The development plan around the Kashi Vishvanath temple and Gyan Vapi mosque compound seems to be going in this direction, and would certainly produce ‘a space of control that excludes and makes invisible that which is forbidden, unpleasant or irritating in various ways’ (Brosius 2012: 209). In this case, the elements to be made invisible would include discarded ritual specialists, such as the Vyas family, local residents and Muslims. The house of the Vyas family was finally dismantled in summer 2017; and more was to come. Subsequently, as I observed during my last fieldwork in early 2018, a series of houses that had acted as a sort of boundary on the eastern side of the compound were demolished. This made the Gyan Vapi mosque and the pavilion of the Well of Knowledge—hidden for decades—now clearly visible. As a result, disputes that are staged at and around the Well’s pavilion, have become, and will probably remain, plainly visible and public. These include, as we have seen, the long-standing struggle of the Vyas family to maintain their status, role and space of belonging in the face of increased securitisation of the area. Following the latest demolitions, though, the previously subdued local protest movement against government development plans has been energised, and now consists of active and vocal residents and local religious authorities. Some have taken up the cause of discarded ritual specialists and spaces, such as the Vyas family and the Well of Knowledge, respectively. In opposing state-imposed development projects, these people articulate their own ideas of urban religious heritage. An analysis of these alternative articulations is part of my ongoing research and is beyond the scope of this chapter, but the very existence of this contestation within the Hindu domain is already a challenge to certain unitary representations of Hinduness and heritage (on this see also Lazzaretti 2021). Contested narratives and future scenarios If heritage making is principally about efforts to craft a universalising narrative, then the case of the Well of Knowledge illustrates the role that a minor water place can play in such a process. 9780367371753_C006.indd 146 09-04-2021 09:09:52 Water and conflicts around religious heritage 147 We have seen that the symbolic capital of the Well and its water have, at times, been central to sustaining the mainstream narrative that depicts the Vishvanath temple and Gyan Vapi mosque compound as a space of inter-communal conflicts. The narrative, with its variations over time, has been instrumental in corroborating Hindu claims over the compound. It does so by the identification of the compound with an ‘originally’ Hindu domain that has been usurped by Muslims—an identification that various powerful actors over time have actively proposed or tacitly endorsed. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the symbolism and rhetorical potential of the Well were mobilised to shape the city’s central religious space as an exclusively Hindu domain and the waters of the Well were identified with the deity Vishvanath himself, after a previous temple was dismantled by Aurangzeb. As a temporary replacement for the deity, the Well thus reinforced the narrative about inter-communal contestations by nurturing the longing for the ‘lost’Vishvanath and keeping alive the memory of the desecration perpetrated by Muslims. In the same period, the Well also became the ritual arena for the performance of local urban pilgrimage, supervised by the Vyas family. The Well’s waters were materially appropriated, and its ritual uses defined as exclusively Hindu. At the same time, the colonial need for sanitation of water structures and systems and urban amelioration partially coincided with the efforts of Hindu patrons to ‘materialise’ the Hinduness of the city. Colonial narratives about the area drew on Hindu versions of the contestation and also contributed to the projection of a solely Hindu religious heritage. More recently, variations of the mainstream narrative emerged. On the one hand, security concerns have increased considerably since the 1980s and have strengthened the narration of the area as a site of inter-communal tensions. On the other hand, an emphasis on urban development emerged within the government agenda and the area was targeted as one to be ‘beautified’ according to the current Hindu nationalist aesthetic. Both these variations have provoked a transition of the Well and its waters to a peripheral role.Through securitisation, in fact, it became a hardly accessible no man’s land; the development scheme, up to now, seems to have ignored it. As a consequence, the subtler disputes that symbolically and materially take place at the Well of Knowledge have also been obscured. These disputes, in contrast to the idea transmitted by the mainstream narrative, unfold, instead, within the Hindu domain.They speak of fragmented conceptions of Hinduness and challenge the unitary representation of Hindu heritage and identity advocated by Hindu nationalists. At the time of writing, there are several possible future scenarios. One is that the Well could fall into the category of forgotten, useless things, with little appeal to consumers of the new religious heritage projected by the ‘beautification’ scheme. A second is that the Well’s symbolic capital could be mobilised anew, and the pavilion and its maidan ‘beautified’ within the ongoing redevelopment as part of a sanitised, modern and secure Hindu theme park.This would have repercussions for the already distanced Muslim community.The transformation of the Well’s maidan—for long an independent ritual arena and a buffer between the temple and the mosque—would further throw into doubt the rights of access of Muslims and their belonging to this area of the city. 9780367371753_C006.indd 147 09-04-2021 09:09:52 148 Vera Lazzaretti There is, however, a possible third scenario. It seems that the large-scale demolitions have made the Well and the previously hidden disputes within the Hindu community staged here, more visible, both metaphorically and actually. The Well of Knowledge is then likely to be oscillating back to a central role, and this time, it could be mobilised as counter to the mainstream narrative, by becoming a symbol of the protest and the main arena for the formulation of alternative conceptions of Hinduness and heritage. It is far more likely, though, that the Well will soon attract the attention of the government and the second scenario will come to pass. Through its incorporation into the theme park, the symbolic capital of water would then again be instrumental in enhancing the power of, and imaginaries of desecration centred on the Vishvanath temple. Yet another variation of the mainstream narrative about this site would then be taking shape: one that would likely assist the Hindu nationalists’ campaign for the re-acquisition of allegedly usurped religious domains. Notes 1 A first draft of this chapter was written in 2015, drawing on research data I began collecting from 2013 and then, more specifically, during a period of fieldwork from January to April 2015, as an independent researcher. Subsequent drafts have progressively integrated this material with data collected in the following years as part of research funded by the University of Milan and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). In October 2017, I joined the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages of the University of Oslo, where the final version of this chapter took shape. Material collected during recent fieldwork in early 2018, during a time of disruption in the area, has been only partially drawn on in the final section, and enormous changes are ongoing. I thank the editors of this volume and the anonymous reviewer for their stimulating comments on various drafts, and Geoff Ainsworth for support in editing the text and thinking through my data over time. Names of interlocutors are only mentioned in the case of public figures. 2 Rötzer (1989) and Jalais (2014) have addressed specific water architectures, while Schütte (2008) and Doron (2013) dealt with groups of workers linked to water, such as dhobis and boatmen. For a more extensive account of studies about water in Banaras, see Lazzaretti 2017. 3 An idea of the variety of the production on Banaras and the now often criticised focus on its Hindu sacred geography (in Dodson 2012, for instance), can be gathered by looking at the Banaras Bibliography compiled by the Heidelberg research team: http://www.sai.uniheidelberg.de/abt/IND/publikation/bibbanaras/bibbanaras.php (accessed in July 2018). 4 The Ramjanmabhumi (Ram’s birthplace) movement is a Hindu religious and political campaign for the construction of a Ram temple in its supposedly ‘original’ birthplace, Ayodhya. The movement was orchestrated by Hindu nationalist forces, and supported by leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and it led to the demolition of the sixteenth century Babri mosque in Ayodhya which provoked an outbreak of communal riots in many cities of the subcontinent. The demolition of the Babri mosque in December 1992 is arguably among the most critical events in the history of post-colonial South Asia. 5 The Kashikhanda is a section of the Skandapurana and represents the most authoritative eulogistic text on the city; on date and content, see Bakker and Isaacson (2004) and Smith (2007). 9780367371753_C006.indd 148 09-04-2021 09:09:52 Water and conflicts around religious heritage 149 6 The pilgrimage is the Panchakroshiyatra, which circumambulates the entire sacred field of the city; the first description of it is found in the Kashirahasya. For an account of the Panchakroshiyatra, see Singh (2002) and Gengnagel (2011). 7 The Vyas family of Jnanavapi consider themselves descendants of Veda Vyas, the mythical compiler of the Mahabharata. The ancestors of the family that adopted ‘Vyas’ as title are said to belong to the gotra Parashar, and their surname was Upadhyaya. The current elder of the family is Kedarnath Vyas who, together with his three brothers, adopted the title from his maternal uncle Baijanath Vyas who had no male heirs. The Vyas do not see themselves as belonging to the group of local Brahman families of ritual specialists who call themselves ‘son of the tirtha’ (tirthapurohita) and are usually in charge of collecting offerings and taking care of the various shrines of the city; they also strongly distance themselves from other sub-categories of Brahmans and ritual specialists, such as pandas, who have a rather poor reputation. The Vyas’ status, instead, has been shaped by their belonging and physical proximity to the space represented by the ritual arena of Jnanavapi. Their role is defined by Kedarnath Vyas interchangeably as that of landlords (he uses both the English word and the Hindi terms zamindar or malik), or as officials in charge (adhikaris). 8 Various classes of Brahmans are in charge of temples and pilgrims, and disputes between them have been well documented since colonial times, as has the fragmentation and violence involved in the life of ritual specialists in Banaras (Nevill 1909; Bayly 1992; Parry 1994). 9 The Trust was created by the Uttar Pradesh Shri Kashi Vishwanath Temple Act, the full text of which (with amendments) can be found at: http://updharmarthkarya.in/booking/pdf/1983UP29.pdf (accessed in July 2018). 10 For more on shifts in the management of temples and religious institutions and, in particular, on the role of the court in these processes through colonial and post-colonial times, see the introduction and various contributions in Berti, Tarabout and Voix (2016). Price (forthcoming) discusses the approach of the colonial administration towards monasteries in Tamil Nadu, which were seen as places of corruption and dubious conduct, and thus in need of better management.These sentiments seem to echo those mobilised by the UP government at the time of the creation of the KVTT. The subsequent legal battles also have a familiar ring. 11 Interviews with P.N. Dubey, Additional Chief Officer of the Kashi Vishvanath Trust, March 2013 and February 2017. References Alley, K.D. 2002. On the Banks of the Gaṅgā:When Wastewater Meets a Sacred River. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Asher, C.B. 1992. Architecture of Mughal India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Asthana, V. and Ashok Chandra Shukla. 2014. Water Security in India: Hope, Despair, and the Challenges of Human Development. New York and London: Bloomsbury. Bakker, H.T. 1996. ‘Construction and Reconstruction of Sacred Space in Varanasi’, Numen, XLIII(1): 32–55. Bakker, H.T. 2008. ‘The Avimuktakṣetra in Vārāṇasī: Its Origins and Early Development’, in Martin Gaenszle and Jörg Gengnagel (eds), Visualizing Space in Banaras: Images, Maps and the Practice of Representation, pp. 23–40. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Bakker, H.T. and Harunga Isaacson. 2004. ‘A Sketch of the Religious History of Vārāṇasī up to the Islamic Conquest and the New Beginning’, in Bakker Hans T. and Harunga Isaacson 9780367371753_C006.indd 149 09-04-2021 09:09:52 150 Vera Lazzaretti (eds), The Skandapurāṇa, Vol. IIA (Adhyāyas 26-31.14), The Varanasi Cycle, pp. 19–82. Gröningen: Egbert Forsten. Bayly, C.A. 1992. Rulers, Townmen and Bazars: North Indian Society in the Age of the British Expansion, 1770–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Bayly, S. 1999. Caste, Society and Politics in India, from Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bendix, R. 2009. ‘Heritage between Economy and Politics. An Assessment from the Perspective of Cultural Anthropology’, in Laurijane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (eds), Intangible Heritage, pp. 253–269. New York: Routledge. Berti, D., Gilles Tarabout and Raphael Voix. 2016. Filing Religion: State, Hinduism and Courts of Law. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Brosius, C. 2012. India’s Middle Class: New Forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity. New Delhi: Routledge. Collier, P. and Anke Hoeffler. 2005. ‘Resource Rents, Governance, and Conflict’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 49: 625–633. Dalmia,V. 1997. The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions. Bharatendu Harischandra and NineteenthCentury Banaras. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Darrian, S.G. 1978. The Ganges in Myth and History. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. Desai, M. 2007. Resurrecting Banaras: Urban Spaces, Architecture and Religious Boundaries. Unpublished PhD thesis in Architecture. Berkeley: University of California. Desai, M. 2017. Banaras Reconstructed, Architecture and Sacred Space in a Hindu Holy City. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. Di Giovine, M.A.D. 2015. ‘Patrimonial Ethics and the Field of Heritage Production’. in Cristobal Gnecco and Dorothy Lippert (eds), Ethics and Archaeological Praxis. Ethical Archaeologies:The Politics of Social Justice,Vol. 1, pp. 201–227. New York: Springer. Dodson, M. (ed.) 2012, Banaras. Urban Forms and Cultural Histories. New Delhi: Routledge. Doron, A. 2013. Life on the Gaṅgā. Boatmen and the Ritual Economy of Banaras. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Doron, A., Richard Barz and Barbara Nelsen (eds). 2014. An Anthology of Writings on the Gaṅgā. Goddess and River in History, Culture and Society. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Eaton, R.M. 2001. Temple Desecration and Indo-Muslim States’, Frontline, 5 January 2001. Eck, D.L. 1981. ‘India’s Tīrthas: “Crossings” in Sacred Geography’, History of Religions, XX (4): 323–344. Fontein, J. 2008.‘The Power of Water: Landscape,Water and the State in Southern and Eastern Africa: An Introduction’, Journal of South African Studies, 34(4): 737–756. Freitag, S.B. (ed.). 1989. Culture and Power in Banaras. Community, Performance and Environment, 1800–1980. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gaenszle, M. and Jörg Gengnagel (eds). 2008. Visualizing Space in Banaras. Images, Maps, and Practice of Representation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gengnagel, J. 2011. Visualized Texts. Sacred Spaces, Spatial Texts and the Religious Cartography of Banaras. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Gutschow, N. 2006. Benares: The Sacred Landscape of Vārānasī. Stuttgart/London: Edition Axel Menges. Hafstein, V. T. 2009. ‘Intangible Heritage as a List: From Masterpieces to Representation’, in Laurijane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (eds), Intangible Heritage, pp. 93–111. London: Routledge. Harrison, R. 2013. Heritage: Critical Approaches. London and New York: Routledge. Havell, E.B. 1912. Benares, the Sacred City: Sketches of Hindu Life and Religion, 2nd ed. London: W. Thacker & Co. 9780367371753_C006.indd 150 09-04-2021 09:09:52 Water and conflicts around religious heritage 151 Herzfeld, M. 2006. ‘Spatial Cleansing. Monumental Vacuity and the Idea of the West’, Journal of Material Culture, 11(1/2): 127–149. Homer-Dixon, T.F. 1999. Environment, Scarcity and Violence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jaffrelot, C. 1999. The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Jain-Neubauer, J. 1981. The Step-Wells of Gujarat. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications. Jalais, S. 2014. ‘Walking the Ghās: A Measured Approach to the Banāras Riverfront’, in Istvàn Keul (ed.), Banāras Revisited. Scholarly Pilgrimages to the City of Light, pp. 133–150. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Joy, K.J., Biksham Gujja, Suhas Paranjape, Vinod Goud, and Shruti Vispute (eds). 2008. Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts in the Making. London, New York, New Delhi: Routledge. Kashikhanda (Skanda Purāṇa), ed. Dubey, J. N., 1984.Varanasi: Adarsha Prakashan Mandir. Kashikhanda (Skanda Purāṇa), ed. Tagare, G.V., 1996. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Kashikhanda (Skanda Purāṇa), ed. Tripathi, K., 1991. Varanasi: Sampurnanand Sanskrit University,. Khan, S.M. 1947. Maasir-i-Alamgiri. Translated by Jadunath Sarkar. Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal (reprint of 1986). Kramrisch, S. 1946. The Hindu Temple. Calcutta: University of Calcutta. Lazzaretti, V. 2015. ‘Tradition versus Urban Public Bureaucracy? Reshaping Pilgrimage Routes and Religious Heritage around Contested Places’, in Yamini Narayanan (ed.), Religion and Urbanism: Reconceptualizing 'Sustainable Cities' for South Asia, pp. 80–96. London and New York: Routledge. Lazzaretti,V. 2017.‘Waterscapes in Transition: Past and Present Reshaping of Sacred Water Places in Banaras’, in Ravi Lea Stephan and Joseph K.W. Hill (eds), Water and the Environment in Asia: Epistemologies, Practices and Locales, pp. 230–245. London and New York: Routledge. Lazzaretti, V. 2020. ‘The Burden of Security: Moral Frictions and Everyday Policing in a Contested Religious Compound’’. Journal of Extreme Anthropology, 4(1): 74–93. doi:https:// doi.org/10.5617/jea.7526 Lazzaretti,V. 2021.‘The Boundary Within: Demolitions, Dream projects and the Negotiation of Hinduness in Banaras’. In István Keul (ed.), Spaces of Religion in Urban South Asia, pp. 87–99. Abingdon: Routledge. Madan, P.L. 2005. The River Gaṅgā: A Cartographic Mystery. New Delhi: Manohar. Mazzarella, W. 2003. Shoveling Smoke: Advertizing and Globalization in Contemporary India. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Medhasananda, S. 2002. Varanasi at the Crossroads.Vol. I–II. Kolkata:The Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture. Mehta, L. 2005. The Politics and Poetics of Water: The Naturalization of Scarcity in Western India, New Delhi: Orient Longman. Mosse, D. 2003. The Rule of Water: Statecraft, Ecology and Collective Action in South India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Mosse, D. 2008. Epilogue: The Cultural Politics of Water: A Comparative Perspective, Journal of Southern African Studies 34:4: 939–948. Motichandra. 1985. Kashi ka Itihas.Varanasi:Vishvavidyalaya Prakashan. Muthiah, K.S. & Co. 1911. Smiling Benares. A Sketch from the Vedic Days to the Modern Times. Madras: Raithby and Co. Printers. Nevill, H.R. 1909. Benares: A Gazetteer. Vol. XXVI of the District Gazetteers of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Allahabad: Government Press, United Provinces. 9780367371753_C006.indd 151 09-04-2021 09:09:52 152 Vera Lazzaretti Pandey, G. P. 1990. The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Parry, J. 1994. Death in Banaras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peluso, N. L. and Michael Watts. 2001. Violent Environments, Ithaca: Cornel University Press. Price, P. forthcoming. ‘Network Tensions and Conflicts in a Tamil Spiritual Lineage under British Imperial Rule’, in Caleb Simmons and Sarah Pierce Taylor (eds), Beyond the Monastery: The Entangled Institutional History of the South Asian Maṭha. London: Oxford University Press. Prinsep, J. 1833. Benares Illustrated in a Series of Drawings.Varanasi:Vishvavidhyalaya Prakashan (reprint of 1996). Raman,V. 2010. The Warp and the Weft: Community and Gender Identity among Banaras Weavers. New Delhi: Routledge. Rötzer, K. 1989. ‘Wells, Pokhara, Ghat and Hammam’, in Pierre-Daniél Couté and JeanMichel Léger (eds), Bénarès: Un Voyage d’architecture, pp. 89–97. Paris: Editions Créaphis. Ryley, H.J. 1899. Ralph Fitch. England’s Pioneer to India. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Schütte, S. 2008. ‘The Social Landscape of the Washermen in Banaras’, in Martin Gaenszle and Jörg Gengnagel (eds), Visualizing Space in Banaras: Images, Maps and the Practice of Representation, pp. 279–302. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sherring, M.A. 1868. The Sacred City of the Hindoos: An Account of Benares in Ancient and Modern Times. London: Trübner & Co. Singh, R.L. 1955. Banaras. A Study in Urban Geography. Banaras: Nand Kishore & Bro. Singh, R.P.B. 2002. Towards the Pilgrimage Archetype: The Pancakrośi Yātrā of Banāras. Varanasi: Indica Books. Smith, L. 2006. Uses of Heritage. London and New York: Routledge. Smith, T.L. 2007. ‘Re-newing the ancient: The Kashikhanda and Shaiva Varanasi’. Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, 8(1): 83–108. Spronk, S. and Carlo Crespo Flores (eds). 2007. Después de las guerras de l’agua. La Paz: Plural Editores. 9780367371753_C006.indd 152 09-04-2021 09:09:52 PART III Naturalisation of ecological, technological, and historical relations 9780367371753_P003.indd 153 09-04-2021 09:15:16 9780367371753_P003.indd 154 09-04-2021 09:15:16 7 TAMING THE CAUCA RIVER Community and sugar landowners’ contrasting narratives in addressing flood risk in Valle Del Cauca, Colombia Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa Introduction During the rainy seasons of 2010 and 2011, major flooding events struck the Cauca River Valley in Colombia, affecting 18,934 families and inundating 41,173 ha in 2010 and 36,938 ha in 2011, the majority of which were planted in sugarcane. The national government declared a state of emergency in the Cauca River Valley as well as in other regions where flooding occurred. Initial efforts were geared towards attending to the victims of the catastrophe, repairing damaged dikes and providing relief assistance. In the aftermath, media headlines started calling into question the role of environmental authorities in preventing and/or adequately preparing for the disaster. Lack of government planning that had allowed undue occupation of the floodplain was identified as the culprit in mainstream narratives of the 2010–11 flooding events. National authorities and the public started questioning regional environmental authorities’ ability to deal with flood risk management alone. In 2012, the Colombian government signed a partnership agreement with the government of the Netherlands to bring Dutch consultants to Colombia to design a master plan for the Cauca River aimed at preventing new flooding events under the Room for the River approach, called the Cauca River Corridor Project (CRCP). When the floodwaters receded, project workshops began, at which different actors discussed the causes of the ‘disaster’ and solutions to ‘the problem’. These workshops revealed different ways of interpreting the flooding.The catastrophe exposed competing narratives of flooding as well as of the human relationship to the river and the wetlands of the territory, including one which argued against interpreting flooding events as catastrophes. This chapter will examine how particular water policies, in this case flood control management, correspond to different narratives about flooding and meaning-uses of wetlands held by different social actors in Colombia, and how power relations in water access and use are expressed. 9780367371753_C007.indd 155 09-04-2021 09:10:34 156 Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa The two types of water users with the most contrasting meaning-uses around the river and wetlands that clashed during the CRCP were traditional Afro-Colombian farmers and industrial sugarcane growers. Their differing interpretations translated into competing narratives about how to respond to flooding that correlates with two scientific approaches: (1) high modernist large-scale engineering that privileges dams, levees and dikes to tame the river for agricultural production, and (2) ecological engineering, or the Room for the River approach that privileges biological corridors, flooded areas and wetland restoration projects, focusing on adapting to the river and building with nature. The sugarcane landowners’ narratives emphasise a view of water resources as inputs to the productive process, which need to be tapped in the most efficient way in order to maximise economic benefit.The TVA1 high modernist large-scale engineering model is taken as an exemplary successful strategy of dealing with nature to boost development. Under this narrative, the key aim of environmental governance should be to grant producers access to environmental resources such as water to enhance productivity, and to manage watercourses in order to limit disruption or damage caused by natural disasters. In contrast, Afro-Colombian farmers’ narratives present a close and vital relationship with the river and wetlands, one in which these ecosystems and periodic flooding are core features of their livelihoods and are also important cultural elements of their traditions.Their narratives around river management allow for periodic flooding and emphasise living with the ecosystem, which is possible through small-scale agriculture and fishing. In their view, flooding events are a source of life since their livelihoods depend on their periodicity. This narrative was more aligned with the Room for the River approach since both seek to adapt to nature rather than the opposite. Local biologists and environmental engineers participating in the project were also aligned with this narrative and recognised the need to include natural fluctuations of rivers into land-use planning. Although the Room for the River project was intended to enact inclusive forms of governance, the sugar landowners’ narrative became the dominant one. During the process of discussing alternatives to flood management, Afro-Colombian voices ended up being side-lined because of power inequalities in the region. Sugar landowners wielded more power within the decision-making process and had the ability to circumvent or override the decision-making fora designed precisely to include a wider set of actors and interests. The Room for the River approach represents a shift in the engineering ‘command and control’ approach to water planning and management that has long characterised the Netherlands, to a more horizontal way of governance. This approach became common in river management in Western Europe and in various other locations all around the world, with a focus on spatial development as the key to water management. The dominant discourse of Room for the River suggests a move from vertical top-down management to a more egalitarian form of multi-actor network governance, aiming to accommodate different values in spatial development planning. Although there is literature focusing on the results of these participatory experiments 9780367371753_C007.indd 156 09-04-2021 09:10:34 Taming the Cauca river 157 in flood risk management in different parts of the world, and the conflicts arising from the implementation of Room for the River projects (Wolsink 2005; Roth and Warner 2007; Warner, van Buuren and Edelenbos 2012; De Bruijn, de Bruijne and ten Heuvelhof 2015; Edelenbos et al. 2016; van Buuren,Vink and Warner 2016; also see the Roth, Warner and Winnubst chapter in this volume), it does not pay much attention to the narratives around the river and flooding held by different social actors and how these get translated into policies for flood risk management. Colombia is a particularly interesting place to explore how differing values and interpretations of flooding are involved in such large-scale reorganisations of space, since it is a country in which very different social groups in terms of ethnicity, developmental patterns and power differentials coexist in the same territory and share water resources. The case study shows how the implementation of approaches to promote more horizontal governance for managing water resources confronted local power inequalities in Colombia.This situation allowed for more powerful actors’ narratives to prevail over the ones from historical inhabitants, or of experts such as engineers and biologists, leading to decisions contrary to the original goal of giving more space to the river. As many cases in this book illustrate, environmental and waterrelated conflicts have been studied by several disciplines, but often these conflicts focus on violent and international disputes.The case we analyse here did not engender violence, but rather shows how unequal access and control of water resources do not necessarily lead to open conflicts. Our case shows how inequalities in water access both creates and maintains marginalised communities in a given territory. The over-representation of sugar landowners’ interests and narratives have enduring consequences in the way the river and wetlands are managed in the region and how local groups relate to them. The case also shows how inequalities in relation to water resources occur in the context of land-use grabbing,2 and can reinforce ongoing exclusion patterns not necessarily related to water per se that are reflected in undemocratic environmental decision-making processes in the region. In our case study, we illustrate how narratives that represent floods as ‘the river against humans’ can obscure identities of different local groups that make up the population affected by flooding events. These narratives can also suppress claims from groups that express alternative ways of relating to the river and the wetlands. In the Valle del Cauca region, hegemonic narratives to deal with flooding were instrumental in prioritising sugarcane landowners’ interests with regard to AfroColombian livelihoods. To analyse the different discursive constructions around floods and wetland management that emerged in the context of the implementation of the CRCP, we draw on qualitative data gathered that includes 35 formal in-depth interviews as well as numerous informal conversations with participants in the CRCP and other key informants such as community actors, government officials, sugarcane landowners, and local and international consultant experts for the project. Interview questions revolved around meanings and uses of wetlands, relation to flooding and participation in the CRCP.3 In the sections below, we first describe the historical local context, tracing how different narratives about flooding emerged in the region. Next, we provide a brief 9780367371753_C007.indd 157 09-04-2021 09:10:34 158 Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa history of how the CRCP came into being. Then we analyse how these narratives clashed in implementing the Room for the River approach and how some are privileged over others in finding solutions to the ‘flooding issue’. Finally, we conclude by emphasising the importance of taking into account underlying narratives of hydro-social relations when implementing new approaches of flood risk management and carefully incorporating governance schemes for making decisions that allow for multiple narratives to be expressed and negotiated. The context of the study: tracing the origins of narratives of flood risk management in the region (Figure 7.1) Valle del Cauca is a region in Southwest Colombia that spans an area of 440,000 ha and was home to 4.6 million inhabitants in 2016. The predominant ecosystem in the floodplain is tropical dry forest, one of the most threatened in the world, with two distinct rainy seasons during the year. The Cauca River flows from south to north for 214 km, cutting across the region. Being an alluvial river, the Cauca River changes its course frequently, and its meanderings have created numerous wetlands or oxbows alongside its watershed. These wetlands were used by indigenous people and later mostly by black peasants. The first inhabitants of the valley were indigenous groups that were decimated by the Spanish settlers who brought slaves from Africa to replace them as workforce for agriculture and cattle ranching in the haciendas.4 By the nineteenth century, the haciendas, using slave labour, produced mostly panela (a product derived from sugarcane to make sweet beverages), aguardiente (an alcoholic drink also derived from sugarcane) and dairy products. Land ownership became the main source of power and prestige (Colmenares 1980). In the interstices of the hacienda system concentrated along the floodplains of the rivers and wetlands, a parallel peasant economy thrived, composed of poor criollos5 and black peasants with small and medium landholdings, growing subsistence crops such as maize, soy, sorghum, and beans, as well as cash crops such as cacao, complementing their livelihoods with fishing in wetlands and rivers. During the twentieth century, most of the traditional haciendas went through modernisation processes, enabling them to produce sugar industrially after international missions led by the World Bank, such as the Currie Mission (1951), recommended sugarcane cultivation for the region. The wealthier haciendas transformed into sugar mills while the rest became suppliers of sugarcane for the mills. After the Cuban revolution in 1959, sugar production in the Valle del Cauca expanded dramatically as Colombia took over the US markets for sugar vacated by Cuba. Land conversion to industrial sugarcane increased again during the 1990s after Colombia approved an open market policy in 1991, which resulted in the weakening of small agriculture in the region, while benefitting large-scale agriculture such as sugarcane which replaced less profitable crops (Ortiz 1999). Thus, the area planted in sugarcane increased from 76,000 ha in 1987 to 160,466 ha in 1999, a process accompanied by a greater concentration of production, with 29 sugar mills in 1960 declining to only 13 at the end of the 1990s (CNMH 2014). In this process, the region was 9780367371753_C007.indd 158 09-04-2021 09:10:34 Taming the Cauca river FIGURE 7.1 9780367371753_C007.indd 159 159 Valle del Cauca. Source: Authors 09-04-2021 09:10:34 160 Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa transformed through the expansion of sugar plantations while small subsistence agricultural land was reduced to a few remnants. Many small farmers and impoverished hacendados6 sold or rented their lands to the sugar mills, reinforcing a pattern of sugarcane land-use grabbing in the region. In addition, many Afro-Colombian small landholders became sugarcane workers in the mills, especially cane cutters (Figure 7.2). The economic and social transformations of the region were accompanied by transformation of the landscape and nature. The thriving sugar industry needed more suitable lands to expand and fulfil the national and international market demand for sugar. The Cauca River floodplain had all the conditions to accomplish this expansion, including hot weather, fertile soils, flat terrain, but its regular flooding made it unconducive to sugarcane. As floods came to be seen as an obstacle to be overcome, their positive effects on ecosystems (recharging wetlands and enriching the soils by bringing nutrients and organic matter to the floodplain) were overshadowed by the negative effects on sugarcane development. Wetlands then began to be perceived as an obstacle to development. The dominant discourse around flooding in the 1950s was reminiscent of the ‘progressive’ narratives of the Great Plains history in the US described by Cronon FIGURE 7.2 Agricultural occupation of the floodplain. Source: © Cnes 2017, Distribution Airbus DS 9780367371753_C007.indd 160 09-04-2021 09:10:34 Taming the Cauca river 161 (1992), wherein agricultural elites presented the harshness of the floods in Valle del Cauca in such a way as to make the human struggle against it appear as an extremely heroic endeavour.This discourse also obscured the roles of other social groups, such as Afro-Colombian farmers, that related differently to wetlands and floods. Local agricultural elites, especially entrepreneurs who owned large tracts of rural land started looking elsewhere for inspiration to address the obstacles imposed by water, especially to the US engineering efforts for flood management and drainage that, by the 1950s, were leading the networks of technical assistance focused on river basin development under the auspices of the United States Bureau of Reclamation (Sneddon and Fox 2011).Thus, the Regional Autonomous Corporation of the Valle del Cauca (CVC) was founded in 1954 by the initiative of economic elites following the model of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) from the US. This agency set up the River Cauca Regulation Project, which included the construction of the Salvajina dam and flood control works along the Cauca River and its tributaries. Salvajina was designed to store 620 hm3 7 of water, which was complemented by levees along the Cauca River (CVC and Univalle 2007) to regulate river flow and generate electricity. The TVA represented the ideal of modern river basin development: controlling unruly rivers to maximise benefits to society. However, the voices of the growing number of critics of the TVA, which pointed to the environmental problems caused by the region’s dams and the limitations of its water governance model monopolised by local power brokers (Sneddon and Fox 2011), did not reach the engineers and policy actors in Colombia. Through the CVC, the sugar industry created a particular ‘waterscape’ for the region, or the dynamic reconstructing of hydro-social relationships reflecting dominant power structures (Swyngedouw 1999). This order is expressed in specific patterns of access to water, regulatory frameworks, hydraulic infrastructure, and dominant discourses about water control (Bebbington 2009). In Valle del Cauca, all those elements were tailored to suit the sugar industry’s demands related to water.8 The works implemented by applying the TVA model had profound impacts on the landscape and hydrology of the region. The land-use planning of the territory, based primarily on economic variables such as the need for agricultural expansion, resulted in the classification of Dry Tropical Forest soils as having high agricultural potential, thereby reducing most of the forest to small and fragmented pockets (Salazar et al. 2002). As a result, less than 1.76 per cent of the total area is forest cover today (Arcila, Valderrama and de Ulloa 2012). As a consequence of drainage projects undertaken to reclaim lands for extensive agriculture, most of the wetlands were destroyed: of the 15,286 ha of wetlands that existed in 1950, less than 4,000 ha remain today. Also, the area inundated by the overflowing of the river, was dramatically reduced after the construction of the Salvajina dam in 1985, as shown in Figure 7.3, altering wetland recharge and affecting livelihoods that depended on wetlands and floods for fishing or traditional agriculture (Figure 7.4). 9780367371753_C007.indd 161 09-04-2021 09:10:35 162 Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 Salvajina dam 10 0 1950 1966 1967 1971 1974 1975 1982 1984 1985 1988 1997 1999 2008 2010 2011 FIGURE 7.3 Area flooded (000 ha) by year in Valle del Cauca (1950–2011). Source: Vejarano-Alvarez and Saavedra-Rodríguez 2013 Water has memory: the flooding years of 2010 and 2011 To understand how the CRCP emerged in 2012, we need to trace the events that set the stage for the project. The extreme weather conditions in Colombia in 2010 and 2011 resulted in devastating flooding events that destroyed 14 per cent of the national road network and affected 7 per cent of the population (ONU 2014). In the Valle del Cauca region, the engineered river did not withstand heavier-thannormal rains. In December 2010, the Ministry of the Environment, Housing and Territorial Development declared the situation a ‘disaster’ and issued Decree 4579 to attend to the emergency and restore the affected areas. The Colombian government signed a cooperation agreement with the government of the Netherlands to design restoration projects in the affected watersheds. According to the Secretary of Agriculture of Valle del Cauca, 20,000 ha of those affected by flooding in the region were sugarcane areas (Vejarano-Alvarez and Saavedra-Rodríguez 2013). However, what prompted the national government to include the Cauca River in the restoration plans was the two-day failure of the water system of the city of Cali, the capital of Valle del Cauca, an industrial hub of the region and home to a population of 2,369,829 inhabitants.The water treatment plant collapsed because of the high concentration of suspended solids carried by the Cauca River. The threat posed to the capital was used by the governor of Valle del Cauca to urge the Ministry of the Environment to include the region in the cooperation agreements. Undue intervention and occupation of the Cauca River corridor was identified as the main cause of the losses brought about by floods. In this context, the Cauca River Corridor Project (CRCP) was set up in 2012 as a partnership between the regional environmental authority (CVC) and a consulting firm from the Netherlands, with the goal to modify a stretch of 200 km of this corridor by expanding the area for the river under the ‘Room for the River’ 9780367371753_C007.indd 162 09-04-2021 09:10:35 Taming the Cauca river FIGURE 7.4 163 Flooding 2011 in Valle del Cauca. Source: Diario El País/Cali/Colombia approach.Through mathematical modeling of the river dynamics and spatial analysis of past flooding events, the expert team designed alternatives including ecosystem restoration actions along with flood control works. The project was intended to be inclusive, as it was conducted through participatory workshops in which the different alternatives designed by the expert team were discussed with the various stakeholders of the region to make decisions that benefitted their respective interests and needs around the river and the wetlands. However, as we will see in the following section, the participatory methodology proposed in the project to discuss the alternatives was not well suited to counter local imbalances of power in the region. Leaving room for the river: from the Netherlands to Colombia The Room for the River approach falls under the category of ecosystem-based solutions for flood defence. These solutions are recognised to yield many other benefits such as river restoration, habitat creation and lower carbon emissions by restoring wetland and floodplains, which ultimately improve natural capabilities for floodwater retention. This approach seeks to adapt to flooding in a way that harmonises with natural processes, rather than other approaches that emphasise building dams and diverting watercourses, which may reduce risk for humans but do little to protect the 9780367371753_C007.indd 163 09-04-2021 09:10:35 164 Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa biodiversity of associated ecosystems (Vörösmarty et al. 2010). The basic tenets of the Room for the River approach brought by the Netherlands consulting firm to theValle del Cauca case constitute a special narrative about flooding and how to cope with this phenomenon. It highlights the important role of floods in maintaining ecosystem balance, as well as the need to accommodate human activities in accordance with river dynamics and flooding patterns. To reduce flood risk, this approach proposes to give back to the river land that was removed as well as to build flood protection structures. Giving room for the river also requires high levels of public engagement and a change in the way humans relate to nature, from fighting against water to living with water. This new way of looking at flooding was contrary to the way flood risk had been discursively constructed in the region—as a menace to be avoided by high tech engineering solutions—but it resonated well with the team of local experts contracted to carry out the project. In addition to the CVC officials, the team was primarily made up of engineers who were tasked with designing hydraulic measures to control flooding and of biologists who were in charge of designing landscape management tools such as biological corridors. In the diagnostic document for the project, the biologists Vejarano-Alvarez and Saavedra-Rodríguez (2013) argued for a sustainable approach to managing floods through adaptation to natural dynamics of rivers, rather than large-scale engineering solutions to overcome these dynamics. They also argued for the beneficial effects of floods on ecosystems for maintaining productivity and biodiversity by recharging wetlands, favouring nutrient cycling, transporting sediments, and exchanging organisms between the river and the floodplain. From the perspective of the species adapted to this kind of natural regime, floods are very important to complete the life cycles of some species of fish and some other macro invertebrates. Consequently, proposed solutions to restore the Cauca River Corridor from a biological perspective consist of the installation of biological corridors, restoration of buffer zones and riparian forest strips, and a strategy called ‘tools for landscape management’. This strategy aims at connecting sparse patches of forest to provide more habitats for species, allowing their movement across the territory as well as protecting waterways from erosion and sedimentation as proposed by the Room for the River approach. In a similar vein, engineers participating in the project noted that they were already working under a different paradigm from that of the past, as one of the leading engineers of the project expressed in an interview: In the past years, we have changed our approach towards a more natural management of waterways, trying to intervene as little as possible or trying that the interventions are the least aggressive with the ecosystem, taking into account that around a waterway there are flora and fauna that are interconnected … the river is more than a channel to transport water; it is a whole river ecosystem, the adjacent floodplain is also part of the river that during the rainy seasons the river occupies, so it is part of it. We are the real invaders because we occupy the land belonging to the river.9 9780367371753_C007.indd 164 09-04-2021 09:10:35 Taming the Cauca river 165 However, in contrast to the Room for the River approach, solutions about flooding from local biologists and engineers did not mention any need to incorporate local knowledge in designing flood management alternatives, although they agreed on the need to provide space for the river. In fact, informal conversations with some of these experts revealed that they assume that local communities are motivated only by monetary gains or material benefits and are not worthy of being engaged in a process like this. In an interview, one of the team members stated: ‘There is no point in engaging local communities in this process—they will just come and ask what you have for me, what you are going to give me in exchange for my participation.’10 In the view of some of the local experts, the only locals worthy of engagement are the landowners, since most of the wetlands are on private lands and, in order to implement the proposed measures, negotiation with the landowners is mandatory. Thus, scientific knowledge is deemed superior, assuming that key issues in the ecology of the region are technical and context-free; fishermen and traditional farmers are considered not important because of their limited land ownership, even though their livelihoods are directly linked to the river and the wetlands. Despite the reluctance of local officials and experts to involve community actors in the project, the international consultants, in accordance with the participatory outlook of the Room for the River approach, pushed for their inclusion at the initial stages of the process. Local grassroots organisations working with wetlands were invited to participate in the initial forum of the project, which was designed to engage participants in a discussion of the flooding issue to reach long-lasting agreements and a common vision for the region. This strategy relates to the horizontal governance objective in the Room for the River approach, which conforms to recommendations by a growing number of studies that stress the need for community engagement to assimilate local knowledge into flood risk management (Smith et al. 2011; Wilby and Keenan 2012). At this forum, Afro-Colombian organisations from the south of the region (Jamundí) presented their special relationship to the river and the wetlands of this area, showing a perspective compatible with the Room for the River approach. According to Afro-Colombian traditional farmers’ narratives of flooding, their livelihoods represent successful adaptation to periodic flooding and balance with the natural environment through their traditional farming system, which is very different from sugarcane production or cattle ranching. This is how they remember their past (Figure 7.5): At certain times, the river flooded all the traditional farms, but they did not suffer at all, because the river fertilised the soils. We did not enter the productive unit for two or three months at most, during which time we retreated to our homesteads to grow crops in our backyards. When the floods passed and the soil was dry again, we went to harvest, and it was abundant—it took us more than four days to collect the harvest. We produced plantain, oranges, tangerines, lemon, avocados, cherimoya … because the river brought slime and deposited it on the farm soils.11 9780367371753_C007.indd 165 09-04-2021 09:10:35 166 Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa After the flooding, the madreviejas (oxbows lakes) were cleaned up of aquatic plants, and we could fish abundantly because with the floods, fish from the river entered the wetland and the fishing season was very good. Madreviejas were very important within communities because, with fishing, people got through the day-to-day and solved their daily needs.12 Afro-Colombian narratives about flooding also conformed to the Room for the River narrative in that the negative effects of past flooding events of 2010 and 2011 were described as being the consequences of the deterioration of wetlands by agricultural expansion and unsustainable practices on the floodplain. Afro-Colombian farmers of Jamundí blamed the encroachment of sugarcane crops and cattle ranching for the deterioration of the ecological functions of the seven wetlands of their territory, along with the alteration of the flooding regime by the Salvajina dam, which has resulted in loss of riparian lands. The establishment of biological corridors, wetland restoration and the availability of flooding areas as proposed by the Room for the River approach were consonant with the solutions envisioned by the Afro-Colombian farmers. Leaders from these communities also perceive the recovery of their traditional livelihoods as a means of political affirmation of their territorial rights threatened by the forces of modernisation of agricultural development. Interviews with those leaders reveal that Afro-Colombian stories of flooding align with what Cronon (1992) calls a ‘tragic’ or ‘declensionist’ plot, in which the beginning is a harmonic and prosperous time marked by small farmers’ symbiotic relationship with the river and the wetlands, followed by a downward spiral in which the river is no longer a supplier of goods and the wetlands are damaged as a result of external intervention in the territory. The end of this story is the loss of FIGURE 7.5 9780367371753_C007.indd 166 A traditional farm in Robles, Jamundí. Source: Renata Moreno-Quintero 09-04-2021 09:10:35 Taming the Cauca river 167 harmony and the impoverishment of the population. For Afro-Colombians, the restoration of the river dynamics and wetlands was perceived as a way to also restore an imagined past in which traditional farmers were better off. While initially there was consensus that the project was the best way to approach flood risk management in the region, this consensus clashed with sugarcane landowners’ narratives of flooding and risk management at the first workshops of the project. In the next section, we will analyse how the Room for the River narrative deeply conflicted with old narratives that sustained regional development and defined hydro-social relations in the territory. Clashing narratives: leaving room for the river in a sugarcane region Although the implementation of the Room for the River approach entailed a deep shift in the conception of the human/nature relationship, the strategy to engage local participants was through sub-regional one-day workshops, convened by the CVC, to which only sugar landowners were invited. The workshops were conducted by the CVC officials and members of the consultant team. At these workshops, the causes of past flooding events were discussed in small groups among landowners, using cartography, and the alternatives designed by the experts were quickly presented for discussion. As discussed earlier, agricultural entrepreneurs historically envisioned wetlands located in the floodplain as unproductive features of the landscape and an obstacle to progress (Tobasura 2006). In addition, floods were seen as dramatic events that regularly wrought devastation and hence required great efforts to be prevented and controlled. These assumptions were foundational for the growth and expansion of the sugarcane industry in the region, and the type of measures proposed by sugar landowners to control flood risk at the workshops demonstrates that these assumptions remain strong for many members of this economic sector.The workshop attendees repeatedly advocated building the complementary works (drainage and levees) proposed at the time of the construction of the Salvajina dam. Those measures go back to the initial promise of the never fully implemented TVA model in the region called the Lilienthal Plan, which envisioned the triumph of human ingenuity over a mutable environment. In accordance with the way waterways are conceptualised as drainage or irrigation channels in the economic geography of sugar growers, they also proposed to locate levees along the riverbanks so as to not lose any land; they prefer to enhance the levees in the most susceptible areas for flooding and to dredge the river to improve its carrying capacity. The concerns and narratives of biologists and local communities participating in the CRCP were not present in sugar landowners’ narratives, and agricultural encroachment into the floodplain and wetlands was not identified as a cause of the disastrous consequences of flooding. Based on interviews and sugar landowners’ participation at these workshops, it was apparent that water is conceptualised by sugarcane growers merely as an input to the productive process or as a simple economic resource, similar to the way 9780367371753_C007.indd 167 09-04-2021 09:10:35 168 Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa water was viewed in many irrigation projects discussed by Martinez-Alier (2002). When asked to describe the benefits of a lagoon near his plantation, a sugar grower responded: To be honest, I don’t perceive them (the benefits)—one would think that it’s good the wetland remains so it can keep water, but can I use this water to irrigate my crops? No, I am not supposed to touch it. This water is for the ducks to swim in there and for them to reproduce. But I don’t perceive any direct environmental service. However, the lagoon would be an interesting source of water for crops.13 In the sugar landowners’ conceptualisations of the territory, water should be protected in the hillsides where it originates but prioritised for crops in the lower elevations. According to this perspective, Asocaña has, since 2009, invested in the ‘Fund for life and sustainability’ to support conservation projects upstream after severe El Niño years that caused water scarcity in the country. Their narratives divided the territory into two parts, with the upper parts (owned by poor farmers) for water production and the lower parts (mostly owned by large landowners) used for agricultural production and household water consumption. For the sugar landowners, it made sense to use native vegetation and buffer zones in the upper parts of the watershed to protect springs and waterways, but in the valley, there was no place for nature. Rather, the valley is seen as a big factory in which industrial processes and technology deprived land of its natural characteristics to make it more productive. This division of the territory is also marked by land prices. Sugar landowners usually refer to the elevated costs of land in the valley (10 times more expensive than in the hillsides) to highlight why land in this area is so valuable and worthy of protection (Moreno-Quintero and Selfa 2018). One biologist involved in the CRCP explained this clash of narratives and the impossibility of reaching a common understanding of the role of wetlands for flood control: Sugarcane growers perceive wetlands as useful insofar as they serve as water reservoirs for their crops, but they do not perceive them as part of a natural ecosystem; they see wetlands as farm ponds. I believe this stems from the total transformation of the rivers in the floodplain that are now basically one more irrigation channel. The concept of river as a natural system has been lost as well as the concept of wetland as part of a natural ecosystem linked to the river because the transformation has been so profound that the natural characters have disappeared.14 The idea of leaving room for the river rests on the assumption that humans have mistakenly occupied lands that belong to the natural systems of rivers and, to improve the relationship between humans and rivers, those spaces must be restored or given back to the river. However, in the developmental logic of the region, agricultural entrepreneurs constructed themselves as ‘heroes’ who succeeded in taming natural 9780367371753_C007.indd 168 09-04-2021 09:10:35 Taming the Cauca river 169 forces, as eloquently described by Guillermo Regalado, former technical director of the CVC and current advisor of Asocaña15 for the CRCP: Since the beginning of the decade of 1950, more than 100,000 ha with agricultural potential were periodically affected by flooding caused by the Cauca River.Those same lands had serious drainage problems and deficiencies in soil quality … Fortunately there were men that were able to foresee the uncertain future ahead for the region had not this course been corrected … In the continued searching for harmony for the river to be a source of life and not of destruction, engineering works were designed to convert lands, regulate the river and generate energy. (CVC and Univalle 2007: 11–12) These conceptions are similar to what occurred in other places around dam construction. As described by Iyer (2013), British engineers who built dams in India came to be venerated as public benefactors, with shrines erected in their honour. The Room for the River approach rejects this construction of agricultural entrepreneurs as ‘heroes’ and calls for recognition of the mistakes undertaken in this vision of progress, thus entailing a redefinition of an identity constructed over many years and a source of pride for regional economic actors. For instance, alternatives under the concept of leaving room for the river, which required sugar landowners to cede land and implement major changes on their properties, raised great discontent among them, and when they were asked to move their crops away from riverbank areas, they demanded compensation from the state to offset economic losses. One member of the sugar sector asked at the second workshop of the project: ‘How will the state offset the landowner’s lost revenue in exchange for an environmental good which benefits all?’ Sugar landowners feared that such a narrative that portrays them as wrongdoers could be used against them in denying them compensation for the losses imposed. The opposition raised by sugar landowners to the Room for the River approach greatly affected the process of designing alternatives for flood risk management under the CRCP, causing some of the alternatives to be dropped without being discussed thoroughly. Legitimation of sugar landowners’ narratives against competing narratives was sought through the mobilisation of power and resources. This is clearly exemplified by the reaction to the proposal of the ‘Lagunas de Laminación’ explained below. The proposed solutions from the consultants and the local expert team revolved around relocating the existing levees at a greater distance from the river and incorporating wetlands to the river dynamic, so that there were no levees between the wetlands and the river. This strategy should be complemented with Lagunas de Laminación, which are selected tracts of land adjacent to the river, especially those with wetlands, set apart to be inundated during flooding events.This proposal raised the greatest opposition because it implied that some landowners would have to cede lands and lose revenues during the times the lands are flooded. 9780367371753_C007.indd 169 09-04-2021 09:10:35 170 Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa Sugar associations formally rejected this proposal not only at the workshops but also through complaint letters filed at the CVC and by exerting pressure through their representative at the board of directors of the agency. After these protests, four representatives of the sugar mills were invited to be part of the project team. This opportunity was not given to any other sector, reinforcing the influence of the sugar sector on the decision-making process related to this project. As a result, the Lagunas de Laminación were eliminated from the set of alternatives to manage flood risk. The threat of the sugar industry’s withdrawal from the project and their use of powerful contacts at the board of directors of the CVC certainly exerted effective pressure on the decision-making process in this project. These actions were determinant in making sugarcane narratives predominant and allowing their expression and representation in the project, while excluding ecological or community narratives from the discussion and the alternatives. One of the Afro-Colombian leaders expressed the following sentiment in regard to their exclusion from the project: As we have not participated in the CRCP as communities, last year we requested the CVC to discuss the progress and results of the project with the Community Councils and grassroots organisations, but it has not been done yet.We are pushing again for this to happen—because we have not been consulted, and the fact that we participated in one component of the Project (the establishment of biological corridors by planting trees), it does not mean we have fully participated in it.16 In addition, some Afro-Colombian communities that had been settled since the nineteenth century on the Cauca riverbanks in Cali were defined by flood-risk management policies as ‘population at risk’, requiring relocation in order to reinforce the dyke protecting the city. Leaders from these communities contested this definition and expressed their opposition to the project: ‘They said this project will recover the identity of Cali, but they say nothing about other identities they will pass over, trampling another culture that they make invisible saying that we are “at risk”; but, for us, the river is not a threat.’17 On the other hand, in order to reinforce and qualify its participation, Asocaña (the association of sugar mills) hired an expert team of their choice to better counter technical propositions that could hinder sugarcane interests. As described by a sugar growers’ consultant: Asocaña hired a consultant team to advise them in this construction of a sustainable model for the Cauca River corridor, because they feared the project vision to be too ecological or environmentalist, leaving out the productive point of view. They said, ‘we need here knowledgeable people who advise us well, because the CVC can set up some projects that change the course of our activity and we need someone who can tell whether this is ok or not’, so they hired the IGEI group, which is a firm led by the same engineer who designed the Salvajina dam.18 9780367371753_C007.indd 170 09-04-2021 09:10:35 Taming the Cauca river 171 Faced with this opposition from sugar interests, the project gradually scaled back its scope; as one of the engineers participating in the CRCP described: ‘it was said after the second workshop that the project was not a corridor anymore simply because nothing can be moved’.19 The final alternatives were narrowed down to mostly traditional measures: a protection ring in the municipality of La Victoria; reinforcing the dyke surrounding the city of Cali; an early warning system; review of the Salvajina dam operating rules; three pilot vegetation enrichment projects; and four multipurpose dams. The consulting firm hired by Asocaña is currently designing the multipurpose dams for tributaries of the Cauca River so that the water entering it from those tributaries can be regulated during flooding periods, while at the same time serving as reservoirs for irrigation water. These works allow sugar landowners to avoid any changes in their current properties as they push intervention away from sugar areas toward hillsides, thereby maintaining the status quo.This trend is reinforced by food and energy policies in Colombia encouraging the expansion of sugarcane crops.20 Arguably, these policies are in conflict with policies designed to manage land use in ways that reduce flood risk. Responding to these incentives to expand production, sugarcane landowners are also pursuing flood insurance programmes to continue growing sugarcane in flood-prone areas, which result in supporting inappropriate occupation of the floodplain, as demonstrated by Burby (2001) in other cases. The governance scheme of the consulting team had rested on the assumption that decisions would be agreed upon by stakeholders after a discussion about past flooding consequences and causes and strategies to control it, and, therefore, they relied on participatory and multi-stakeholder workshops to make decisions about the alternatives. However, the consultants underestimated that powerful actors often have more direct paths to influence decisions that allow them to circumvent formal venues designed by policy actors, such as the workshops of the project. Conclusions The history of Valle del Cauca around the Cauca River and wetlands illustrates Worster’s (1985) contention that manipulation of and control over water and land has historically been tightly connected to expressions of political and economic power. In our case, this was represented by the sugar industry’s encroachment over territory, while communities that depended on wetlands, such as fishermen and traditional farmers, became isolated from, and lost access to, those ecosystems. Moreover, the environmental institutions created to manage natural resources, such as the CVC, originated as part of an effort to support a model of development that privileged large-scale agriculture. This institutionalisation of hegemonic hydro-social relations in the territory also marginalised community actors from environmental management decision-making related to rivers and wetlands, creating limited environmental citizenship rights21 for those actors. This translates into limited use of wetlands and rivers by fishermen and traditional farmers. The implementation of the TVA model in Valle del Cauca deeply ingrained a Promethean attitude to nature, based on controlling and submitting nature to serve 9780367371753_C007.indd 171 09-04-2021 09:10:35 172 Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa human needs. As Iyer (2013) argues, and as illustrated in the Room for the River case study, the realisation that this may not be the right relationship to nature is not easy to accept, as it links the debate over flood control to challenging the current idea of ‘development’ and the associated identities created in this process. The Valle del Cauca flooding disaster of 2010–2011 was attributed by local and international experts to the inappropriate and unregulated dominant pattern of development within the floodplain. According to flood risk literature, development control in this case is a legitimate adaptation measure because of the potential to limit future hazards (Wilby and Keenan 2012). However, because of the limited participation of community or environmental actors in the environmental decision-making process in the region that was also reflected in the implementation of the CRCP, alternative development paths were never considered. The CRCP project was no more than a techno-fix to a problem framed by a specific narrative that explained floods as natural disasters that needed to be controlled by high-tech solutions. Hence, following an initial assessment of the flooding disaster as a problem of development, the narrative underlying the project transformed into a storyline that accommodated the prevailing status quo and evaded the thorniest questions that emerged in the aftermath of the flooding emergency, that is, the unregulated and unsustainable use of the floodplain and the role of the environmental authorities in allowing this. In addition to the implications of the limited participation of marginalised communities in environmental management in the region, the case reveals that the TVA model (control and taming of the river) continues to be appealing to economic actors in the region, in spite of wider scientific consensus that a ‘Room for the River’ approach is a more appropriate and effective management strategy. Hence the continued pull of the TVA model—supported by the sugar growers who benefit from it—stands against the implementation of new approaches, such as the Room for the River, that reflect ecological and community interests. Finally, the case shows that finding solutions to managing flood risk involves technical and political factors in which narratives play a central role. Narratives reflect asymmetries of power that, in this project, were overlooked in the first stages of the policy design process but became more important than technicalities later on. Therefore, it shows the importance of putting in place governance mechanisms that are more equitable and inclusive, including access to information, broader participation of stakeholders in the process (not limiting participation to landowners), facilitation and conflict resolution, as well as the design of incentives for relocation. Notes 1 Tennessee Valley Authority. It was a multipurpose development programme created by the US Congress in 1933, consisting of the construction of dams and other technologies to control flooding, improve navigation and also harvest electricity in the Tennessee River, aiming at regional modernisation. Its example became intertwined with modernisation programmes offered by the United States to many parts of the developing world well into the 1960s (Ekbladh 2002: 336). 9780367371753_C007.indd 172 09-04-2021 09:10:35 Taming the Cauca river 173 2 See Vélez-Torres et al. (2019) Beyond property: rural politics and land-use change in the sugarcane landscape in Colombia. 3 In addition, we conducted an extensive archival review of reports, workshop proceedings and bulletins produced by policy actors, sugarcane associations and grassroots organisations during two years of the project. We also draw on field observations at the meetings of the CRCP, wetland management committees and public events of the CRCP. All the interviews were entirely transcribed; interviews, field notes and secondary documents were coded to identify common themes and differences among actors in the values attached to wetlands and flooding as well as differential rights in relation to use of water resources and participation in decision-making. 4 A property system originating in Spain and brought to America during the colonisation process. It usually included housing units of high architectural value in large tracts of land. 5 The term criollo refers to Spanish descendants born in America. 6 Hacienda owners 7 Hm3 means cubic hectometre which is one billion litres. 8 In 2009, the sugar industry had 64 per cent of the concessions for surface water compared to 26 per cent for household uses, 7 per cent for other agriculture, 2 per cent for industry and 1 per cent for other users. For underground water: 88 per cent is used by the sugar industry, compared to 2 per cent for household use, 2 per cent for other agriculture, 6 per cent for industry and 2 per cent for other uses (Perez et al. 2011). 9 Interview with one of the engineer experts participating in the CRCP, Cali, 26 February 2015. 10 Informal conversation with one of the expert members of the CRCP team, Cali, 16 August 2014. 11 Interview with an Afro-Colombian leader of Quinamayó, Jamundí, 11 February 2015. 12 Interview with an Afro-Colombian leader of Robles, Jamundí, 5 February 2015. 13 Interview with a sugar grower, Buga, 2 March 2015. 14 Interview with a biology professor participating in the CRCP, Cali, 22 January 2015. 15 Asocaña is the association of the sugar mills of Colombia. 16 Interview with an Afro-Colombian leader of Robles, Jamundí, 5 February 2015. 17 Interview with Marina Teresa Sánchez, Afro-Colombian leader Playa Renaciente (INCODER 2013: 103). 18 Interview with a sugar growers consultant, Cali, 16 February 2015. 19 Interview with an engineering professor participating in the CRCP, 5 February 2015. 20 ‘Sugarcane producers and the Ministry of Agriculture agreed to increase efforts to expand production by 20% in 2016’ (El País 2016). 21 By limited environmental citizenship rights we mean limited participation in environmental decision-making venues which hinders the ability of marginalised actors to secure access and control of natural resources such as wetlands and rivers. This occurred as a result of the way the CVC was originally created with a mission of regional development and headed by members of the sugarcane elite. References Arcila, A.M., C. Valderrama and P. Chacón de Ulloa. 2012. ‘Estado de fragmentación del bosque seco de la cuenca alta del río Cauca, Colombia’, Biota Colombiana, 13(2): 86–101. Bebbington, A. 2009. ‘Contesting Environmental Transformation: Political Ecologies and Environmentalisms in Latin America and the Caribbean’, Latin American Research Review, 44(3): 177–186. 9780367371753_C007.indd 173 09-04-2021 09:10:35 174 Renata Moreno Quintero and Theresa Selfa Burby, R.J. 2001. ‘Flood Insurance and Floodplain Management:The US Experience’, Global Environmental Change, 3: 111–122. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica (CNMH). 2014. Patrones y campesinos: tierra, poder y violencia en el Valle del Cauca (1960–2012). Bogotá, D.C., Colombia: CNMH. Colmenares, G. 1980. Cali: terratenientes, mineros y comerciantes. Siglo VIII. (2nd ed). Bogotá, Colombia: Carlos Valencia Editores. Corporación Autónoma Regional del Valle del Cauca (CVC) and Universidad del Valle (Univalle). 2007. El Río Cauca en su Valle Alto: Un aporte al conocimiento de uno de los ríos más importantes de Colombia. CVC, Cali, Colombia: Universidad del Valle. Cronon, W. 1992. ‘A Place for Stories: Nature, History and Narrative’, Journal of American History, 78(4): 1347–1376. Currie, L. 1951. Bases de un programa de Fomento para Colombia. Mission Report, 2nd edn. Bogotá, D.C., Colombia: Banco de la República. De Bruijn, H., M. de Bruijne and E. ten Heuvelhof. 2015. ‘The Politics of Resilience in the Dutch “Room for the River” Project’, Procedia Computer Science, 44: 659–668. Edelenbos, J., A. Van Buuren, D. Roth, and M. Winnubst. 2016. ‘Stakeholder Initiatives in Flood Risk Management: Exploring the Role and Impact of Bottom-Up Initiatives in Three “Room for the River” Projects in the Netherlands’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management. doi:10.1080/09640568.2016.1140025. Ekbladh, D. 2002. ‘“Mr. TVA”: Grass-Roots Development, David Lilienthal, and the Rise and Fall of the Tennessee Valley Authority as a Symbol for U.S. Overseas Development, 1933–1973’, Diplomatic History, 26(3): 335–374. doi:10.1111/1467-7709.00315. El País. 2016. ‘Investigación, así han arrasado los humedales en el Valle’. 20 March 2016, http://www.elpais.com.co/elpais/valle/noticias/investigacion-asi-han-arrasado-humedales-valle. (accessed on 1 April 2016). Instituto Colombiano de Desarrollo Rural (INCODER). 2013. Proceso de Fortalecimiento Territorial a consejos comunitarios y capitanías, Centro de Estudios Interculturales (CEI), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Cali, http://www.javerianacali.edu.co/sites/ujc/files/node/ field-documents/field_document_file/proceso_de_fortalecimiento_territorial_a_consejos_comunitarios_instituto_de_estudios_interculturales.pdf (accessed on 26 February 2016). Iyer, R. 2013. ‘Viewpoint: The Story of a Troubled Relationship’, Water Alternatives, 6(2): 168–176. Martinez-Alier, J. 2002. The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK. Moreno-Quintero, R. and T. Selfa. 2018. ‘Making Space for the Cauca River in Colombia: Inequalities and Environmental Citizenship’, in T. Perreault, M. Zwarteveen, J. Vos and R. Boelens (eds), Water Justice. New York: Cambridge University Press. ONU. 2014. ‘Consideraciones ambientales para la construcción de una paz territorial estable, duradera y sostenible en Colombia’, Insumos para la discusión, http://reliefweb.int/ sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Consideraciones%20ambientales%20para%20la%20 construccion%20de%20una%20paz%20territorial%20estable%20duradera%20y%20sostenible%20en%20Colombia.pdf (accessed on 31 May 2015). Ortiz, C. 1999.‘Coyuntura económica del Valle del Cauca: 1988–1998’, in A. Guzmán-Barney (coord.), Cuatro ensayos de coyuntura: Valle y Cauca a fines del s, p. XX. Cali, Colombia.: Cidse-Cerec. Perez, M., M. Peña and P. Alvarez. 2011. ‘Agro-Industria Canera y Uso dela Agua: Análisis Crítico en el Contexto de la Política de Agrocombustibles en Colombia’, Ambiente y Sociedad, 14(2): 153–178. 9780367371753_C007.indd 174 09-04-2021 09:10:35 Taming the Cauca river 175 Roth, D. and J. Warner. 2007. ‘Flood Risk, Uncertainty and Changing River Protection Policy in the Netherlands: The Case of “Calamity Polders”’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 98(4): 519–525. Salazar, M.I., N. Gómez, W.G. Vargas, M. Reyes, L.S. Castillo, and W. Bolívar. 2002. Bosques secos y muy secos del departamento delValle del Cauca. Corporación Autónoma Regional del Valle del Cauca (CVC), Cali, Colombia. Smith T.F., P. Daffara, K. O’Toole, J. Matthews, D.C. Thomsen, S. Inayatullah, J. Fien, and M. Graymore. 2011. ‘A Method for Building Community Resilience to Climate Change in Emerging Coastal Cities’, Futures, 43: 673–679. Sneddon, C. and C. Fox. 2011. ‘The Cold War, the US Bureau of Reclamation, and the Technopolitics of River Basin Development, 1950–1970’, Political Geography, 30: 450–460. Swyngedouw, E. 1999. ‘Modernity and Hybridity: Nature, Regeneracionismo, and the Production of the Spanish Waterscape, 1890–1930’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 89(3): 443–465. Tobasura, I. 2006. ‘La Laguna de Sonso Valle del Cauca, Colombia: Más de tres décadas de lucha ambiental’, Un caso de historia ambiental. Gestión y Ambiente, 9(2): 13–26. van Buuren, A., M.Vink and J.Warner. 2016. ‘Constructing Authoritative Answers to a Latent Crisis? Strategies of Puzzling, Powering and Framing in Dutch Climate Adaptation Practices Compared’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 18(1): 70–87. doi:10.1080/13876988.2013.877675. Vejarano-Alvarez, P. and C.A. Saavedra-Rodriguez. 2013. Diagnóstico ambiental y de las inundaciones del 2010–2011 sobre los ecosistemas del Corredor de conservación y uso sostenible del valle alto del Río Cauca en el Valle del Cauca: un análisis con miras a la conservación y la restauración ecológica. Document for Private Circulation. Asocars, CVC, Cali, Colombia. Vélez-Torres, I., D. Varela, V. Cobo-Medina, and D. Hurtado. 2019. Beyond property: rural politics and land-use change in the sugarcane landscape in Colombia, Journal of Agrarian Change, 19: 690–710, DOI: 10.1111.joac.12332. Vörösmarty, C.J., P. McIntyre, M. Gessner, D. Dudgeon, A. Prusevich, P. Green, S. Glidden, S. Bunn, C. Sullivan, C.R. Liermann, and P. Davies. 2010. ‘Global Threats to Human Water Security and River Biodiversity’, Nature, 467: 555–561. Warner, J.F., A. van Buuren, and J. Edelenbos. 2012. Making Space for the River: Governance Experiences with Multifunctional River Flood Management in the US and Europe. London: IWA Publishing. Wilby, R.L. and R. Keenan. 2012. ‘Adapting to Flood Risk under Climate Change’, Progress in Physical Geography, 36(3): 348–378. Wolsink, M. 2005. ‘River Basin Approach and Integrated Water Management: Governance Pitfalls for the Dutch Space-Water-Adjustment Management Principle’, Geoforum, 37: 473–487. Worster, D. 1985. Rivers of Empire:Water, Aridity and the Growth of the American West. New York: Pantheon Books. 9780367371753_C007.indd 175 09-04-2021 09:10:35 8 IMAGES OF THE NILE How competing narratives frame water disputes Mattia Grandi The hydropolitics of the Nile: its evolution in a dynamic and uncertain context The often-asserted water war along the Nile riverbanks1 has not yet materialised, nor has the inkling of an eventual violent confrontation concretised. While the inflated threat of a looming conflict between the main contenders shrank, the prospect of success for water negotiations in the basin has apparently improved. Nevertheless, the conflict to cooperation potential has not been entirely realised, and intra-basin waterrelated disputes persist. While most of the failures of hydro-diplomatic efforts are attributed to inter-state frictions between Egypt and Ethiopia—such as historic mistrust and diverging political agendas—the modest outcome of protracted negotiations over access to and utilisation of the Nile waters are also associated with the dynamics of regional power (im)balances inside as well as outside the water sector per se. After four years of renewed tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia (with the latter laying the foundation of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam [GERD] on the Blue Nile in 2011), since 2015 the hydro-political setting in the Nile River Basin has experienced major changes, whose occurrence is an evidence in itself of the dynamic nature of intra-basin relationships among the riparian countries. In particular, the seeming rapprochement between the two leading antagonists of the Nile waters controversy marks a critical juncture in the history of hydro-political interconnections in the region, which might hold the potential to turn the longlasting conflictive status in the basin into a new cooperative regime of integrated water management. Indeed, in 2015, the basin’s convoluted hydro-diplomatic process made a breakthrough in regime variations as Egypt accepted to participate in a meeting of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) after a five-year boycott. The reason behind the Egyptian decision to freeze its participation in the initiative laid in the 2010 motion to open (after a decade of unsuccessful negotiations) the Agreement 9780367371753_C008.indd 176 09-04-2021 09:11:27 Images of the Nile 177 on the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework (CFA) for signature, a move approved by seven upstream countries but explicitly dismissed by Egypt and Sudan. The most immediate consequence of the Egyptian opposition to the CFA and its refraining from the NBI was actually unintended and unexpected by the Mubarak administration: whereas the hydro-strategy of the regime was aimed at slowing, if not halting, the observable gradual shift in the regional hydro-political balance that was slightly favouring the ‘upstream block’ of Nile riparian states vis-à-vis downstreamers Sudan and Egypt, the counter-move to the CFA actually resulted in speeding up the process of signature and ratification by its promoters.2 In addition, Egypt’s temporary withdrawal from the basin-wide dialogue platform somehow legitimised, or sanctioned anyway, unilateral moves by the other riparian states, which felt compelled to act in return. It is in that precise uncertain setting and shifting context that Addis Ababa announced in April 2011 the commencement of the GERD, formerly known as the Millennium Dam, a visionary but contentious national project that epitomises both Ethiopia’s hydraulic appetite and its government’s aim to reach middle-income status by 2025, as well as the country’s ambition to counter the historically acquired Egyptian hydro-hegemony over the Nile waters and rise as a regional power hub in the Horn of Africa. According to current plans, with its 1,800 m length, 145 m height and its 74 bcm reservoir, the GERD project, if completed,3 would feature the largest dam in Africa and produce more than 15,000 GWh per year through two surface powerhouses equipped with 16 power-generating units (IPoE 2013), which would make it the continent’s biggest hydroelectric power plant. Much has been written on such controversial mega-infrastructure and on the impact that its construction might have on the ecological, economic, social, political, and cultural spheres of a complex regional environment as well as on the fragile inter-state equilibrium in a conflict-prone area such as the Horn of Africa (Hussein and Grandi 2017; Tawfik 2016; Verhoeven 2013). Egypt’s concerns for potential threats to its water security, the likelihood of irreversible adverse environmental impact, the downstream countries’ reliance on ‘historic and legal rights’ due to ‘prior use’ of the Nile water resources contested by the upstreamers’ narrative of their ‘equitable and reasonable’ utilization, are just a few among the blistering issues that have triggered the debate over the GERD in recent years. Notwithstanding its relevance as a ‘game changer’ (Tawfik 2016) that could bring about a ‘new legal order’ (Salman 2018) in the hydro-political basin’s setting, it’s essential to emphasise that the GERD has not emerged from a vacuum, nor has its on-going construction paved a straight way towards either more cooperation or more conflict among the Nile riparian states. Rather, the project arose from a specific evolving context in a distinct time period due to the crucial convergence of relative changes in different dimensions of power (Hussein and Grandi 2017), which were revealed to be supportive of Ethiopian and the upstream block’s aspirations. In this regard, if the GERD has to be viewed as a counter-hegemonic manoeuvre in order to contrast the protracted Egyptian hegemony over the Nile, it needs to be assessed not as isolated evidence, but as a distinguishing momentum within 9780367371753_C008.indd 177 09-04-2021 09:11:27 178 Mattia Grandi a broader dynamic waterscape and an even wider constantly developing regional confrontation.Twists and turns in the hydro-diplomacy of the Nile Basin have been more than common in the last decades, and the probable completion of the GERD would by no means put to an end the lasting state of uncertainty over modes and tones of the regional water governance; actually, it keeps posing old and new challenges to the parties to the hydro-dispute of allocations and utilisation of the Nile waters.What is certain is that the official kick-off of its construction further induced Egypt to maintain the hostile position towards the other riparian countries already expressed with the boycott of NBI’s activities, de facto crystallising the intra-basin divergences. The discord among the Nile countries had partially attenuated in 2015 when al-Sisi joined his Sudanese and Ethiopian counterparts (al-Bashir and Desalegn, respectively), shortly after the Egyptian NBI-boycott ended, in signing the Agreement on Declaration of Principles on the GERD Project (DoPs), the tangible—yet abstract, unless technically implemented—result of the tripartite negotiations resumed earlier that year.4 From the political framing of water conflict to the hydro-framing of political disputes The complexity of water policy making is enshrined in dynamic evolving narratives, which at the same time forge and support, and, in turn, are also constructed by specific water paradigms and sociocultural imaginaries. This is particularly relevant with regard to the hydro-politics of the Nile both in terms of scales and outcomes, since the water-related disputes in this region do not solely revolve around contentious technical issues, but emerge from the dichotomy of competing imaginaries, perspectives and perceptions of (in)security. Referring to the geopolitics of water in the region by using the term ‘hydropolitics’ of the basin is not accidental, despite the fuzziness of its conception and the lack of an agreed upon definition within the scientific debate (Turton and Henwood 2002). For this chapter’s purposes, the emphasis over hydro-politics aims at driving the readers’ attention towards the inter-linkages between power, negotiations, statecraft, and diplomacy (-politics) in designing water policies (hydro-) in the Nile basin (Warner et al. 2017) and, vice versa, the prominence that hydrology and its related sub-fields have in shaping political relationships (Kitissou, Ndulo and Nagel 2008) within and beyond the region. Moreover, the adoption of the concept also helps underscore the transboundary nature of the largest water resources available in the region (Mollinga 2008) and the potential for conflict and cooperation among the riparian states that the contention for a shared precious resource brings about (Priscoli and Wolf 2009), thus collocating this chapter within the tradition of studies over ‘the nature and conduct of conflict and cooperation between states over transboundary water resources’ (Elhance 2000). Assuming that water-related issues stand at the core of policy-making, multilateral negotiations, conflict and cooperation emancipate the investigation from the dominance of the presumed neutrality of technology, applied physics and water 9780367371753_C008.indd 178 09-04-2021 09:11:27 Images of the Nile 179 engineering (Hussein and Grandi 2017), and rather lead to analyse them within the frames of political economy, instead of in ‘naturalistic or liberal–technical terms’ (Selby 2005). As such, hydro-politics subsumes not just the allocation ‘and/or use of international and national water resources’ (Meissner 1999: 4–5), but, in its looser form, it actually governs the systems of behaviours and activities that allow for the ‘authoritative allocation of values in society with respect to water’ (Turton and Henwood 2002: 16).5 The allocation of values, that is, the very process of policy making, is ‘subject to the perceptions of, and the prioritization of risk’ (Allan 2004), which indeed qualifies the definition of spatial-specific water security as well as the identification of water-related threats and opportunities. Perceptions, however, are neither permanent nor do they have a static nature, and arise from the interpretation of practices, political imperatives and social values in a given time- and space-frame. Thus, narratives that are constructed and reproduced over perceptions and prioritisation provide ‘the vital hermeneutic which links definitions and practices, meaning and action’ (Coskun 2011: 14) and are fundamentally context-specific.The narratives emerging from the water domain inform, and, at the same time, result from, ‘environmental imaginaries’ (Peet and Watts 1996), a concept through which human geographers and political ecologists address ‘the constellation of ideas that groups of humans develop about a given landscape’ (Davis and Burke 2011: 3), including normative assumptions and claims over the understanding of natural and social processes. Peet and Watts (1996) contend that the mere sharing of spaces in a distinct environmental context impinges on the group identity of a given community, which experiences ‘whole complexes of imaginaries’ (ibid.: 37) that retain social values, rules, imperatives, in the end ways of living in defined conditions. Environmental imaginaries are logically the early realms where competing ideas and visions contend in order to turn normative beliefs into predominant narratives. As such, neither imaginaries nor narratives are static: rather, they both reflect the ‘congeries of power relations’ (Davis and Burke 2011: 3) outside the environmental domain per se, and they both influence the political relationships well beyond the context-specificity from which they actually emerge. In order for an environmental imaginary to soar through such conceptual dispute, for a narrative to rise as prevailing, and for both to become authoritatively sanctioned, the relevant actors involved devote efforts to frame them according to perceived opportunities, risks, benefits, and interests, as well as to securitise the referred issue at stake (e.g. water security) by means of depoliticisation. While emerging from different fields of inquiry, the concepts of framing, securitising and (de)politicising well integrate each other when applied to the social sciences in general, and to environmental issues in particular (Maertens 2018). Portrayed as constitutive of a fluid broader process rather than confined stages of a rigid system, the dynamic interaction among frames, securitising moves and depoliticisation tactics refer to precise governing strategies, which ultimately serve defined interests of concerned actors in the political arena. At the core of such a process stand practices of information transfer aimed at influencing human consciousness, which operates through the definition of a problem, the diagnosis of its cause(s) and the prescription 9780367371753_C008.indd 179 09-04-2021 09:11:27 180 Mattia Grandi of remedies in accordance with a careful early selection of sets of ideas (Entman 1993).The act of selecting (imaginaries, imperatives, concepts, definitions), whereby the presence or the absence of specific issues in that given set of ideas acquires meaning in itself, logically renders salient some information at the expense of others, thus moulding the borders of the issue at stake (i.e. framing it) while at the same time directing public attention away from other aspects (ibid.; see also Levin, Schneider and Gaeth 1998). For framing processes that operate within, rather than aside from, specific systems of beliefs and shared social values, the referred cultural context is of crucial importance not only for the symbolic meanings (at the level of reality construction) attached to the object(s) of framing activities, but also – and, at times, more notably – for consequent prospects of action mobilisation (Benford and Snow 2000). By selecting, emphasising and excluding issues from the organisation of debatable ideas, frames project their effects over preferences, evaluations and behaviours of individuals and social groups (Levin, Schneider and Gaeth 1998), thus revealing their intrinsically political nature. Therefore, the generation and development of frames is dynamic and context-specific (and contested, as politics often is), and responds to the interests of political powers, which in the end – by pursuing strategic goals – concur to alter the very values of that socio-environmental imaginaries and cultural narratives on which they had drawn. It is precisely under this two-fold outcome that frames manifest their relevance: on the one hand, by selfreproducing and self-reinforcing their features, and, on the other, by revealing their centrality in the exertion of power (Entman 1993). Power elaborates on frames ‘by way of three sets of overlapping processes that can be conceptualised as discursive, strategic, and contested’ (Benford and Snow 2000: 623), which in most cases translate into securitising moves, especially when applied to sensitive and controversial issues. According to Buzan, Wæver and Wilde (1998), securitisation implies the deliberate construction and delivery of a speech act by a specific actor (securitising actor) over a perceived threat in relation to a certain issue (referent object).The core of securitisation processes/securitising moves is thus a discursive process through which an issue (i.e. water security) is defined as ‘existentially threatened’ (i.e. by domestic or exogenous factors) whereby ‘extraordinary measures’ are deemed necessary in order to deal with that threat.This process relies on semiotic and rhetorical structures that make the referent object dramatised and prioritised in the political agenda, while at the same time inducing compliance from the general audience (i.e. the national population) through the labelling of it as an ‘urgent’ matter of ‘national security’. When accomplished, this process of securitisation may lead to (a) setting the political agenda; (b) marginalising other issues from the public debate; (c) spreading one-dimensional views among the public; (d) excluding alternative perspectives; (e) suppressing secret relevant data and information; (f) legitimising the adoption of non-conventional, non-debatable and sometimes rule-breaking extraordinary countermeasures (Buzan, Wæver and Wilde 1998). The analysis of discursive practices and securitising moves enables the understanding of how and why some narratives are selected and institutionalised among the many that circulate, as well as the identification of the relevant actors who 9780367371753_C008.indd 180 09-04-2021 09:11:27 Images of the Nile 181 succeed in managing the process to the stage where imaginaries and discourses are ‘embodied in a structurally coherent set of social relations [that gives them] their performative, constitutive force in the material world’ (Jessop and Sum 2006). The framing of such narratives responds to given sets of interests and claims, which reflect the nature and objectives supported by actors who are relatively more powerful within the web of political relationships, economic linkages and sociocultural values that identify a specific community or a social constituency, in the end, a nation. Images from the Nile delta: narratives of river glorification in Egypt The belief of Egypt being a ‘gift of the Nile’ is not only due to Herodotus’ famous statement of ‘a land won by the Egyptians and given them by the Nile’,6 which reflects its significance since ancient times, but supposedly it also emerges from the name of the river itself. According to some – although contested – sources, the word Nile comes from the Arabic nel, literally ‘gift to others’, then transliterated into the river being ‘a gift from God’ and Egypt a gift of the river (Shitie 2012). Aside from the etymology of the river’s name, which is disputed (Goedicke 1979), historians have acknowledged early the relevance of the Nile for both its magnitude (‘in antiquity the Nile was the largest river known’, ibid.: 69) and its unique features (‘a river which is unlike every other river’, Herodotus’ Book II: 19), which made the river sacred for the Egyptians. Personified in the god Hapy, the Nile seasonal flood has been long regarded as the main source of the country’s prosperity, by linking the exceptional fertility of the river’s banks with the prodigious flow of its waters and the richness of its fine silt. Accordingly, whereas in the Middle Kingdom, Hapy was treated as the ‘master of the river bringing vegetation’ (Hart 2005), the centrality of the Nile annual flooding in the creation of thriving Egyptian civilisations early on resulted as a crucial feature both in terms of religious and popular beliefs and with regard to the political economy of the country. Apart from the farmers’ calendar, which, following its seasonality, divides the year into three seasons (Akhet: inundation, Peret: growth, and Shemu: harvest), the Nile flood is also celebrated in myths and rituals, such as the ancient Pharaohs’ cosmogony, Coptic liturgies and the mythological resurrection of the god Osiris (Hart 2005). In ‘The Great Hymn to the Aten’, composed in the fourteenth century BC and attributed to Pharaoh Akhenaten, the god Aten relies on the rise of the Nile to feed the peoples of Egypt (You bring him [as flood waters] when you will/To nourish the people. /You made a heavenly Hapy [i.e. rain] descend for them) (Shavit, in Erlich and Gershoni 2000: 80). The holy nature of the river’s flood has been a recurrent topic in the Egyptian imaginary throughout the centuries, as it is even sanctioned in the Coptic liturgy: Raise [the waters of the Nile] to their measures, according to Your grace O Lord/Give joy to the face of the earth/May its furrows be abundantly watered and its fruits be plentiful/ Prepare the land for sowing and harvesting/manage our lives as deemed fit (Shenoda 2016). 9780367371753_C008.indd 181 09-04-2021 09:11:27 182 Mattia Grandi Flooding is also associated with the myth of Osiris, whose power in regulating the Nile overflow is acknowledged in ‘The Book of Making the Spirit of Osiris’: Hail, Osiris … Hàp[y] (the Nile) appeareth by the command of thy mouth. /Making men and women to live on the fluxes which come from thy members, /making every field to flourish (Wallis Budge 1911). The Nile’s creative force and the reliance of the Egyptians on its nourishing power are well depicted in the notorious twenty-first century BC ‘Hymn to the Nile’, whereby the river is blessed as giver of life (Adoration to the Nile! /Hail to thee, o Nile! /who manifesteth thyself over this land, /and comest to give life to Egypt!), and for its sacred essence (Path that descendent from the sky), glorified for making the land blossom (Thou createst the corn, thou bringest forth the barley,/… If thou ceasest thy toil and thy work,/then all that exists is in anguish./… he is the creator of all good things, /as master of energy, full of sweetness in his choice) and worshipped as such (Come [and] prosper, come, o Nile, come [and] prosper!) (Shavit, in Erlich and Gershoni 2000). Closely associated with its nourishing power is the beauty of the Nile’s environment and the loving feelings that it induces, traditionally celebrated both in the religious domain (God has mentioned this region repeatedly in the Qur’an and has shown its pre-eminence to mankind. Egypt is one of the two wings of the world […] its river the most splendid of rivers),7 and in the cultural sphere (My betrothed, do not tarry … /Embrace your bride, /bearer of sheaves of corn, /With wave-enveloping flowers, /Take pleasure in your wedding songs. /Path that shakes earth to Egypt … /Flows exuberantly).8 In modern Egypt, the tradition of respect, love, gratitude, and glory for the Nile that emerged from ancient texts, revived in the circulation of verses dedicated to the sacred river. In Hafez Ibrahim (1872–1932), who for his praises to the river gained the epithet of ‘Poet of the Nile’ (Ewaidat 2015), resonate both the greatness and authority of the Nile—personified as a king—and the poet’s gratitude for its cares about its people (He moved guarded by the men of irrigation /As if he were a king guarded by his soldiers and court men/(…) Flooding with blessings in the valleys).9 The acknowledgement of the benevolence of the river is recurrent in the twentieth-century Egyptian literature, as exemplified in the same Ibrahim’s poem (Never dried a land or intend to oppress) (ibid.), or in Ahmed Shawqi’s (1869–1932) ‘The Nile’ (Benevolence is his attitude /So the valley is always green) (See Ewaidat 2015). Love, national pride, respect, and holiness kept their widespread echoes in modern poetry, as embodied in the epic of Mahmoud Ismael (1910–70), whose ‘A Song for the Nile’ glorifies the river in a very similar vein to that of the ancient ‘Hymn’: Hail the heart of existence and the fascination of the universe/Oh! Nile, the son of eternity, the wine of the Pharaoh/ Hail heart of existence, my ancestors’ home (ibid.). Another persisting image in modern poetry is associated with the purity of the Nile waters, closely associated with the emotions for its beauty and its sacred nature, as in, again, Hafez Ibrahim’s ‘Egypt Speaks for Herself ’ (My River is sweet and pure) and in ‘The Nile’ by Ahmed Shawqi (The pure Nile is a river from Heavens, ‘Al-Kawther’/Paradise is his green banks) (ibid.). The variety of imaginaries emerging from popular beliefs, religious rituals and poems about the Nile in Egypt reveals the profound interconnectedness between the river and its populations, whose livelihoods severely depend on the very existence of its sacred waters. The holiness of the Nile and its creative power as a giver 9780367371753_C008.indd 182 09-04-2021 09:11:27 Images of the Nile 183 of life to the land of the Egyptians are so devotedly celebrated that a feeling of communion permeates most verses. The sincere admiration for the beauty of the river’s ecosystem and the purity of its waters pairs with a deferential respect for the grandiosity of the Nile, which deserves worships and praises for the vital gifts that it brings while flowing. The image of a river portrayed as essential for life is dominant in Egypt and explains the affection for the river so deeply rooted in the societies along its banks. The attachment to the river—the betrothed who embraces his bride—is at times so intense as to culminate into sentiments of possessiveness (My river), which disclose yet again the enduring love of the Egyptians for the blessed river.These imaginaries, while originating in the social, religious and cultural spheres, have spread across the diverse sectors of the society, and by coming through the political and economic domains, have resulted in narratives of gratitude, patriotism and pride.Thus, by urging their historic longing to praise the Nile and the national yearning to glorify its course, the Egyptians have expressed their devotion for a river that deserves their thorough consideration, not just in terms of glorification and praise, but also in terms of respect and protection. The popular meanings associated with the Nile River have been incorporated throughout the centuries into the cultural imaginaries of the Egyptians and renovated within the national narratives in present times. According to Cascão (2009), the traditional values attached to the Nile have inspired policy-making and discursive formation in modern Egypt in three key domains, namely sanctioned knowledge, sanctioned discourse10 on prior use and the securitisation process. First, the priority given in the national political agenda to water management (World Bank 2007) has progressively given Egypt the regional supremacy in terms of expertise, water institutions and multilateral funding, which have allowed the downstream state to take advantage of the capacity gap with its upstream neighbours in order to ‘sanction existing knowledge, numbers, data and information concerning the Nile waters, and [to oppose] any alternative numbers, information and models’ (Cascão 2009: 145). Second, the historical grievance over its ‘acquired rights’ of prior use of the Nile waters has become a non-debatable (i.e. securitised) issue for the Egyptians in order to counter any modification to the status quo of established patterns of utilisation of the Nile flows; indeed, despite growing claims by upstream states with regard to the amendment of water allocations,11 the Egyptians claim that they ‘will not let go one drop of water’.12 Finally, by succeeding in addressing the Nile issue as a top national security priority, Egypt has defined any potential challenge to its ‘acquired rights’ as an existential threat to its water security, thus marginalising from the political agenda (i.e. depoliticising) any possible alternative to the mainstream governmental discourse. One symbolic projection of such narratives is the Aswan High Dam, which rapidly became the token image of the Egyptian hydraulic mission, as well as of its growing role as an international power, thus transcending the water-sphere per se. The project of the mega-dam over the Nile attains a symbolic feature far beyond 9780367371753_C008.indd 183 09-04-2021 09:11:27 184 Mattia Grandi mere technical benefits: first, it had been used by the Egyptian government to build domestic consensus and unify the country around the image of the ‘hydraulic imperative’ as a trigger for development; second, it represented a powerful tool to increase the role of Egypt as a regional superpower, legitimated by its technical supremacy in water engineering; and third, it represented the willingness of Egypt to show the world its rapid evolution through the building of a modern and highly developed state (Waterbury 1979). All these reasons made the Aswan High Dam a key project in the governmental agenda, and, most importantly, allowed it to be presented in the frame of a ‘national security’ priority: the rhetoric around the dam13 strengthened the process of depoliticisation of the water issue in general, and of the use of the Nile river in particular, secreting data and information over the specifics of the project and silencing critical concerns and alternative voices (Caine 2010). Evidence of the political commitment to the preservation of the status quo and of the emphasis in dictating its ‘self-reproducing discourse’ (Cascão 2009) are explicitly disclosed in a multitude of official statements, speeches and reports from successive Egyptian governments: from Nasser14 to Sadat,15 from Mubarak16 to Morsi17 to alSisi,18 the reiterated narrative over the management of the Nile waters has stressed the Egyptian dependency on the Nile waters (i.e. the Nile as lifeblood of Egypt), the alleged right of quasi-monopoly over their utilisation, together with a patriotic sentiment of defensive nationalism against any potential challenge to the highly water-insecure country. Images from the Ethiopian highlands: the resentment towards the Nile The centrality of the Blue Nile—or Abbay in Amharic—in the Ethiopian culture is reflected in the number of tales, proverbs, songs, rituals, and poems dedicated to the river. Adored since ancient times and seen as an object of worships, oblations and offerings, the beliefs over the river’s healing powers have endured till present times (Tvedt 2010). One of the most important rituals for the Coptic Church is the celebration of the Epiphany (Timket), permeated in Ethiopia by a strong water symbolism. Indeed, the Baptism of Jesus revives through the blessing of Christian devotees with holy water, and, in some cases, it even entails mass bathing.This ritual is especially alive in the Lake Tana and neighbouring areas, where the source of the Blue Nile is located. In this region, other religious rituals are closely connected to the Nile: during the Feast of the Cross (Meskel), the worshippers’ processions generally end at the Nile’s banks—or at that of its tributaries—where a big wooden cross is thrown into the river, whereas in most of the country, the celebration envisages an association with another natural element—fire, rather than water—by the burning of the cross into consecrated flames (Oestigaard 2009). The deep connection between the Ethiopians and the Abbay is also exemplified by the etymology of its name: stemming from the ancient Ge’ez language’s term Abbawi, literally ‘fatherly’, the 9780367371753_C008.indd 184 09-04-2021 09:11:27 Images of the Nile 185 meaning of the river’s name is translated into either ‘our father’ or ‘father of rivers’ (Tafla, in Erlich and Gershoni 2000), thus disclosing not only the local habit of personifying the river, but also its central role in the moulding of Ethiopian society. The Abbay’s creative power is celebrated in Tsegaye G/Medhin’s ‘Nile’, where the poet addresses the spiritual heritage of the river as the blood of Ethiopia, the mother of Cush, /The introducer of civilization to the world (cit. in Arsano 2007: 277). Yet, such centrality is not unambiguous; rather, it reveals the controversial relationship between the river and its people: admired for its natural might, blessed and loved (Non transient beauty, limitless splendor, /Eternal waters, more enduring than time/ Waters that emanated and flowed from Heaven /Since the conception of Adam and the time of creation/Unfathomable charisma, grace of the nation, Abbay. /Abbay, nourishment of the desert),19 the sacred river is also hated, cursed, outraged. First, the Abbay’s destructive power, manifested in the wrecking floods that inundate and divide the populations along its river banks, pairs the respectful behaviour that it instils with the anxiety, despair and fear for natural disasters (Shitie 2012). Second, the historic failure of the Ethiopians in fully harnessing their god-given treasure—by means, for example, of hydraulic development and irrigation potential—recurs as if it responded to the Abbay’s will, rather than to technical, political and socio-economic challenges (Tvedt 2010). These two imaginaries, which are associated with a sense of vexation suffered because of the Blue Nile’s attitude towards Ethiopia, frequently emerge from couplets, popular wisdom and proverbs (such as in the following saws: One wails and fails, when the waters swell;The Abbay has no home, but where does it take all those logs it carries?;The son of the barber suffers from lice, the son of the Abbay suffers from thirst) (Tafla, in Erlich and Gershoni 2000), and denote the connotation of the river as a traitor, indifferent to its people’s suffering so as to make them starve in hunger and thirst. The paradoxical depiction of the Nile as ‘an arrogant thief of soil and cattle, a traitor that steals Ethiopia’s waters and divides her sons’ (Erlich and Gershoni 2000) is among the most recurrent images in the Ethiopian tradition, often revitalised and reinforced in modern poetry. As an example, both in ‘Shotelay’ and in ‘Tukur Abbay’, poet and playwright Ayalneh Mulatu emphasises the painful disconnection from the Nile: You have ripped me off my treasure,/You have left me naked,/You are drawing my enemies, not my allies,/You came out of my womb, but you are not my supporter/(…) The death, suffering of yesterday and before yesterday,/Isn’t that because of you, Abbay? (Shitie 2012). The cruelty of the river earns insults and offences from its people, such as in Hailu G/Yohannes’ ‘InnatkinBelulgn’, where the Nile is charged with lack of compassion for its own home country and brutality: [Abbay] flows like a snake in a twist,/ When its natives suffer from thirst,/When they utter a cry of agony./Why then does it not give response?/Because it is cruel, Abbay is heedless/(…) Abbay-the idle, (…)/(…) Please see the land screaming in pain, (…) /Yelling to receive your favor, (…)/Begging for your mercy, (…) Begging you for a drop of water. (…)/When your land cries out to tell the tale of her woes, /With her throat dried up, (…)/So, what happened to your ears? (…)/For they seem to be deaf to her cries (ibid.). The recurrent topic of a river that steals Ethiopia’s resources to make others enjoy them is also present in Tadele Gedle’s ‘Abbay Went 9780367371753_C008.indd 185 09-04-2021 09:11:27 186 Mattia Grandi Out of Sight’ (While there are many natives at home, (…)/It took all our produce from our fields(…)/(…) To give it to the Egyptians) (ibid.), whereas Abebaw Melaku urges to curse the uselessness of the cheating Abbay (For the illegitimate praise you have received in the past, /For your wicked way of fooling the entire habesha, /Get double of your disaster, be cursed./(…) Abbay! Reap vanity, reap what you have sown, /As we grieved because of you, grieve even more) (ibid.). The interpretation of the imaginaries attached to the (Blue) Nile emerging from Ethiopian poetry reveals how the relationship between the upstream populations and their most important river has been controversial (Shitie 2012). The images of anguish, grief and regret mingle with the traditional feelings of reverence, love, admiration, and respect for the mighty river. Blessed and cursed at the same time, the sacred waters have inspired a sense of resentment among the Ethiopians, with the astonishment for its magnificence being tied to sorrow and melancholy for what it could have been but was not. The abundance long yearned for and never enjoyed has rendered Ethiopia’s frustration into sentiments of vexation, indignation and rancour to the Abbay, as if it were a degenerate son rather than the country’s father. Despite the—still alive—spiritual attachment to the river, the traditional reverence to the Nile somehow vanishes in contemporary poems, because of the presumed lack of any meaningful economic benefit stemming from its flows (Tvedt 2010). A direct linkage exists between these popular narratives and the governmental rhetoric associated with the Nile: the development of hydraulic infrastructures for exploiting the water potential of the river is currently deemed necessary not only for the benefits associated with the increase in water supply and energy production, but most importantly for the symbolic meanings attached to a general sentiment of nationalistic pride, expectations for a brighter future and widespread patriotism. Accordingly, the massive GERD on the Blue Nile is not accidentally named after the word Renaissance; it is the most allegorical project that epitomises not only the grandeur of the Ethiopian government, but also the ambition for a new Ethiopian Renaissance of development and prosperity. Indeed, the GERD is represented as the ‘flagship project of the government and people of Ethiopia’ (MoWR 2014), which ‘like the Adwa victory (…) will be venerated for generations’.20 The former Ethiopian PM Hailemariam Desalegn had often reiterated this narrative of unity, nationalism and pride attached to the GERD, the ‘source of our national proud [sic]’.21 However, this narrative is certainly incompatible with the Egyptian perspective with respect to the construction of hydraulic infrastructures over the Nile. Whereas for the downstream country the GERD represents not only an objective threat to its water security, but also a barrier to the eventual development of effective cooperation within the basin, the Ethiopians see the GERD as an opportunity to spread the benefits of shared waters beyond borders; in other words, it’s ‘a dam of mega benefits’.22 The former Ethiopian PM Meles Zenawi had framed this specific discourse since the very launch of the project: ‘the benefits that will accrue from the Dam will by no means be restricted to Ethiopia. They will clearly extend to all neighbouring states, and particularly to the downstream Nile basin countries, to 9780367371753_C008.indd 186 09-04-2021 09:11:27 Images of the Nile 187 Sudan and Egypt’, he argued (ibid.). Illustrating the benefits that would accrue from the dam to the neighbour states (‘Egypt and Sudan will be benefited from clean energy generated by the plant and will also reduce the accumulation of sedimentation on lower riparian countries’),23 the government’s rhetoric sanctions the narrative of the ‘win-win undertaking’ (MoWR 2013) and of harmless intentions (‘We have no reason to make the Egyptians feel insecure’).24 With regard to internal affairs, the narrative of hydro-development has prevailed over alternative perspectives, which insist on the adverse impact that the GERD provokes, both in term of modifications of the ecosystem and with regard to the socio-economic effects for communities culturally attached to the (natural flow of the) Abbay (e.g. fishers and farmers living along its banks). The trade-off between expected benefits and potential unintended externalities has been silenced and excluded from the political debate, in order to spur the development agenda of the ruling party (Veilleux 2013).The hydraulic mission promoted by the Ethiopian government entails peculiar narratives that transcend the specificity of water management and engineering per se; rather, mainstream discourses reveal a wider strategy of national identity construction through inflated patriotism and rhetoric over unity. In this perspective, the implementation of huge infrastructural projects in marginal areas does not exclusively respond to the urgency to harness the water potential in the country, but it does represent a strategic tool for the expansion of the governmental apparatus to peripheral territories that have historically been delinked from the centre (such as the Benishangul-Gumuz Region, where the GERD is located). Accordingly, the narratives on water development in Ethiopia are integral to the broader state-interventionism agenda and ultimately respond to the interests of the rulers in two crucial spheres: the control over the periphery by a centralised state, and the legitimation of the developmental state’s modus operandi (Fantini 2014). As such, water narratives are both instrumental to central state authorities as they tighten their grip over local affairs, and functional to the promotion of everyday nationalism through the discourse of a ‘New Ethiopia through hydropower’ (Verhoeven 2013). Conclusions: the framing of water dispute in the eastern Nile Perceptions and prioritisation of risks are central features of water-related disputes and are closely related to the imaginaries associated with water resources at different levels. These imaginaries are generated and reproduced through the creation of peculiar narratives that serve specific interests, which ultimately reside outside the mere water sector. The increasing process of securitisation of water resources is evident across the Nile River at different scales. At the regional level, the Egyptian apologetic narrative of historical rights (associated with apocalyptic imaginaries of eventual changes to the hegemonic status quo in the basin) and the Ethiopian unilateral development of its hydraulic mission had precluded negotiations towards more cooperative engagements and integrated management of the Nile flows. At the domestic level, the securitising moves of the Ethiopian government have promoted 9780367371753_C008.indd 187 09-04-2021 09:11:27 188 Mattia Grandi sanctioned discourses on the prioritisation of national interests over the imaginaries of local populations, now detached from their historical ways of utilisation of water resources, as in the case of the construction of the GERD. In the basin, the emphasis over existential threats that impinge over the current and future enjoyment of water resources (i.e. the Egyptian concerns over upstream hydraulic development by the other riparian states) rhetorically justifies the adoption of extraordinary measures, deemed necessary for the very survival of the nation, and which are supported by space- and time-specific narratives (i.e. the glorification of the Nile in Egypt, or the developmental rhetoric in Ethiopia). The exclusion of alternative narratives from the public debate and the political arena (that is, securitisation of water issues) contributes to the reproduction of sanctioned discourses, which risk overlooking existing alternative imaginaries associated with the significance, the social practices, the historic uses and the symbolic meanings that water resources embody. Nevertheless, since ‘every [hegemonic] order is susceptible to being challenged by counter-hegemonic practices that attempt to disarticulate it’ (Mouffe 2013: 27), emerging forms of resistance in the water sector (i.e. the transnational linkages between local populations in Ethiopia and international human rights networks, or the Ethiopian challenges to the regional hegemonic status quo) could favour the inclusion of alternative narratives into mainstream water resources management across the Nile Basin, by de-securitising water-related issues and de-sanctioning institutionalised discursive practices. The Nile-related narratives that have historically emerged in Egypt and Ethiopia could be epitomised in the representation of sentiments of ‘glorification’ in the former vis-à-vis the ‘resentment’ in the latter: whereas the Egyptians have always celebrated the Nile as the physical and spiritual founder of their ancient and modern civilisations, the Ethiopians have mostly addressed it with mixed emotions of ‘lamentation, anger and sorrow’ (Shitie 2012). For the Ethiopians, the Abbay has been regarded for centuries ‘as a traitor that steals over a half-million tons of fertile soil, cuts deep into the earth and obstructs communications, and then dumps water uselessly in a distant land (…) leaving Ethiopians to die of thirst’ (Tafla, cit. in Arsano 2007). In this regard, the recent hydraulic mission developed by the Ethiopian government can be assessed not (or not only) in terms of a sort of revenge over the Egyptian historical quasi-monopoly over the Nile waters, but rather as revenge over the river itself: following centuries where the river’s fate has been that of ‘killing and healing at the same time’ (Shitie 2012), the Ethiopians are now riding the wave of national water development as a pragmatic opportunity to reconcile themselves with the often cursed river. Narratives over waters provide the linkage between definitions and practices, meanings and actions, and emerge from configurations of social relations that reflect, and in turn influence, interests and objectives of competing actors at different levels. At the same time, national dimensions are not separable from the international patterns of security interdependence, and the case of the Nile Basin is explicative of this mutual relationship. Indeed, the same actor, the Ethiopian government, while playing a counter-hegemonic role at the regional level in order to pursue 9780367371753_C008.indd 188 09-04-2021 09:11:27 Images of the Nile 189 its water-related interests, operates as a hegemonic power in its internal affairs, in which the management of water resources plays a crucial but not exclusive role. Breaking ‘the now essentialised link between “nationality” and “culture”’ (Archer et al. 2007) is a necessity in order to counter the negative externalities of securitisation moves, since the prevention of ‘vertical identity conflicts between central states and peripheral communities’ (Buzan, Wæver and Wilde 1998: 132) requires the appreciation of alternative narratives and the inclusion of legitimate competing interests. The same might be revealed to be true at the regional level too, where the exploitation of cultural imaginaries on the Nile have been translated into the frames of ‘national security priorities’ in order to sanction political imperatives and pursue political interests. Resulting from the multi-faceted political dimension where power plays concur to state-building processes, these narratives reveal their influence over aspects of hydro-diplomacy in the basin, whose evolution also depends on the forms and tones that practices of sanctioning discourses attach to the imaginaries traditionally linked to the Nile waters Notes 1 The likelihood of a water war between Egypt and Ethiopia over the control of the Nile is a recurrent topic both in the media industry (see for example Benaim and Hanna 2018, on Foreign Affairs or Allington 2018, on Bloomberg’s Environment & Energy Reports) and in academic debates (see, among others, Levy 2019). 2 By 28 February 2011, six Nile countries (Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda) had already signed the CFA. Should the Agreement be ratified by six of the parties, it will enter into force (at the time of writing, October 2018, only three riparian states had ratified it). 3 According to Ethiopian diplomatic sources, the GERD project was more than 65 per cent completed by mid-2018 (see https://ethiopianembassy.be/en/2018/06/04/morethan-65-of-gerds-construction-completed/, accessed on 15 February 2019). 4 The Declaration was signed in Khartoum on the 23 March 2016, and includes ten principles: principle of cooperation; principle of development, regional integration and sustainability; principle of equitable and reasonable utilization; principle of not to cause significant harm; principle to cooperate on the first filling and operation of the dam; principle of confidence building; principle of exchange of information and data; principle of dam safety; principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity; principle of peaceful settlement of disputes. (The full text can be accessed at http://aigaforum.com/documents/Final-fulltext-of-egypt-sudan-ethiopia-agreement-on-nile-use.pdf, accessed on 15 February 2019). 5 Both definitions pay tribute to Easton’s (1965: 21) seminal work, whereby he defined a political system as ‘those interactions through which values are authoritatively allocated for a society’. 6 See Herodotus’ Book II: 29–30; Book III: 17–25; Book VII: 69–70, in Bowie (2007). 7 See 1st century Arab scholar al-Muqaddasi, quoted in Wilkinson (2014: 15). 8 From a love poem of early Roman Egypt (cit. in Shavit 2000). 9 See Ibrahim Hafez’s ‘Look at the Eminent District of Azbakia’, in Ewaidat (2015). 10 On the conception of ‘sanctioning’ applied to hydro-politics see Allan (2004), Zeitoun and Warner (2006). 11 Especially with regard to the 1929 and 1959 Nile agreements. 9780367371753_C008.indd 189 09-04-2021 09:11:27 190 Mattia Grandi 12 Abdel-Moteleb, ex-Egyptian Irrigation Minister, 06 January 2014, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-08/ethiopia-rejects-egyptian-proposal-on-nile-asdam-talks-falter (accessed on 15 February 2019). 13 Caine (2010: 27) reported that in 1967 the UAR stated that ‘The High Dam’s major value lies in that it represents the determination and free will of a nation, looking forward in pride and dignity and insisting on translating into practical action the aspiration of the people for a better standard of living’. And Waterbury (1979: 108) described the dam as a ‘symbol of Egypt’s will to resist imperialist endeavours to destroy the revolution’. 14 Nasser deliberately excluded Ethiopia from the 1959 Nile agreement with Sudan and from the planning of the Aswan High Dam. 15 In 1978, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said: ‘We depend upon the Nile 100 per cent in our life, so if anyone at any moment thinks to deprive us of our life we shall never hesitate (to go to war) because it is a matter of life or death.’ One year later he reiterated, ‘The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.’ 16 In 2010, while inaugurating the new Saft el-Laban corridor in Giza, President Mubarak assured that Nile water ‘will not extend beyond Egyptian borders" (https://wikileaks. org/gifiles/docs/14/1454644_egypt-ethiopia-kenya-mubarak-pledges-to-keep-nilewater-in.html, accessed on 19 September 2018). Moreover, a leaked communication from Stratfor security agency revealed that the same year Mubarak held talks with his counterpart al-Bashir for constructing a military base in Sudan, from which attacks to Ethiopia would have been possible in case of escalating disputes over the Nile waters issue (http://wikileaks-press.org/stratfor-sources-reveal-egypt-sudan-contingency-plans-tosecure-nile-water-resources/, accessed on 19 September 2018). 17 ‘Egypt’s water security cannot be violated at all,’ President Morsi said in 2013. ‘As president of the state, I confirm to you that all options are open’ (http://www.bbc.com/news/ world-africa-22850124, accessed on 15 February 2019). 18 ‘The waters of Egypt is not a subject for talk, and I assure you, no one can touch Egypt’s water’ stated al-Sisi in 2017, https://www.egyptindependent.com/no-one-can-touchegypts-share-of-nile-waters-sisi/ (accessed on 15 February 2019). 19 See Ejigayehu Shibabaw’s ‘Abbay’ (2008), in Shitie (2012). 20 S. Bekele, former GERD Project Manager, 15 December 2013, http://addisfortune.net/ columns/like-the-adwa-victory-the-great-ethiopian-renaissance-dam-gerd-will-bevenerated-for-generations (accessed on 15 February 2019). 21 H. Desalegn, former Ethiopian PM, 27 March 2017, https://www.ezega.com/News/ NewsDetails/4086 (accessed on 15 February 2019). 22 MelesZenawi, former Ethiopian PM, 02 April 2011, http://grandmillenniumdam.net/ the-dam-speech/ (accessed on 19 September 2017). 23 Ethiopia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Ambassador Dina Mufti, 9 June 2013, http:// www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?iframe&page=imprimable&id_article=46880 (accessed on 15 February 2019). 24 Desalegn Hailemariam, former Ethiopian PM, 29 January 2015, http://english.ahram. org.eg/NewsContent/1/0/121692/Egypt/0/Relations-have-improved (accessed on 21 September 2018). 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Maertens, L. 2018. ‘Depoliticisation as a Securitising Move: The Case of the United Nations Environment Programme’, European Journal of International Security, 3(3): 344–363. Meissner, R. 1999. ‘Water as a Source of Political Conflict and Cooperation: A Comparative Analysis of the Situation in the Middle East and Southern Africa’, Unpublished M.A. Dissertation, Department of Political Studies, Johannesburg, South Africa: Rand Afrikaans University (RAU). Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR). 2013. Unwarranted Anxiety: The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and some Egyptian Experts Hyperbole, http://www.mowr. gov.et/index.php?pagenum=0.1&ContentID=88 (accessed on 24 September 2017). Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR). 2014. Setting the Record Straight, http://www. mowr.gov.et/index.php?pagenum=0.1&ContentID=173 (accessed on 16 September 2017). Mollinga, P.P. 2008. ‘Water, Politics and Development: Framing a Political Sociology of Water Resources Management’, Water Alternatives, 1(1): 7–23. Mouffe, C. 2013. Agonistics:Thinking the World Politically. London:Verso, p. 92. Peet, R. and M. Watts (eds). 1996. Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. New York: Routledge. Priscoli, J. D. and A.T. Wolf. 2009. Managing and Transforming Water Conflicts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oestigaard, T. 2009. Water, Culture and Identity: Comparing Past and Present Traditions in the Nile Basin Region. Bergen: BRIC Press. Salman, S.M.A. 2018. ‘Agreement on Declaration of Principles on the GERD: Levelling the Nile Basin Playing Fields?’, in Z. Yihdego, A. Rieu-Clarke and A. E. Cascão (eds), The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Nile Basin: Implications for Transboundary Water Cooperation. Abingdon-New York: Routledge. Selby, J. 2005. ‘The Geopolitics of Water in the Middle East: Fantasies and Realities’. Third World Quarterly, 26(2): 329–349. Shenoda, M. 2016. ‘Damming the Nile: A Poet’s Ecology’, Prairie Schooner, 90(3): 40–50. Shitie,Y. 2012.‘Literature as a Hydro-Political Discourse:A Comparative Analysis of Ethiopian and Egyptian poetry’. Unpublished Master Thesis, College of Humanities, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa. Tawfik, R. 2016. ‘The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: A Benefit-sharing Project in the Eastern Nile?’, Water International, 41(4): 574–592. Turton, A.R. and R. Henwood (eds). 2002. Hydropolitics in the Developing World: A Southern African Perspective. Pretoria: African Water Issues Research Unit (AWIRU). Tvedt, T. 2010. The River Nile in the Post-Colonial Age: Conflict and Cooperation among the Nile Basin Countries. London and New York: I.B. Taurid & Co. Ltd. Veilleux, J.C. 2013. ‘The Human Security Dimensions of Dam Development: The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’, Global Dialogue, 15(2): 1–15. 9780367371753_C008.indd 192 09-04-2021 09:11:27 Images of the Nile 193 Verhoeven, H. 2013. ‘The Politics of African Energy Development: Ethiopia’s HydroAgricultural State-Building Strategy and Clashing Paradigms of Water Security’, Phil Trans R Soc, A 371: 20120411. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2012.0411. Wallis Budge, E.A. 1911. Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. London: Philip Lee Warner; New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Warner, J., N. Mirumachi, R.L. Farnum, M. Grandi, F. Menga, and M. Zeitoun. 2017. ‘Transboundary “Hydro-Hegemony”: 10 Years Later’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews:Water, 4(6), e1242. Waterbury, J. 1979. Hydropolitics of the Nile Valley. New York: Syracuse University Press. Wilkinson, T.A. 2014. The Nile: Downriver Through Egypt's Past and Present. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. World Bank. 2007. Making the Most of Scarcity. Accountability for Better Water Management in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group. Zeitoun, M. and J. Warner. 2006. ‘Hydro-hegemony: A Framework for Analysis of TransBoundary Water Conflicts’, Water Policy, 8(5): 435–460. 9780367371753_C008.indd 193 09-04-2021 09:11:27 9 INFRASTRUCTURAL CARE AND WATER POLITICS IN COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA Patrick Bresnihan ‘And after the water wars … what?’1 In 2000, a broad alliance of irrigators, campesinos, factory workers, street vendors, urban water committees, neighbourhood organisations, students, and middle-class professionals forced the Bolivian government to cancel the contract it had signed with a consortium of private companies and return the municipal water system of Cochabamba to public control. The story of the citizens of Cochabamba standing up to and defeating the combined forces of an international consortium, the IMF and an entrenched political elite is a modern-day story of David versus Goliath (Assies 2003). It is no surprise that it is has become one of the touchstones in the ongoing struggle over ownership and control of water resources and infrastructures around the world.2 A popular understanding of the Water Wars sees the events in Cochabamba as the opening salvo in a series of powerful social mobilisations that took place across Bolivia between 2000 and the end of 2005, culminating in the election of Evo Morales as President in 2005. As the first indigenous President in South America, Morales has gone on to become a consistently strong voice on global issues of climate change, water rights and the rights of Mother Earth.The new Bolivian constitution, enacted in 2009, establishes water as a human right and bans its privatisation. On this platform, the Bolivian government subsequently led a successful drive for UN recognition of water and sanitation as a human right in 2010.3 Through a new Ministry for Water and well-publicised investment programmes, Bolivia has also made good progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in water and sanitation.4 From the perspective of these developments, the Water Wars can be understood as one, albeit decisive, moment in the emergence of a new progressive government that has now re-established the state as the guiding force in social, economic and environmental affairs (Yates and Bakker 2014).5 9780367371753_C009.indd 194 09-04-2021 09:11:56 Infrastructural care and water politics 195 The establishment of the state as the provider of water services and the guarantor of the right to water is enshrined in the 2009 Bolivian Constitution, which states that ‘[i]t is for the government to regulate, protect and plan the adequate and sustainable use of water resources, with social participation, guaranteeing access for everyone’. This clause was incorporated into the Constitution to explicitly counter the discourse of privatisation and commercialisation that had been predominant in Bolivia for the previous two decades. But the generic goal of ensuring the right to water for the population does not specify what this means or how it should be achieved (see Bakker 2013). For example, the UN MDGs have a limited definition of water access (access to a water pipe) and basic sanitation (the availability of a bath with a drainage system). These definitions say nothing about the quality of these services, such as how much water people receive, for how much time, at what cost and of what quality. The government’s emphasis on achieving measurable results within the limited criteria of the MDGs has meant that there is often little concern for the quality of new projects or infrastructure. Over-reliance on centralised public funds6 has also generated opportunities for political clientalism and corruption, whereby municipal and local authorities might approve projects simply to acquire money (Baer 2015). In some cases, money has been spent without any project being executed, or in other cases where it is executed, the lack of planning can result in pipes being laid where there is not even a source of water to fill them (Costa 2015).7 Thus, while capital investments in the water infrastructure servicing the poorer, southern part of Cochabamba have increased during Morales’ administration, much of this investment has been sporadic and partial (Yaku al Sur 2013).8 The continued lack of reliable water access for at least half of the population of the city means that hundreds of thousands of people continue to rely on a combination of aguaterros (private vendors), expensive bottled water owned by multinational corporations, or their own water sources—primarily wells that are vulnerable to contamination and over-use due to population pressure. As a result, the everyday reality in terms of access to potable water and sanitation for many of the residents of Cochabamba today is little different from that before the Water Wars (Los Tiempos 2015; Shultz 2010b; Spronk 2014). Challenging the idea that the right to water is guaranteed only by the Bolivian government is the ongoing presence of self-organised, collective forms of water provisioning in Cochabamba that have asserted themselves against state-provided water services (Olivera 2014; Perreault 2008).9 While the Water Wars were principally a struggle against privatisation, they also made visible the existence of these collective forms of water provisioning that had previously been invisible or taken for granted (Zibechi 2009).10 The rest of this chapter focuses on these collective urban water infrastructures, specifically the ways they foreground the different, often contested, social and ecological dimensions of water infrastructures on the ground. The research for this chapter was carried out over two six-week periods in October/November 2014 and June/July 2016. During these visits, I conducted interviews with researchers, NGO workers, activists, and individuals directly involved in water cooperatives/community-managed water systems. I also stayed 9780367371753_C009.indd 195 09-04-2021 09:11:56 196 Patrick Bresnihan with an individual who had been actively involved in the mobilisations in 2000, and who now works on local and regional projects supporting greater democratic participation and access to water. Facilitated by this individual, I visited four different water cooperatives/community-managed water systems around Cochabamba, two of which are discussed below. Collective water provisioning In Cochabamba, collective water systems built and organised by communities largely emerged in the 1980s in response to the limitations of the existing municipal water system, a system that only served a relatively small proportion of the population in the north of the city (around half in 2000, and roughly the same today). Successive waves of new urban settlers were forced to source their own water, dig their own wells, lay their own pipes, ensure the maintenance and functioning of their water systems, and make decisions on allocation and use. In the process, they also developed their own ways of making collective decisions, organising collective labour and adjusting to the changing social and environmental conditions that did not rely on the institutions of the market or the state.11 These water systems amount to an alternative form of collective urban infrastructure that can appear provisional and precarious, yet provides for large sections of the marginalised urban population (Amin 2014). Post-colonial scholars and anthropologists have documented the existence of informal, collective forms of urban infrastructure across cities in the Global South (Amin 2014; McFarlane 2008; Simone 2004). In contexts where basic services such as access to water are not available, people are required to collectively experiment with available materials and resources to provide for themselves. In contrast to the large-scale, technical infrastructure projects provided by the state,12 these localised alternatives demonstrate forms of infrastructure-making that are ‘lively’ (Amin 2014), ‘social’ (Silver 2014) and ‘peopled’ (Simone 2004), relying on social networks, shared labour, communal responsibility, and ongoing improvisation. These collective forms of urban infrastructure thus rely on and generate distinct forms of social cooperation and collective action that can, in turn, shape distinct forms of politics (Zibechi 2010). The relationship between collective urban water infrastructures and politics was demonstrated during the Cochabamba Water Wars where the most militant and active sections of the population were those threatened with the direct appropriation of their collective water systems—rather than increased water charges (Olivera and Lewis 2004; Zibechi 2009). Those who participated in and relied on these water systems were not struggling to defend a state-managed public water system but rather their own water sources and collectively-maintained water infrastructures (wells, pipes, irrigation systems).13 After the Water Wars, these self-managed water systems did not want to give up their customary rights to water resources and collectively-made infrastructures. In the urban and peri-urban areas of Cochabamba, this meant refusing the option of simply becoming paying users of the public 9780367371753_C009.indd 196 09-04-2021 09:11:56 Infrastructural care and water politics 197 water utility—even if that had been a realistic possibility (Bakker 2007). Instead, these communal water systems hoped to devise ways of working with SEMAPA (Servicio Municipal de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado), the municipal water utility in Cochabamba, and other government agencies and departments to strengthen their technical, financial and organisational capacities as recognised water providers (Sanchez-Gomez and Terhorst 2005).With the election of Evo Morales in 2006, the possibility for such co-management alternatives was given some impetus as ongoing questions concerning water provision in the city continued and alternative solutions were sought (Driessen 2008; Spronk 2008).14 Rather than ignoring the vital social functions that the water cooperatives and committees performed (as before), the new government granted them formal status to better address chronic problems in the public water system.15 As early as 2010, however, efforts at co-management began to falter.16 Water committees and cooperatives are now tolerated but not supported, as was the case before the Water Wars. The difference, however, is that the government can now claim ownership over these self-organised water systems in line with its constitutional role as the guarantor of the right to water. Infrastructural care As well as fostering a more vivid sense of ownership over specific water resources and the infrastructures that sustain them, collective forms of urban water provisioning also foster different kinds of relationships between water, people and the material conditions required for ongoing water services. Where large-scale water infrastructure provided by the state (or private companies) is usually intended to be invisible to its users, collectively made and maintained water infrastructures tend to be more visible to the people who rely on them; the social, makeshift and vulnerable nature of these localised water systems demands that those who use them are more intimately invested in their protection and functioning.This foregrounding of the infrastructure that enables quality water services is thus often a matter of practical necessity. The practical foregrounding of infrastructure-making resonates with a rich vein of work on critical infrastructure emanating from science and technology studies (Carse 2016; Star 1999) and, more generally, feminist accounts of reproductive or care work (de la Bellacasa 2017; Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 2001).17 The point of overlap is a shared concern and attention towards the multiple and diverse labours, materials, processes, bodies and so on that are involved in sustaining (certain forms of) everyday social life (for some): who or what is involved in these vital infrastructures, and how and why do they endure and fail. In the case of collective water provisioning in Cochabamba, these are neither abstract questions nor are they concerns that only arise in moments of spectacular politics. For those for whom access to drinkable water and sanitation cannot be taken for granted, the making and maintenance of the conditions required to supply such needs cannot be taken for granted either.The maintenance of these conditions can, I argue, be described in terms of ‘infrastructural care’. The concept of infrastructural care expands what is commonly understood by infrastructure. From this 9780367371753_C009.indd 197 09-04-2021 09:11:56 198 Patrick Bresnihan perspective, infrastructure is not separate, solid and beneath social life (‘infra’), but a more provisional, explicit and fluid combination of people, materials, resources, and ecology, held together through relations of reciprocity and care (Berlant 2016). The notion of care draws from feminist accounts of women’s reproductive work that has also, historically, functioned as a taken-for-granted infrastructure of social life (Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 2001). As Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto argue, ‘care’ does not just denote childcare or healthcare, but ‘everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our “world” so that we may live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web’ (quoted in Tronto 2010: 160). This care-work cannot be outsourced to professional engineers, planners or politicians because the concerns being addressed cannot be settled through recourse to technical expertise. In the case of Cochabamba, caring for collective water systems involves different degrees and forms of social participation that enable ongoing responses to changing demands and pressures. One effect of this is that the politics of such everyday infrastructure-making is not relegated to spectacular conflicts (transfer of ownership, for example) but unfolds through many minor struggles that foreground the messy process of negotiating different social needs and material limits. Through this process of negotiation, infrastructures become gathering forces and sites of conflict. The rest of this chapter describes two collectively managed water systems located to the east of Cochabamba. These two cases cover the management of water as it flows from the mountain lakes in the north to the flow of treated wastewater into the Rio Rocha to the south. The narratives I present relate the challenges facing these collective forms of water provisioning. How the communities navigate these precarious conditions, how they adjust to and negotiate changing needs and limits, informs the concept of infrastructural care. Whose right to water? The Tunari water cooperative provides drinkable water 24 hours a day to over 1000 families in the North East of Cochabamba (about a 20-minute drive from the city centre).18 Don Raimundo,19 the president of the cooperative, told me that it had all begun in the mid-1980s when people first started arriving to the area. At that time, the area would have been entirely rural (today small fields continue to be planted with crops and small dairy farms continue to operate). At first, the community used to take water from a nearby pond. There were only 20 or so families at that time and the mothers and grandmothers collected the water in buckets. After a time, people within the community came together to try and improve the situation.They thought about getting water from the nearby river, but they knew that there were people washing clothes upstream, so it wasn’t clean. They decided to search for a different source of water, starting by excavating in a hill where they had seen water coming out of the ground. At first no one believed it would work but they managed to find the water and dig a well. That was how the collective water system began. 9780367371753_C009.indd 198 09-04-2021 09:11:57 Infrastructural care and water politics 199 After a few years, the water from the well was insufficient, as the community had grown with more arrivals from rural areas. Members of the community climbed up the mountain behind the settlement and found several lakes—including the Wara Wara Lake that SEMAPA had already taken ownership of to supply the city of Cochabamba. The community decided to build a small dam out of clay and rock in one of the lakes.This initially led to a dispute as another community that lived close to the lake claimed that the lake belonged to them and that they had traditional rights over it.The two communities negotiated, exchanged some money and agreed to build the dam together as both communities would benefit. All this took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the early 1990s, the Tunari community decided to have their water system formally recognised as a cooperative by the state and thus protected under the law. However, it also meant that they had to pay taxes on a service they provided themselves. They have never received any financial support from the municipal government. The cooperative is now able to supply drinking water directly to all its members at a cost of 10 bolivianos a month, and for sewage at three bolivianos.20 This is largely because they have their own water source that comes from the mountains, and thus doesn’t require (expensive) electricity to pump the water up from the ground. This physical infrastructure, from the dam to the pipes to the three large tanks that hold the water and the network of pipes that distribute the clean water to individual households, was built through the labour and investment of the cooperative. While there is little requirement for physical labour these days, the members of the cooperative take turns to clean the water tanks three or four times a year. Don Raimundo led me through an area of cultivated parkland (part of a national park) to show me a series of raised camaras (drain covers) built of cement that enable easier access to the underground pipes—in case there is a blockage or leak. He opened one of the camaras to show the water flowing in the pipes two meters below ground. There are 40 of these camaras between the three large tanks that hold the water at the bottom of the mountain and the lakes at the top.The park spreads from below the main road that circumnavigates the city all the way up the mountains that lie to the north of the city. Despite the protected status of the park, there have been many developments within the boundaries since the mid-2000s, as the city has expanded, and developers have seized on opportunities for speculation (Figure 9.1). The municipality itself has recently begun to invest in the park, with a new access road, landscaping, and small shelters where people can have food and cook on barbeques. Don Raimundo was concerned about the motivations for these sudden ‘improvements’ and what it means for the people who live there and use the water system. For example, many more people are now coming to the park but there are no public restrooms, so people urinate and defecate wherever they can (we passed piles of used toilet paper). The cooperative has now sealed the camaras with metal because people were throwing rubbish into them, which could have contaminated the water or blocked the pipes. While the municipality pays people to work on landscaping and improving the park, there is no one paid to monitor or clean it up. Don Raimundo thinks that they are improving the park because it 9780367371753_C009.indd 199 09-04-2021 09:11:57 200 Patrick Bresnihan FIGURE 9.1 National Park with ‘improvements’, Cochabamba, Bolivia. Source: Author will encourage new development and urbanisation, particularly into an area that is considered ‘undeveloped’ and has ready access to water (provided by the cooperative’s infrastructure). In 2009, a national police organisation that provides housing for its members was sold land within the park to build 400 houses.The area includes access to the cooperative’s water tanks (Los Tiempos 2009).21 The community resisted, rejecting the legality of the development and asserting their entitlement to the land. In Bolivia, formal entitlement to land ownership comes from claims of use and thus rests on whether such use can be proven. This creates room for abuse as individuals (called loteadores) can acquire tracts of land either by paying people who currently live on it or through paying relevant officials in the Mayor’s office, which has authority over land holdings. So far, the community in Tunari has been successful in blocking the development of the houses for the police organisation, despite efforts to bribe and intimidate Don Raimundo and the community. The community has not been very successful, however, in blocking the incremental erection of one-off illegal houses and structures that have been (at least tacitly) allowed by the municipality. It is likely that some of these unfinished houses and structures have been constructed by loteadores more interested in the title deeds to the land. Larger, more substantial houses are also being built, however, with individuals or families in residence.We could see where some of these new houses were digging and laying their own pipes to connect illegally to the water cooperative’s wastewater system. We took a shortcut through someone’s land. The family owned about two dozen cows that were out grazing in the yard. Behind them was a small field of crops (Figure 9.2). An individual who had recently built a new house nearby had formally complained to the Mayor about cows being allowed to graze in an ‘urban area’. The 9780367371753_C009.indd 200 09-04-2021 09:11:57 Infrastructural care and water politics 201 New developments and existing agricultural uses in the peri-urban area of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Source: Author FIGURE 9.2 family claims it is not an urban area or shouldn’t be exclusively. They rely on being able to graze their animals and grow crops—though this is also under threat due to the contamination of the water from untreated sewage generated by the community. When they moved there 20 years ago, the area was countryside. Further on, we passed two new, large condominiums.These are now home to 78 families, but the developer built them without any water or sewage services (which is illegal). The families now want to be part of the water cooperative and are even threatening to sue the cooperative if they don’t supply them with water. They can do this under Article 20 of the Constitution—the right to water—and it is within the power of the state to force the water cooperative to comply. Since the 1980s, when water was first extracted from a pond to supply the first arrivals in Tunari, the task of providing water for people living in the area has involved negotiation and experimentation that has been largely ad hoc: the decisions, infrastructural works and investments (social as much as financial) that have given rise to Tunari’s water system were never based on a clear, well-formulated plan or strategy. Today, however, the Tunari water cooperative faces many more pressures and challenges. The main driver of these pressures is urban expansion as the area becomes more desirable for visitors (to the national park), housing developers and individuals seeking to build houses. The existence of a good quality water supply has undoubtedly raised the value of the land and thus the prospect of speculative developments.These peri-urban areas are now becoming significant sites of conflict as competing uses of water collide and the ambivalence of the constitutional right to water becomes tangible (Bustamente et al. 2004).These tensions and conflicts are not just over who should have access to water, but over what is required to maintain the quality of the present water services. 9780367371753_C009.indd 201 09-04-2021 09:11:57 202 Patrick Bresnihan The water system that supplies the Tunari cooperative has been built up over time through the direct labour and/or financial investment of those who use it. As well as embodying a history of collective labour and struggle, the water infrastructure also provides affordable, quality water for people (and animals and plants). It works well, something that cannot always be said about the public water system (as Don Raimundo pointed out). And it works well because attention is paid to the condition and quality of the water, pipes, land, tanks, and the developments that may affect the quality of these elements and the ways they interact; care is taken to try and ensure that changing social needs or environmental conditions are accommodated such that the quality of water service can be maintained. For example, the growing numbers of visitors to the park and the continuing absence of public toilet facilities poses a threat to the water flowing in the pipes that required the camaras to be sealed. The proposed housing development in the national park poses a much greater threat, potentially blocking access to the water tanks and imposing an unsustainable demand on the current water supplies. In response, the members of the Tunari water cooperative mobilised themselves to stop the development by occupying the land, an action that was directly connected to the defence of water (and water infrastructures). The members of the Tunari water cooperative understand that their water supply is vulnerable and that certain conditions must be maintained, or adjusted, to ensure that the water remains drinkable, flowing and affordable (Figure 9.3). FIGURE 9.3 PA system on the roof of the Tunari water cooperative building. It was directed in all four directions and is used to call the members of the cooperative together—whether for a protest, assembly, work, or celebration. 9780367371753_C009.indd 202 09-04-2021 09:11:57 Infrastructural care and water politics 203 Those who benefit from the Tunari water system are not just the paying consumers of a water service they know nothing about—they also have attachment and responsibility towards the water resources and physical infrastructure that go beyond monetary value. Historically, the search and securing of water was one of the ways people living in the area came together. Through meetings, protests, assemblies, and celebrations, the Tunari water cooperative continues to maintain a sense of collective responsibility towards the water system. Though hard to articulate, these social ties and relationships of collective reciprocity are as much a part of the water infrastructure as the pipes and lakes in the mountains: put simply, without them there would be no functioning water system. And just as the pipes and lakes are vulnerable, so too are the collective social forms and relationships of reciprocity that sustain them. This is becoming evident as the cooperative is challenged due to the inclusion of new residents to the area as paying customers. The water cooperative is currently debating whether to connect the new condominiums to the water system. Water supply is not the main concern as the cooperative can build a new water tank. The main concern is how the residents of the new condominium will be allowed to join. Don Raimundo assumed that as well-paid professionals, the residents will not want to be involved in the organisational or physical work involved in maintaining the water system, nor will they necessarily know about its history; as long as the water comes out of the taps, they will be happy. Because of this, the cooperative is considering charging these residents a higher rate. But this still doesn’t address the difficulties that may arise when users of the water system are neither involved in nor particularly concerned with the history, labour and collective responsibilities required to make and maintain such a system. For Don Raimundo, there is an important distinction between paying for water services and participating in the labours of infrastructural care required to provide and maintain water services—from laying pipes to attending meetings to blocking housing developments. A longer-term concern for the cooperative is that they will be asked to supply more and more water to new residents in the area without having the time or financial/technical support to adjust adequately. It is possible, for example, that new residents moving into the area who want to connect to the Tunari water system could appeal to the courts to have their constitutional right to water protected. In such a case, the government could force the Tunari water cooperative to extend their water service. But if they are forced to include many more people, the quality of the water service will suffer, becoming more like the sporadic and poor service of SEMAPA. If the water service does deteriorate or fall below the minimum standard required by law, then the cooperative may even have to forfeit its status as a legal provider of water, potentially having its water sources and infrastructure taken over by SEMAPA. These scenarios (all raised by Don Raimundo) have been made possible by the 2009 constitutional reforms that established the state as the final arbiter and guarantor of the right to water. The negotiation of rights to water in Tunari has historically not been mediated through state institutions. From the agreement with the community in the 9780367371753_C009.indd 203 09-04-2021 09:11:57 204 Patrick Bresnihan mountains over the sharing of access to the lake, to the inclusion of new arrivals into the water system, including overlooking ‘illegal’ connections from one-off houses, the negotiation of access and use rights has taken place in response to specific contexts, the limits and possibilities that are afforded. Resistance to the influx of new residents in the area is not primarily about excluding people from access to a fixed water system but arises from concerns about the various impacts these new developments will have on the water system and how (rather than whether) they can be accommodated. Negotiating in such situations is more constrained when the right to water is legally enshrined and adjudicated on by the state, rendering the traditional ways of managing the use and access to water null and void (Dwinell and Olivera 2014).22 The example of the animals grazing on land that is now being developed for residential purposes illustrates the difficulty of negotiating different water needs (including non-human needs). It also shows how recourse to the state to resolve such differences may result in the short-circuiting of such disputes through a narrow, liberal interpretation of the constitution (human right to water). Don Raimundo believed that the family should have a right to graze animals as it provided them with an important source of income. To continue grazing animals, the family relied on access to land and clean water (to grow crops and feed animals). Not only were new, higher income residents moving into the area, objecting to the presence of animals and agricultural activity in the ‘city’, but the untreated wastewater from the community was also posing problems for the health and quality of the land and the water used for milk production. These were the uneven and complex social, economic, political, and ecological contexts that Don Raimundo (and the Tunari cooperative) sought to foreground even if it meant that easy solutions were harder to find. More-than-human infrastructures All along the Rio Rocha, the lack of wastewater treatment infrastructure means that untreated sewage pours straight into the river. The Tunari cooperative wanted to build a treatment plant to address the contamination of their section of the river, but the mayor and the municipality blocked the proposal, backed in part by the same property-owner who objected to the cows grazing. Don Raimundo believed that the mayor’s resistance was because of the community’s opposition to the development in the park and more generally, urbanisation in the area.The municipality also told the cooperative that they were going to build a bigger treatment plant further up-river for all the communities along the river. This hasn’t happened yet, and Don Raimundo has little faith that it will anytime soon. The water treatment plant that was originally planned for Tunari had been supported by the Fundación Abril, an independent organisation set up after the Water Wars to support grassroots, community-based water systems that continue to embody the values of participation, self-management and social justice in the management of water. With the support of the Fundación, funding for the treatment plant had been secured from CeVi, an Italian NGO that has been working closely 9780367371753_C009.indd 204 09-04-2021 09:11:57 Infrastructural care and water politics 205 with the Fundación and community water systems in Cochabamba for over eight years. When it became clear that the treatment plant couldn’t go ahead as planned in Tunari, another water cooperative, Aurora, based a little further down the river, approached the Fundación Abril to see whether it could take on the project. Aurora is a district established at around the same time as Tunari—beginning in the 1970s, collectively addressing the question of basic services like water throughout the 1980s, and officially forming a cooperative in 1995. Over this time, as the community grew, new sources of water were found and harnessed through the digging of wells, underground pipes and tanks (Silava 2016). Today, Aurora is only a 15-minute drive from the centre of Cochabamba. It has paved roads, pavements, planted trees, and a school, and it is hard to imagine that most, if not all, of this was built through the labour and investment of the people who live there. Like Tunari, the members of the Aurora Water Cooperative receive potable water 24 hours a day, and even though the charges are higher due to the cost of electricity to pump the water from the wells, they are still relatively low compared to the charges paid by users of SEMAPA (Figure 9.4). The treatment plant itself is relatively small and simple. It was designed by engineers but built with the help of members of the cooperative. It is made of cheap materials—cement, stone, plastic piping—and uses physical and organic filtering and treatment methods. After the wastewater passes through the primary treatment process within the cement structure, it passes to a secondary treatment process. Here, the water is filtered underground through a wetland made up of layers of stone and gravel and planted with tortoras, a plant whose roots metabolise the micro-organisms in the water and use them to grow. By the time the water reaches the end of the wetland, it is clean enough to be released into the river or to be used to irrigate a new area of native tree reforestation. The Aurora treatment plant is currently the FIGURE 9.4 9780367371753_C009.indd 205 Aurora water treatment plant, Bolivia. Source: Author 09-04-2021 09:11:57 206 Patrick Bresnihan only treatment plant on the Rio Rocha. Although it is literally a drop of clean water in an otherwise contaminated river, the Aurora wastewater treatment plant provides a more explicitly articulated example of infrastructural care, expanding and animating what is counted as infrastructure and the possibilities it can generate. The treatment of wastewater and the provision of clean drinking water are inseparable aspects of the water cycle even though they may be separated spatially and temporally. Contaminated water affects other activities and sites, such as the growth of crops and the use of land. In Aurora, the land where the treatment plant is now built, was once inaccessible due to the presence of raw sewage. This has now been reclaimed for the treatment plant itself, a wetland, a forested area where native species can thrive and has a provision for a field that is soon to be turned into a football pitch. Accompanying these physical and vegetal changes, are the birds and insects that now find sanctuary between the trees and the river. While the Rio Rocha is still contaminated, this small stretch of water and the land beside it provide a picture which is very different from the one further downstream at Tunari. While a wastewater treatment plant may sound technical and mundane, the experience in Aurora suggests something quite different. This is not accidental. Although the initial motivation for the treatment plant was the prospect of a fine from the municipality for polluting the Rio Rocha with untreated wastewater, the project fitted within a broader ecological and communitarian commitment and vision that the Aurora cooperative have been developing. Their stated mission was to complete the water cycle by returning clean water to the environment in the same way they had found it (Figure 9.5). The water treatment plant in Aurora is not hidden like most water and sanitation infrastructures. One of its walls is even painted with a beautiful mural. The mural depicts the houses of Aurora up on the height above the river. A stream of FIGURE 9.5 9780367371753_C009.indd 206 Mural on treatment plant by Mona Caron. Source: Author 09-04-2021 09:11:57 Infrastructural care and water politics 207 wastewater flows down towards the Rio Rocha. A line of men, women and children are holding hands, blocking the water and re-directing it towards the treatment plant. As the water is re-directed, new relationships and capacities are brought into being. These are represented as new streams, each of which is named: selfmanagement, conviviality, participation, democracy, and solidarity. The message is clear: in coming together to make and manage the water treatment plant, these abstract ideas are put into action and materialised—from the initial assemblies to discuss the building of the treatment plant; to learning about the treatment process, preparing the land and building the plant; to the celebration that marked the opening of the treatment plant; to the support of the Fundación Abril and CeVi (representing the people of the Friuli region of Italy who funded it by agreeing to pay a small additional charge on their water bills); to the ongoing self-management and participation that will allow the treatment plant to go on serving the people of Aurora.Through the collective making of seemingly banal infrastructure for treating wastewater, the ideals of participation, self-management, conviviality, and so on are brought to life and given substance. The process of making the water treatment plant not only fosters new social relationships and capacities, but as described above, the treatment of wastewater also involves non-humans, both in the labour of metabolising the wastewater and through the creation of ecological conditions in which other species can settle and flourish—the bees, insects, native trees.These ecological effects were not all planned for, but they are welcomed. If it is possible to describe an infrastructure as generous, this is it: a configuration of materials, land, wastewater, micro-organisms, people, rivers, plants, animals, that is not precisely engineered or controlled, generating conditions for others to thrive in a way that is only tangentially related to the primary goal of treating wastewater. This more-than-human dimension of water infrastructure finds resonance with the traditional use rights and customs found among irrigators in rural areas in Bolivia (Dwinell and Olivera 2014). The understanding that water was inseparable from other forms of life was something the irrigators and campesinos taught those involved in the Water Wars in 2000. ‘For example’, Oscar Olivera23 told me, ‘when you divert a river or an irrigation ditch, the birds and animals disappear. The irrigators claim the water for all living things. I think this is what the irrigators are like and we [Coordination for the Defense of Water and Life] learned a lot from them’ (Olivera 2015). This more-than-human conception of water became a point of debate during the constituent process (2006–08) that brought together various social movements, unions, civil society groups, and community organisations to discuss the content of the new Bolivian Constitution.While the proposal to include the human right to water was accepted, there were others, particularly indigenous, irrigator and campesino groups, who believed this didn’t go far enough. For them, it was important to recognise that water was necessary for all life, including plants, animals and the ecological territory more generally, and this more-than-human right should be acknowledged in the Constitution. Reflecting this, the 2009 Bolivian Constitution includes two articles on the right to water: Article 20 states that all 9780367371753_C009.indd 207 09-04-2021 09:11:57 208 Patrick Bresnihan people have the right to water, and Article 373 states that water is a right fundamental for life. But this constitutional provision does not address how the complex, uncertain negotiation of human and non-human needs and limits is to be worked out other than through recourse to the institutions of the state and the strategies of development they engender. In the case of Aurora, the guiding orientation for community-managed water infrastructures is the situated and diverse needs and interests of the people who live there and the wider territory of which they are a part. As the mural makes clear, this basic democratic aspiration is not just a claim but also something that is exercised through projects like the making and maintaining of a wastewater treatment plant. The point has been made that infrastructure always involves the re-configuration of relations between land, water, people, animals, and technologies, with intended and unintended effects (Star 1999). In this process, not everything can be included or accounted for: infrastructures are partial arrangements. But there are different ways that these ‘cuts’ can be negotiated and decided upon, making them more or less explicit, more or less provisional (and thus reversible), and more or less generous to the unintended or unforeseen. At stake are how different resources, needs and capacities are drawn into the decision-making processes and labour of (water) infrastructure-making. Ideally, infrastructures should expand possibilities and capacities, cultivating diverse social values, such as beauty and conviviality. In the case of the Aurora treatment plant, this is materialised in the land that is reclaimed, the trees that are planted and will benefit from the wastewater, the animals that can now flourish, the friendships that are made, and so on. Rather than intensifying the rifts that exist between human and non-human communities in Cochabamba, the wastewater treatment plant thus represents the potential for re-thinking and making infrastructures that do more than deliver ‘basic services’. Conclusion In contrast to the spectacular politics of the Water Wars and the ambitious targets of the new government’s water investment programmes, the struggles and achievements of the Tunari water cooperative and the Aurora water treatment plant may seem minor. For some, they may not offer much hope (see Dawney, Blencowe and Bresnihan 2017): while the narratives I have recounted demonstrate collective capacities to meet everyday water needs in a context where there are few alternatives, these efforts take place in the face of highly stressed conditions, rapid urbanisation, and a sclerotic public administration that hinders rather than supports self-organised communities to meet their water needs. There is also an ever-present risk that by identifying, even idealising, localised, collective capacities for meeting basic functions, the continuing failure of the state to invest in infrastructures for social reproduction is tacitly approved. These points are hard to argue with. In terms of access to water and sanitation, the situation of at least half of the population of Cochabamba is serious.The reasons for this are complex and historical and cannot be simply directed at the current 9780367371753_C009.indd 208 09-04-2021 09:11:57 Infrastructural care and water politics 209 administration. As the city expands, with pressures on existing water sources and systems, the capacity of people to maintain the conditions necessary to meet water needs is being severely tested. Although far from ideal solutions to the chronic problems of unequal access to water in Cochabamba, I want to conclude by reflecting on the potential significance of these water collectives for thinking about infrastructural politics. Despite coming to power on the back of popular mobilisations around water and the uneven access to water services, the Bolivian government under Morales has thus far failed to remedy the inequalities that still prevail (Baer 2015).The alignment of the right to water with narrowly defined, technical criteria (access to a water pipe and a bath) can displace the need to engage more fully with different social needs, contexts, and material conditions. This amounts to a short-circuiting of water politics. It is this short-circuiting that perpetuates the gap between ‘the seemingly radical discourse of the Right to Water, and the reality of basic service provision in Bolivia, which appears to be much more conservative in reality’ (Bustamente, Crespo and Walnycki 2012: 223).24 This tension is illustrated through efforts to incorporate collectively managed water systems within the state’s claim to guarantee the right to water in a context of continued urban expansion and development. Here, efforts to short-circuit the messy negotiation of water use and access comes into conflict with communities more attuned to the precarious, contested, and more-than-technical infrastructures required to maintain their (and others’) collective right to water. More generally, behind the state-as-service-provider model is the persistent promise of universal, affordable and sustainable water services, a promise that was shared by the neoliberal regimes that preceded Morales and favoured policies of privatisation under the influence of the World Bank (Bakker 2007).25 The continued delay, failure and absence of such projects materialising contrasts with the myriad ways that people, usually the most marginalised, have devised and relied on their own provisional infrastructures for providing basic services, including water. From this perspective, while localised collective water infrastructures are vulnerable, they should not be dismissed as just marginal, temporary fixes awaiting the arrival of ‘modern’ infrastructural progress. Perhaps the strongest evidence for this is that the people involved in making and caring for their own water infrastructures have not wanted to give them up in exchange for a state-provided service. Long experiences of living outside the promise of ‘big’ developments and the kinds of delay and disappointment that accompany them have weakened faith in external service provision and the uneven political dynamics this has enabled. If we consider infrastructure to be background—an inert, technological apparatus—then infrastructural politics is largely confined to questions over who has access to ‘it’, who owns ‘it’, how ‘it’ is to be financed (state, private, community). But in the cases of Tunari and Aurora, this understanding of infrastructure as separate from the social life, labours and collective responsibility of those who use it is harder to sustain. By participating in the making and maintaining of conditions necessary for basic needs, these collectives are not seeking inclusion within large-scale, state-provided water systems. Access to water is not something that is provided by 9780367371753_C009.indd 209 09-04-2021 09:11:57 210 Patrick Bresnihan an external authority but something that is continuously made and struggled for through the actions of people working with others, with materials, technologies, plants, and the limits and possibilities provided by specific environmental conditions (Bresnihan 2016). This form of infrastructural politics ‘may not appear as muscular or heroic as a politics of citizenship and power’ (Amin 2014) but what it does demonstrate is a form of ‘thick’ justice (Papadopoulos 2010): making infrastructures for social reproduction from within situations of injustice and inequality. This is infrastructural politics as infrastructuring: not simply demanding access to externally provided infrastructure but building collective capacities in the process of making infrastructures for everyday social reproduction. Beyond survival strategies for marginalised urban populations, connections can also be made between these everyday, collective forms of infrastructure-making and the eruption of more spectacular, emancipatory political movements (Zibechi 2010). Returning to the Water Wars, the fact that the leading protagonists were selforganised water committees and cooperatives indicates the power of attachment that these collectives had to water and the infrastructures they had put in place to distribute and use it. Wanting to maintain control over these water systems (against privatisation and state appropriation), these collectives provided an important base for organising during the Water Wars (Olivera and Lewis 2004). This is something that is often missed by commentaries that remain rooted in the terms of political economy and the binaries of state/public versus market/private. In the case of the Water Wars, the political dispute was not solely about increased water charges but about who had the right to discuss and make decisions concerning water and other common goods.26 As an early communication from the Coordinadora expressed it: ‘At the base, this is the problem: who decides about the present and the future of the people, the resources, the work and the living conditions. We, in relation to water, want to decide for ourselves: and this we call democracy’ (Dossier 28 January 2000). This was reiterated to me 15 years later by several people who participated in the Water Wars and continue to be involved in self-managed water systems—the visceral sense that something had changed in the minds and feelings of the people regarding their capacities for self-government, at least when it came to the issue of water. The Water Wars were about resisting privatisation, but they were also about reclaiming water as something that belonged to everyone and thus something that people should discuss and negotiate among themselves. Although this moment of popular democracy could not last, defused once more through the state-population division, this basic principle continues to animate the actions and politics of selfmanaged water systems like those in Tunari and Aurora. Notes 1 Graffiti on a wall in Cochabamba. 2 Jim Shultz writes, ‘Long after the Cochabamba Water Revolt had become a distant memory for most of the people who actually lived it, writing about it and making films about it was becoming a global enterprise’ (Shultz 2008: 9). 9780367371753_C009.indd 210 09-04-2021 09:11:57 Infrastructural care and water politics 211 3 Backed by high profile international water activists and organisations such as Maude Barlow, the Morales administration proposed that the right to water be recognised by the United Nations General Assembly, which it duly was in July 2010. Under Resolution 64/292, each member state of the UN is now required to develop its own Plan of Action for the Realisation of the Right to Water and Sanitation. 4 In the official census of 2012, it already seemed like Bolivia was well on its way to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for water access: 79 per cent coverage on water when the millennium goal for that year was 78.5 per cent (up from 73.2 per cent in 2001), and 48 per cent coverage for sanitation (up from 38.87 per cent in 2001) when the goal was 64 per cent (Campanini 2014). 5 In April 2015, speaking at an event organised by groups involved in the Irish Right2Water Campaign, a leading Latin American scholar claimed, ‘The issue of water [in Bolivia] became connected to an alternative political platform. The people wanted greater intervention of the State in managing the economy for the wellbeing of the people.This led to a decision that a new political platform was needed and a movement towards socialism’ (Holland 2015; my italics). 6 The main policy instrument that the Morales government has developed for incorporating the right to water into national development plans is the MiAgua programme (Mas Inversion para el Agua, More Investment for Water). MiAgua increases the amount of money invested in water and irrigation projects and is one part of an overarching government strategy for public investment called Evocumple (‘Evo delivers’). This strategy is intended to speed up the investment of public money in infrastructure projects by bypassing existing bureaucratic and planning procedures—the government claimed that a project could be approved within a week. 7 The source of this information has been anonymised as it was relayed through an interview. The source is a professional researcher who works for a well-known, independent research organisation in Bolivia. 8 Nor does it mean that investment in water infrastructure as a proportion of GDP has increased (Spronk 2014): in 1999, the Bolivian government was investing more money in water infrastructure as a proportion of GDP than the current government (Costa 2015); current investment in water is less than in transport infrastructure or exploration for hydrocarbons. 9 There are roughly 600 of these water systems in operation, representing a significant level of self-organisation in the vital area of water provision. 10 It is not always remembered, for example, that it was the rural irrigators and campesinos that initially brought the question of water privatisation to public attention (Olivera and Lewis 2004). 11 What I am calling collective, self-managed water systems encompass a diverse range of systems in terms of size, sources of water, decision-making processes and organisational structure. Water cooperatives are more formal than water committees and have a President and a Board of Representatives that are elected periodically. Water committees are less formalised; meetings and assemblies can take place weekly and may or may not be obligatory. In the larger cooperatives, assemblies are held twice a year unless there is a pressing issue to discuss. In general, all self-managed water systems collectively share the costs and labour involved in building and maintaining their water infrastructure (pipes, wells, pumps), and significant decisions are discussed and decided on within assemblies where all members are allowed to participate (See Yaku Al Sur 2013; Zibechi 2009). 12 The modernist vision of seamless, technical systems enabling productive activity through the distribution and circulation of water, energy, bodies, and information lies at the heart of very term ‘infra-structure’: the promise of large-scale infrastructures is that they will remain beneath the surface, invisible to those who use and benefit from them (see Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000). 9780367371753_C009.indd 211 09-04-2021 09:11:57 212 Patrick Bresnihan 13 These groups were primarily opposed to Law 2029 passed by the Bolivian government in 1999. This Law effectively granted concessions to private contractors over communitymanaged water resources and infrastructures. 14 SEMAPA was initially interested in working with the water cooperatives and committees because it recognised the important role they performed in providing water to large sections of the population. The value of these autonomous water organisations was given legal basis with the Law of Autonomies and Decentralisation (Law No. 031) in 2010. Those entities that could show that they provided a certain quality of water service were given the formal title of ‘Entities Providing Water and Sanitation Services’ (EPSAs). 15 For example, large quantities of water were being stolen directly from SEMAPA pipes. This meant the utility was losing both money and water, but, at the same time, it was almost impossible to regulate this without requiring more investment. The committees, however, relied on strong social and communal obligations and responsibilities that could be drawn upon to prevent this kind of illegal activity. 16 The reasons for the change in attitude from the state to the water committees and cooperatives are not clear but the relationship became fraught in 2011. In that year, the government faced considerable opposition over its plans to build a highway through an indigenous territory called TIPNIS (Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro). Many water committees and cooperatives mobilised in support of the indigenous people against the government (Webber 2011). 17 In the tradition of science and technology studies, ‘infrastructural inversion’ is a method for undoing the black box of infrastructural standards, technologies, codes, and systems that otherwise fade into the background of everyday, taken-for-granted experience, thereby becoming silenced or devalued (Morita 2015; Star and Bowker 2007). 18 Water cooperatives are distinguished from water committees by their degree of formalisation and internal structure. They have a different legal status that requires them to have at least two general meetings a year and submit their financial accounts to the government. They also have a more hierarchical structure with a President and Board of Directors. However, these positions are not (in general) salaried. 19 Unless otherwise stated, all interviewees, cooperatives and place names have had their names changed to protect the anonymity of the people involved. 20 To compare with SEMAPA, it costs about 40–50 bolivianos a month for water and sewage (the conversion is about $1 to 8 bolivianos). 21 The organisation is called COVIPOL (Consejo de Vivienda Policial). 22 Discussing the tradition of communal water management in Bolivia, Dwinell and Olivera (2014) identify the centrality of ‘uses and customs’ as a basis for resolving conflict or guiding usage, a means for accommodating rather than excluding different, potentially conflicting social (and ecological) needs.They argue that the flexibility of such customary frameworks is frustrating for those looking for legalistic guidelines and regulations. 23 Oscar Olivera was the unofficial leader of the Coordination for the Defense of Water and Life during the Water Wars, the umbrella organisation that brought together and spoke for the many sectors and communities involved in the Water Wars. 24 This is not unique to Bolivia. As other scholars have shown, replacing private companies with state institutions responsible for both achieving and accounting for progress towards the right to water does not guarantee progressive, public water outcomes (Angel and Loftus 2017; Bakker 2007; Bond 2014). 25 A clear example of the continuity of this progress narrative is the Misicuni Dam Project in Cochabamba. Misicuni has been the hope on the horizon for Cochabamba for over 50 years (Marston 2013) by promising to solve the water needs of the state of Cochabamba. 9780367371753_C009.indd 212 09-04-2021 09:11:57 Infrastructural care and water politics 213 Under Morales, the construction of the dam appeared to finally be a reality. However, in 2015, the costs of the dam had risen from $79 million in 2009 to $120 million amidst corruption allegations and it is still not finished. 26 Oscar Olivera sums this up well when he brings together the struggle against the privatisation of resources with the struggle against the privatisation of the word. In reference to the experience of 15 years of neoliberalism prior to 2000, he writes: ‘we were mute spectators … Yet in a time of privatization and monopoly, ordinary working people were able to “unprivatize” the monopoly of the word—of voice and expression—and reclaim the right for themselves’ (Olivera and Lewis 2004: 47). References Amin, Ash. 2014. ‘Lively Infrastructure’, Theory Culture & Society, 31(7–8): 137–161. Angel, James and Alex Loftus. 2017. ‘With-against-and-beyond the Human Right to Water’, Geoforum. Angel, J. and A. Loftus. 2019. ‘With-Against-and-Beyond the Human Right to Water’. Geoforum, 98: 206–213. 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Morita, A. 2017. ‘Multispecies Infrastructure: Infrastructural Inversion and Involutionary Entanglements in the Chao Phraya Delta, Thailand’. Ethnos, 82(4): 738–757. Olivera, Oscar and Tom Lewis. 2004. ‘Cochabamba!: Water Rebellion in Bolivia’. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press. Olivera, Marcela. 2014. ‘Water Beyond the State’, NACLA 47(3): 64–68. Olivera, Oscar. 2015. Interview. Papadopoulos, Dimitris. 2010. ‘Insurgent Posthumanism’, Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 10(2): 134–151. Perreault, Tom. 2008. ‘Custom and Contradiction: Rural Water Governance and the Politics of Usos Y Costumbres in Bolivia’s Irrigators’ Movement’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(4): 834–854. Sanchez-Gomez, Luis and Philippe Terhorst. 2005. ‘Cochabamba, Bolivia: Public-Collective Partnership after the Water War’, in Reclaiming Public Water. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute and European Corporate Observatory. http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/ archives/books/watercochabamba.pdf. (accessed on 5 September 2015). Shultz, Jim. 2008. ‘The Cochabamba Water Revolt and Its Aftermath’, in Jim Shultz and Melissa Draper (eds), Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia’s Challenge to Globalization, pp. 9–44. London, England: University of California Press. Shultz, Jim. 2010a. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2010/04/21/cochabambawater-revolt-ten-years-later (accessed 16 March 2021). 9780367371753_C009.indd 214 09-04-2021 09:11:57 Infrastructural care and water politics 215 Shultz, Jim. 2010b. ‘The Cochabamba Water Revolt, Ten Years Later’, Yes! Magazine. Silava, Eduardo. 2016. ‘La Cooperativa Aurora Magisterio: Una Historia de Organización Y Compromiso’, in Agua y Saneamiento para Todas y Todos, ed. Fundación Abril. Cochabamba, Bolivia: Fundación Abril. Silver, Jonathan. 2014. ‘Incremental Infrastructures: Material Improvisation and Social Collaboration across Post-Colonial Accra’, Urban Geography, 35(6): 788–804. Simone,Abdou Maliq 2004.‘People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg’, Public Culture, 16(3): 407–429. Spronk, Susan. 2008. ‘After the Water Wars in Bolivia: The Struggle for a ‘Social-Public Alternative’, Upside Down World, http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives31/1255-after-the-water-wars-in-bolivia-the-struggle-for-a-qsocial-publicq-alternative (accessed on 5 September 2015). Spronk, Susan. 2014.‘Post-Neoliberalism in Latin America? Urban Water Supply Management in Bolivia under Evo Morales’, in David McDonald and Greg Ruiters (eds), Alternatives to Privatization: Public Options for Essential Services in the Global South, pp. 421–452. Cape Town: Routledge. Star, Susan Leigh. 1999. ‘The Ethnography of Infrastructure’. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3): 377–391. Star, S.L. and G.C. Bowker. 2007. ‘Enacting Silence: Residual Categories as a Challenge for Ethics, Information Systems, and Communication’, Ethics and Information Technology, 9(4), 273–280. Tronto, J.C. 2010. ‘Creating Caring Institutions: Politics, Plurality, and Purpose’, Ethics and Social Welfare, 4(2), 158–171. Webber, Jeffery. 2011. From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation, and the Politics of Evo Morales. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Yaku al Sur. 2013. ‘Fortaleciendo La Gestión Comunitaria Del Agua En La Zona Sur de Cochabamba’. Cochabamba, Bolivia:Yaku al Sur. Yates, Julian S. and Karen Bakker. 2014. ‘Debating the ‘Post-Neoliberal Turn’ in Latin America’, Progress in Human Geography, 38(1): 62–90. Zibechi, Raúl. 2009. ‘Cochabamba: From Water War to Water Management’. Americas Program 27. http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/1723. Zibechi, Raúl. 2010. Dispersing Power. Social Movements as Anti-State Forces. AK Press. 9780367371753_C009.indd 215 09-04-2021 09:11:57 10 THE NEGATION OF CHANGE AS A NARRATIVE STRATEGY OF CONTROL The case of the Polavaram mega-dam in India Mieke van Hemert, Jayaprakash Rao Polsani and Madhu Ramnath Introduction Large dams are becoming ever more contested—yet in many parts of the world, their construction continues unabated. In a recent volume detailing debates and developments with respect to large dams in Asia, Hanna Werner discussed the prevailing ideology of development of the Indian state as a hegemonic, functional whole, in which large dams figure as a symbol of state power. Potentially transformational alternative development paths continue to be marginalised, which starts with the state defining them as marginal (Werner 2014). Werner sought to answer the ‘why’ of the central state’s continued interest in large dams: ‘If it is obvious from a century-long experience that mega-dams are more often than not ecologically and socially problematic, economically unproductive and outdated in their modernist vision, then why would their construction still be high on a nation’s agenda?’ (Werner 2014: 143). In this chapter, we attempt to shed light on a related, but slightly different question. We ask ‘how’ it is that the state of Andhra Pradesh succeeds in maintaining its narrative on the Polavaram multipurpose mega-dam in the face of contestation and conflict. Our question thus focuses on the narrative (dis)order that accompanies a particular mega-dam project in India. We start by introducing the project as described in various government documents. We then briefly discuss some episodes in the long history of the project relevant to understanding the current situation, introducing our approach to narrative analysis in the process. Our brief characterisations of both the hegemonic narrative and counter-narratives are based on the official documentation we could get access to, a wide range of other sources pertaining to the project and a long-standing engagement of the two of us (JRP and MR) with forest dwellers and forest conservation in the area. Our juxtaposition of the narratives constitutes an analysis of how the world gets cut up and assembled 9780367371753_C010.indd 216 09-04-2021 09:12:30 The negation of change as a narrative strategy of control 217 in particular discursive ways in order to harness power, and how this is done differently in the narratives. Our conclusions on the narrative (dis)order follow from this juxtaposition. The Polavaram project The project on paper The Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) aims to build a 45.72 m high dam across the Godavari river, near the town of Polavaram. The technical design comprises a body of earth and rock, combined with a masonry dam and a concrete spillway that should be able to convey a river flood up to 102,000 cubic metres per second, the ‘maximum flood’ as estimated in 1980 (GoAP 2015b; GoI 2014). As its primary benefit, the project foresees the addition of 291,000 hectares of irrigated land. The right canal, running from the dam to the Krishna river would irrigate 130,000 hectares; the left canal, running from the dam to the coastal city of Visakhapatnam, 161,000 hectares. Secondary benefits would be generation of 960-megawatt hydropower, provision of drinking water and industrial water for the coastal region, as well as an annual inter-basin transfer of 224 million cubic metres from the Godavari to the Krishna river, as agreed upon in the Bachawat Award.1 By realising the latter objective, the right canal would form the Polavaram–Vijayawada link in a National River Linking Plan (NRLP), entailing a transfer of water from socalled surplus- to deficit- river basins. The Polavaram dam would submerge 60,000 hectares in the state of Andhra Pradesh, including 3,223 hectares of forest. Officially, there are 170,000 ‘Project Affected People’ entitled to compensation, 53 per cent of whom belong to Scheduled Tribes and 13 per cent to Scheduled Castes. Brief history The idea to build a dam across the Godavari to irrigate the coastal region was first proposed during British colonial rule, in 1941, by the chief engineer of the irrigation department of the Madras Presidency. Engineers from the United States and the United Kingdom who were hired to conduct feasibility surveys in 1947 gave a green signal to the proposal of building a dam just where the river leaves the Eastern Ghat mountain range (Lakshmaiah 2006: 28). A severe flood in 1953, however, made the engineers rethink the site of the dam: whether or not to build the dam further upstream so that it is firmly founded on hardrock. But soon afterwards, technical aspects such as where and how to build a solid dam that would withstand unexpectedly high floods gave way to the more pressing political question as to how water resources should be shared among states. To resolve ongoing tensions in the formation of the nation, states were created on the basis of language in 1956. The division of the nation into states however started to interfere with the use of cross-boundary resources such as rivers—in the South, for example, predominantly Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh came 9780367371753_C010.indd 217 09-04-2021 09:12:30 218 Mieke van Hemert et al. to include Telangana. Since Telangana had remained under Nizam rule for more than two centuries, independent from the colonial powers as the princely state of Hyderabad, the resentment of the inhabitants of Telangana towards the new regional powers was intense, and further fed by the feeling of being exploited for the benefit of coastal Andhra Pradesh. In fact, the majority of the irrigation projects conceived during the time that (the now separate state of) Telangana was part of Andhra Pradesh did benefit the coastal regions. The Polavaram project would be no exception: most of the irrigation and drinking water would become available in the delta areas of the Godavari, the Krishna and the coastal strip up to Visakhapatnam.2 Inland areas which mostly shared the political and cultural history of Telangana, notably the Khammam district, as well as inland areas in the states of Chhattisgarh and Odisha would face submergence as a consequence of the dam. To resolve the inter-state tensions around the use of the Godavari river, the Godavari Water Disputes Tribunal,3 which came to be known as the Bachawat Tribunal (after its chairman), was established in 1969. At the time, the Godavari river basin was shared by five states: Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. In the course of a decade, the five riparian states reached an agreement over the use of the Godavari waters.The Godavari river basin was divided into sub-basins, the flows of which were allocated to individual states on the principle of equitable apportionment. Unlike in the resolution of other water disputes in India (albeit similar in approach to the Indus agreement between India and Pakistan), flows or shares were not quantified (Richards and Singh 2002). In 1980, Andhra Pradesh also reached an agreement with Madhya Pradesh and Odisha over the limit of submergence as a consequence of the proposed Polavaram dam. In 1990, the Government of Andhra Pradesh submitted a detailed project report to the Central Water Commission (CWC). The governments of Odisha and Madhya Pradesh however objected to the design of the dam, disagreeing with the Government of Andhra Pradesh over the projected level of submergence as a result of backwater effects of the dam. This led to a resurgence of inter-state tensions, which the Bachawat Award had aimed to resolve. As a consequence, the Polavaram project existed only on paper for decades. In 2004, the boom in the Indian economy was in stark contrast to the agrarian crisis that Andhra Pradesh was facing. With farmer suicides increasing, the newly elected Congress state government announced an irrigation development plan titled ‘Jala Yagnam’, consisting of 28 irrigation projects, which, if implemented, was projected to double the area under irrigation in the state, from 44 to 90 per cent of the land.4 The Polavaram dam project, in turn, was considered to be Jala Yagnam’s jewel, given its impressive irrigation potential on paper. The then Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy promised that the mega dam would be completed in two years (Gujja et al. 2006: 19). His government submitted a project report to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and obtained clearances unusually quickly.The construction of canals started in March 2005, while on 25 October 2005, the government received clearances from the MoEF to build the dam (GoI 2005).5 On 21 November 2005, the Central Water Commission (CWC) filed an affidavit 9780367371753_C010.indd 218 09-04-2021 09:12:30 The negation of change as a narrative strategy of control 219 (written statement) in the High Court of Andhra Pradesh, stating that it had not given permission to build the dam (Rao 2010; Sharma 2006: 227).6 As the immediate source of inter-state tensions—the extent of submergence upstream of the dam—remained unresolved, the governments of the neighbouring riparian states of Odisha and Chhattisgarh took legal action. They filed cases against the state of Andhra Pradesh for violation of the Bachawat Award of 1980. When the Polavaram project was resurrected in 2004, people residing in the submergence zone and activists soon organised themselves for resistance, whereas the regional cadres of political parties remained divided—some were against the dam itself, while others supported it conditionally, subject to the affected people receiving proper rehabilitation or the design of the dam being changed to reduce submergence (Rao 2006b). At an early stage during the resistance against the proposed dam, appeals were made (by the leaders of Agency Girian Sangham and Adivasi Samkshema Parishad) to the tribal people to join hands with the non-tribal people, so as to not let societal divisions weaken their position. Further evidence of interstate tensions was seen when in a case (filed in the name of elected village representatives of tribal communities from Odisha and Chhattisgarh) in the Supreme Court, it was alleged that the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes had not been consulted in the context of the Polavaram project, and that it amounted to violation of the Constitution7 (Rao 2006; Sharma 2006). Also, the aforementioned Bachawat Award, the Environment Protection Act (1986) including a mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment (1994), the Wildlife Protection Act (1972) and the Forest Conservation Act (1980) were held to be violated as legitimate clearances had not been obtained for the project (SCoI 2006a).The petitioners also informed the Central Empowered Committee (CEC), a body constituted in 2002 to act as witness to the Supreme Court on matters of forest conservation and management. After a visit to the area in 2006, the CEC directed the Government of Andhra Pradesh to stop the work till such time as clearances were obtained (SCoI 2006b). Environmental groups filed another case against the environmental clearance of the project, on the grounds that the Environmental Impact Assessment report was based on insufficient and outdated information (Environics Trust 2011). Nearly two years later, the National Environmental Appellate Authority (NEAA) quashed the environmental clearance on the grounds that no public hearings had been held in the affected villages in Chhattisgarh and Odisha (IEP 2008). The construction works were halted temporarily, but only to be resumed in 2008, as the Government of Andhra Pradesh obtained a stay on the order of the NEAA from the High Court of Andhra Pradesh. In the following years, the state of Andhra Pradesh was affected by the worldwide financial crisis as well as internal political crises: in December 2008 the state government was unable to pay the bills of the contractors; in September 2009 the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy died in a helicopter crash; the monsoon rains of that year led the Krishna river, comparable in size to the Godavari, to produce a flood more than twice as voluminous as any other flood over the last hundred years. In November 2009, the leader of Telangana Rashtra Samithi, a political party, went on a fast unto 9780367371753_C010.indd 219 09-04-2021 09:12:30 220 Mieke van Hemert et al. death to demand the formation of a separate state, re-igniting the struggle. These conflicts left the Andhra Pradesh government in disarray (Rao 2010)—the construction of the dam was again halted. Nonetheless, other work related to the same project continued: notwithstanding a number of petitions pending at the Supreme Court, the MoEF granted forest clearance in July 2010 (GoI 2010); the construction of canals continued at a tempo determined by the possibilities of land acquisition. Preparations at the dam site were also resumed in 2012, depending on financial availability. Given the history of the project, the creation of the state of Telangana and the consequent territorial division between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in June 2014 could have ignited an inter-state conflict on the Polavaram project. Instead, two strategic moves by the state of Andhra Pradesh saved the project. First Andhra Pradesh succeeded in retaining within its residuary territory 205 villages in Telangana’s Khammam district that were facing submergence. Even more importantly, the Polavaram project, now in both states, was declared a national project: its completion became the responsibility of the central government, which agreed to pay 90 per cent of the costs. In the meantime, alternative designs claiming a smaller submergence zone, and consequently less forced displacement, had been rejected on the grounds that they would not deliver the same benefits as the original (GoI 2014).8 Fears voiced by the Minister of Irrigation of Telangana that the Government of Andhra Pradesh had plans to increase the height of the dam from 150 to 186 feet (46 to 57 m), which would submerge even more land, were also dismissed. High-level irrigation officials declared that no such plan existed, and drew attention to the agreement from 1980 for details on the design of the dam (The New Indian Express 2015). Approach to narrative analysis Our approach to analysing narrative relies on a Foucauldian discourse analysis as further developed in the field of interpretive policy analysis. It includes insights on the performative dimensions of narrative and a view of discursive space as a space of contestation or hegemonic suppression of counter-narratives. According to interpretive policy analysts, discourse, frame and narrative are related concepts which foreground the way reality is ordered linguistically, while being bound up with particular practices (Laws and Hajer 2008). All three concepts posit a relation between how the world is perceived and categorised and which courses of actions are considered relevant and legitimate. How, in a given discourse, problematisations produce contingent orderings of the world, is an important aspect of Foucauldian discourse analysis (Bacchi 2012; Feindt and Oels 2005). In this case study, the problematisation of poverty in Andhra Pradesh—defined by the state as a problem of drought and lack of irrigated land—will be contrasted with problematisations by academics, activists, affected villagers and others, which foreground the ongoing displacement of tribal people from the forests they inhabit. According to political science scholar Herbert Gottweis, ‘narratives bring elements of clarity, stability, and order into what usually tends to be the complicated 9780367371753_C010.indd 220 09-04-2021 09:12:30 The negation of change as a narrative strategy of control 221 and contradictory world of politics. This power to create order is an attractive quality that makes narratives essential for the shaping of policies, the settling of conflicts, or the securing of legitimacy for political action’ (Gottweis 2006: 468–469). Ordering reality discursively is thus inextricably bound up with strategic agency and the exertion of power. Narratives have a performative dimension in so far as they are geared to bring about what they present. The performative dimension of narrative contrasts with its representational dimension in that it is unconcerned with the truth or falsity of what it narrates. To bring about that of which it speaks, a narrative, however, must be authoritative in one way or another, so that it is either accepted by its audience or enforced upon it. Subjects and objects of government are, however, never fully determined by the discourses and strategies in which they take up positions; they are capable of initiating change even while being subject to relations of power. Studying how multiple discourses compete, forms an important aspect of Foucauldian discourse analysis (Feindt and Oels 2005). In our case, it is the tensions between the hegemonic narrative of the state of Andhra Pradesh and other competing narratives that form the core of our analysis. Hegemonic narrative The multipurpose mega-dam as a timeless solution The state of Andhra Pradesh conceives of mega-dams as timeless solutions to drought and poverty. The state’s narrative negates all other contesting narratives— those that question the effectiveness of large-scale irrigation as a solution to drought and poverty, or the ones that point out the undesirable societal and environmental changes that might necessitate a change in the design of the dam. In 2006, the Minister of Irrigation9 of Andhra Pradesh declared the Polavaram project ‘a historical necessity’ (Lakshmaiah 2006: 27).The dam would ‘tackle perennial drought in the State and wipe out poverty from the face of Andhra Pradesh’ (idem). As of 2014, when the final responsibility for the project was transferred from the state level to the central government, only the estimated costs had been adjusted (GoI 2014), the project was yet to receive the green signal, and officially, no changes had been made in the proposed dam project ever since the detailed agreement of 1980 was signed. In March 2015, the Minister of Irrigation of Andhra Pradesh, Devineni Umameshwara Rao, asserted: ‘The Polavaram project shall be completed under any circumstances by June 2018 and the interconnection between the two major river basins [Godavari and Krishna] completed, rendering the state free from drought’ (Reddy 2015). On its website, the Water Resources Department of the state of Andhra Pradesh has stated its goal to nearly double the area under irrigation with the help of projects such as the Polavaram project: The history of irrigation in the state goes back to ancient kings and rulers who have built many artificial lakes and reservoirs for irrigation and drinking water. After Independence, the government has given the highest priority to 9780367371753_C010.indd 221 09-04-2021 09:12:30 222 Mieke van Hemert et al. the irrigation sector which is the key force behind the agricultural revolution. Many gigantic projects have been taken up in addition to many medium and minor schemes, thus creating a total irrigation potential of 134 lakh acres [5,422,788 hectares].The goal is to reach the ultimate [Irrigation Potential] of 217 lakh acres [8,781,678 hectares]. (GoAP 2015a) Land-for-land as an innovative social policy The narrative on ‘Resettlement and Rehabilitation’ (R&R) is one of innovativeness and negotiated changes. In contradistinction with the decade-old design of the dam, the state of Andhra Pradesh presents its R&R policy, agreed upon in 2005, as state-of-the-art. The Polavaram project’s secretary has stated that the ‘government is taking maximum care to protect the interests of the tribals’, by giving an equal extent of land to those losing land as a consequence of displacement (Chandra 2006: 38). Until 2005, in the absence of a national policy for resettlement and rehabilitation, ad hoc approaches had become the norm (Mariotti 2012: 183). The new policy of the state sought to reverse historical injustices by recognising ‘special needs of tribal and vulnerable sections’.The policy aimed to address these needs by differentiating between tribals and non-tribals, and thereby sought to compensate them in different ways.Tribal families would be entitled to a piece of land that would compensate them for the land they cultivated and from which they would be displaced. While the policy mandated that they would also receive cash compensation for land holdings above six acres (nearly two and a half hectares), in reality, most tribal families cultivate less than that, thus exposing a lacuna in the new policy. Non-tribal families are to be compensated only in cash, with the rationale that they are illegal occupants of land in Scheduled Areas. Andhra Pradesh has taken pride in the Polavaram ‘R&R package’ which they showcase as ‘the best in the country’10 (Lakshmaiah 2006: 31). The state has also expressed its willingness to make adjustments to the package, after holding ‘meetings and discussions with eminent environmentalists and intellectuals like Medha Patkar’ (idem).11 Several amendments have been made since 2005, partly to conform to the Forest Rights Act of 2006,12 and partly on the request of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) mediating on behalf of the people affected by the Polavaram project (Mariotti 2012: 184). Counter-narratives Questioning the project’s benefits Water resources experts question the irrigation benefits of the mega-dam project both quantitatively and qualitatively. The counter-narrative is one that identifies changes in the use of water resources over the last few decades and changes in viewpoints about the societal and environmental consequences of large-scale engineering. In doing so, they draw the contours of a new water 9780367371753_C010.indd 222 09-04-2021 09:12:30 The negation of change as a narrative strategy of control 223 resources management paradigm, which is to succeed the paradigm of multipurpose mega-dams. Agricultural experts maintain that the targeted land that the proposed Polavaram project seeks to bring under irrigation, has already been covered under irrigation over the last few decades, which essentially implies that the project would lead to hardly any irrigation benefits. At the turn of the century, some 70 per cent of the land to be served by the right branch canal was already estimated to be under irrigation, and this figure had increased to 95 per cent in 2007 (Bharati, Anand and Smakhtin 2008: 66). Over the years, due to the availability of subsidised electricity, farmers were incentivised to buy electric pumps to extract groundwater, with the result that groundwater has become the most important source of irrigation. Irrigation using tanks and canals has thus been replaced largely by groundwater irrigation, which, incidentally, is as unsustainable as large-scale irrigation (Shah 2013: 41) according to water resources experts. The Polavaram project was, in fact, conceived in the hydraulic engineering paradigm which reached its apogee during the post-independence Nehruvian era (D’Souza 2008).13 In recent decades however, civil society has forced successive governments to reform its policies on resettlement and environmental assessment following the fierce controversy over the Narmada dam and other similar projects (Choudhury 2014). The hydraulic engineering paradigm, with multipurpose dams as a generic solution, has nevertheless continued to occupy centre-stage as far as water management in India is concerned (D’Souza 2014). Water resources scholars speak of a fundamental mismatch between this paradigm, on the one hand, and contemporary insights on sustainable and equitable water resources management on the other. In their reading, ‘supply-side hydrology’ forms part of a reductive expert discourse, which has been serving the interests of politicians, industrialists and large farmers. The technical framing of the water problem as one of ‘supply- and deficit basins’ does not allow small-scale alternatives to emerge (Gupta and Van der Zaag 2008; see also D’Souza 2014; Shah 2013; Shukla and Asthana 2005). If one has to conceive of such alternatives to the dominant paradigm, then it would necessitate operating within a completely different paradigm, one which (according to the Twelfth Plan of the Planning Commission in India) would require … a move away from a narrow engineering-construction perspective towards a more multidisciplinary understanding of water with central emphasis on the goal of resilient eco-systems, a focus on the principle of subsidiarity, incentivisation of participatory approaches, modern data management systems, innovations in technology and path-breaking legal changes that recognise the common pool nature of water and are based on the most updated scientific knowledge. (Shah 2013: 51) Land alienation A counter-narrative on land alienation speaks of an ongoing eviction of adivasis from the forest land they inhabit. Development-induced displacement currently 9780367371753_C010.indd 223 09-04-2021 09:12:30 224 Mieke van Hemert et al. results from all kinds of conversions of farmland and forests into industrial, mining, real-estate or submergence areas. Eviction of adivasi people from the land that they traditionally inhabit has continued for more than three centuries in Andhra Pradesh (Rupavath 2015). Neither have the adivasis benefitted substantially in recent decades from the legal protection against land alienation—in fact, if anything, these measures have had adverse effects. A case in point is the legalisation (by the Government of Andhra Pradesh in 1979) allowing non-tribal land holdings in tribal areas, up to a maximum size. While the restriction in size was intended to protect the non-tribal landless poor, in reality it had the effect of creating enmity between non-tribal and tribal small peasants as rich landlords divided up their lands and sold them to the former. As a consequence, the most fertile of the lands on the alluvium of the Godavari had come to be occupied by non-tribal peasants. As of 1995, the situation remained more or less unchanged, with only a very small portion of the thousands of hectares being transferred back to the tribal people, as a result of the legal provisions (Rupavath 2015). The conversion of land for industry and real estate has also accelerated over the last decade on account of neoliberal policies geared to attract private investment and deregulate economic development (Kumar 2014; Ramachandraiah and Venkateswarlu 2014; Surepally, Bushan and Rawat 2012). On the basis of a law (dating from 2005) that created a category of Special Economic Zones, peasants and labourers get evicted from fertile farmland which is sold to private investors, clearing the way for the setting up of a coastal corridor of 60,704 hectares in Andhra Pradesh, one that has been earmarked as a potential enclave for petrochemical industries (Ramachandraiah and Venkateswarlu 2014). In the submergence zone of the Polavaram project, land alienation of forest dwellers is an ongoing process (Mariotti 2012: 178). While the Forest Rights Act has officially come into force in Andhra Pradesh in 2007, the government has continued to neglect community forest rights.14 Only individual land rights (Patta) are recognised, and in the overall process, democratic rights and policies on community participation have become dead letter (idem). As far as key technical details on the dam and figures about the submergence area and the affected population are concerned, not only are these difficult to access but there are also discrepancies between the data in various government documents (Mariotti 2012; Stewart and Rukmini Rao 2006). A case in point is the land to be acquired by the government for the Polavaram project: figures have been fluctuating from 3,604.94 to 10,405.48 to 44,763.84 hectares based on different documents (Mariotti 2012: 153), thus varying from a very small to a very substantial compensation of land in the submergence area. Figures on the submergence area have also fluctuated from 38,186 to 63,961 hectares between the data of the Environmental Impact Assessment and that of an earlier feasibility study by the National Water Development Agency (idem). Furthermore, while the documents of the Government of Andhra Pradesh state that none of the affected families live in Reserved Forests, about 95 per cent of the state’s forests are classified as such (idem: 163) and the Environmental Impact Assessment itself reports that 3,223 hectares of forest are likely to be submerged. 9780367371753_C010.indd 224 09-04-2021 09:12:30 The negation of change as a narrative strategy of control 225 The practice of compensation A counter-narrative on the practice of compensation paints the image of the government as untrustworthy, and that of compensation as a source of uncertainty, conflict and divisions.The present-day reality of both land and cash compensation is conflictual and arbitrary, according to surveys carried out in the area. People who have been compensated with land complain that the land allotted bears no resemblance whatsoever to the plots they used to cultivate in the forest, while in some other cases, they report that the land is already occupied or has a disputed legal status. In villages near the dam site, people have received compensation for land, but not for trees on their land and in their homesteads, as prescribed by the R&R policy (HRS 2015). Moreover, some people complained that they were allotted agricultural land 20 or more kilometres away from the resettlement centres, and that both the former and the latter were located too far from the forests they formerly inhabited. Also, there was no provision of communal grounds, e.g. burial ground and areas for temples in the resettlement centres (idem). Interviews with villagers in Chinturu mandal in the East Godavari district reveal that people felt they were at the receiving end of the whims of officials: No Grama Sabha is organized for survey and identification of affected families and their properties like trees, houses etc. The compensation paid is not clear for which [head] and how the amounts are reached. The surveyors themselves decided everything and made calculations. No affected family is informed about the compensation details like for land, for trees, for house construction etc. (Interview with sarpanch Chuturu village, in ASHA 2015) … out of 140 families living in the village, only 19 families got compensation and package. I have not understood how the government procured over 300 acres of land for allotting to the farmers (having less than 6 acres) and from where for all the 121 families of our village. (Interview with ex sarpanch Mukunuru village, in ASHA 2015) The NGO which conducted the survey states that while the government had originally listed 27 villages as submergence villages, only 14 have been listed as those entitled to an R&R package, of which only six villages have actually received the compensation in the form of land (ASHA 2015). NGO and village narratives thus paint the government as untrustworthy. A socio-economic study on the project’s R&R package concludes that it is inherently deficient, given the history of land alienation and the lack of livelihood opportunities for displaced people (Mariotti 2012, 2014). The R&R policy, which is actually meant to prevent the exploitation and eviction of tribal people, ironically results in deepening the divisions between tribal and non-tribal villagers. Moreover, as compensation is paid in an arbitrary manner—some get paid while others do not—it creates or aggravates divisions within villages, and between families. 9780367371753_C010.indd 225 09-04-2021 09:12:30 226 Mieke van Hemert et al. Land, forest, food A counter-narrative on forests as a source of food and a world to live in, foregrounds the life of forest-dwelling people. By narrating life in the forest, it shows how, for forest dwellers, categories such as land, forest, housing, and food are inseparable, as evident from the following: When the Chief Minister came to lay a foundation stone for the project on 8 November 2004, adivasi and non-adivasi people submitted a memorandum demanding ‘provision of land for land, house for house and forest for forest for all adivasis and non-tribal people to be displaced’ (Rao 2006b: 10). A large majority of the villages affected by the dam project (205 out of 277 according to figures from 1996) are located in the forest areas of the Khammam district. In this district, about half of the people entitled to compensation are from the Konda Reddy and the Koya tribes, while a small minority are Dalits. The Koya mostly live in the valleys and cultivate plots of land using oxen, while the Konda Reddy practise shifting cultivation, hunt and collect minor forest produce on the hills. A large part (around 40 per cent) of the food of these tribes in central India comes from the forest (Ramnath 2015). Most forest food is gratis, available for the effort of going out to gather it. Forest food contains many essential minerals and trace elements that are unavailable to the indigenous people from any other source. Displaced forest communities often suffer from deteriorated health and nutrition, partly because their diet undergoes drastic changes upon resettlement. Such communities have their diets changed from ‘locally-produced, diversified and protein-rich to market-purchased, nutrient-poor, high carbohydrate’ (Mariotti 2012: 356–357 citing Kedia 2008). On the basis of their calorie-intake, forest dwellers, among others, have been classified as backward and poor (Mariotti 2012: 169). From an anthropological viewpoint, however, food is much more than calories and nutrition; aspects related to knowledge and skills, identity, community, the spiritual world, and ecology all play a part (Ramnath 2015, 2021).The issue of land thus emerges as one that is tightly intertwined with that of forests and the high-quality food they provide. The value of forest food in connection with bio- or agro-diversity, wild food varieties, has also been raised as an argument against the Polavaram dam, as it would submerge some 4000 hectares of forest land of high ecological and livelihood importance, including part of a wildlife sanctuary and Reserved Forest in the Eastern Ghat mountain range (Rao 2006a). According to estimates, the Eastern Ghats are home to 96 species of wild relatives of crops (of more than 2500 plant species in total), including wild rice, pigeonpea, cucumber, ginger, and turmeric (Rao 2006a citing Reddy et al. 2002). A unique dwarf breed of goat originating in the region, locally known as Kanchu Mekha, also plays an important role in the livelihood of the forest communities, as does a local species of poultry (Rao 2006a). Conclusion In the narrative of the main actor, the state of Andhra Pradesh, which is pushing the construction of the Polavaram dam, the land to be irrigated by the dam is deemed 9780367371753_C010.indd 226 09-04-2021 09:12:30 The negation of change as a narrative strategy of control 227 to be more valuable than the land now inhabited by forest dwellers. There are, on the one hand, grandiose statements claiming that irrigation will bring prosperity in a timeless way, apparently notwithstanding social, environmental or other conditions and changes. That a technical design, of a mega-dam no less, can be taken off the shelf after decades and can be sold as a project that will deliver exactly the same benefits as those conceptualised decades earlier, is sheer audacity. Moreover, the statements emanating from government sources tend to be rather abstract and minimalistic, simply stating the design and benefits of the proposed project and repeating the same over and over again without any elaboration. No storylines are offered as to how the benefits will come about. There are, on the other hand, statements promising a generous, state-of-the-art compensation policy, which would purportedly provide the tribals with land and a better life. They hold that tribal people will be redeemed for past injustices and that they will be better off after resettlement, being housed and given land equal in size to the land they possessed in the submergence zone. While the latter statements do acknowledge one aspect of change, namely the legal provisions made for tribal communities, the view that tribals are backward and poor continues to persist. The connection between land, forest, housing, and food, essential to forest dwellers, remains neglected. The narrative of the state of Andhra Pradesh thus invokes both timelessness and innovativeness. While on the one hand, dams are presented as a timeless solution to problems of drought and poverty, right from ancient times till date, on the other hand, the state takes pride in its ‘state-of-the-art’ R&R policy, the subjects of which are the hundreds of thousands of people who will be displaced by the mega-dam project. The counter-narratives question both, the benefits the mega-dam is purported to bring and the grounds and realisation of the compensation policy. A counternarrative on water resources and agriculture advocates a shift in paradigm—away from large-scale irrigation towards small-scale alternatives since large-scale irrigation appears unsustainable and the mega-dam cannot realistically add irrigation benefits anyway. A counter-narrative on land alienation traces the ongoing conversion of land, first from forests as commons to forests owned by the state, and then from forests to privately held cropland and, increasingly, from forest and cropland to industrial, mining and real-estate enclaves owned by foreign investors. The narrative also reports on the continuing eviction of adivasis from the land they inhabit. One counter-narrative includes a commentary on the conflicts and corruption that accompany compensation, thus exposing the state’s narrative as an empty promise. Another counter-narrative on forest food brings out the interconnectedness of land, forest and food in the life that forest dwellers lead, providing an entirely different way of ordering the world. While being disparate narratives, ranging from expert views on preferred developmental avenues, to historical analyses of land ownership, to life-world narratives, what the counter-narratives have in common is that they all speak of alternatives to the development narrative of the state of Andhra Pradesh. They speak of other paradigms, worlds and imaginaries, with space for small-scale alternatives and the possibility of a rich life in the forest. 9780367371753_C010.indd 227 09-04-2021 09:12:30 228 Mieke van Hemert et al. What is the narrative order the state of Andhra Pradesh has established with respect to the Polavaram multipurpose mega-dam and what is its instrumentality? What is the impact of counter-narratives? As we have seen, the narrative of the state of Andhra Pradesh is a compound narrative composed of two parts: the irrigation benefits of a multipurpose mega-dam and a compensation policy for the people affected by the project. By keeping the ‘downstream’ and ‘upstream’ separate—one in a narrative of timeless technology, and the other in a narrative of innovative social policy—it effectively disconnects the two, and then re-connects them in terms of a win-win outcome. As the dam is presented as a ‘historical necessity’, submergence is presented simply as a logical consequence, while compensation has been presented as something that can take a variety of forms. The narrative order is both subverted and maintained, with government documents pertaining to the project being inconsistent in the numbers they present, and top officials continuing to claim that the project is, and will be, exactly as agreed upon in 1980. The counter-narratives question the legitimacy of the project. They do this by highlighting the numerous inconsistencies and legal violations, ongoing societal and environmental change in the area, and by fundamentally questioning the very worldview in which the narrative of the state of Andhra Pradesh is located. The hegemonic narrative of the state of Andhra Pradesh, however, has a stiff minimalist order which acts as a wall defending it against a plurality of counter-narratives. In a world that is in flux, the Polavaram dam appears to be carved in stone. At the beginning of this chapter, we referred to a recent analysis by Hanna Werner. While her analysis foregrounds the reasons for the central state of India continuing to build large dams, one particular remark resonates with our analysis of ‘how’ it is that the hegemonic narrative of the state of Andhra Pradesh appears to be immune to contestation. She notes that ‘top-down development approaches … are functional mainly because they have succeeded in appearing non-negotiable, and they will remain functional unless the core principles of their architecture are questioned’ (Werner 2014: 143). It is this non-negotiability that stands out in the case of the Polavaram dam too: the narrative of the state of Andhra Pradesh appears immune to contestation. Certain kinds of narrative order may contain (internal) disorder and (external) contestation because they are basically non-negotiable, and thus carved in stone. This is a tautologous conclusion, but also a reality hard to neglect. Notes 1 The Bachawat Award entails the agreement the five riparian states reached in 1980 over the use of the Godavari waters (see details under Brief History). 2 The command area for irrigation are mandals (sub-district administrative units) in the coastal districts Krishna and West Godavari on the right side of the Godavari, and East Godavari and Visakhapatnam on the left side of the Godavari. The mandals to be served are along both sides of the right canal, stretching from the Godavari to the Krishna river, 9780367371753_C010.indd 228 09-04-2021 09:12:30 The negation of change as a narrative strategy of control 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 229 and both sides of the left canal, which ends in Visakhapatnam, an industrial city on the coast to be served with drinking water from the Godavari. Though water is mainly a state subject, the central government can intervene by way of appointing a tribunal under the Inter State Water Tribunal Act, 1956, if the riparian states cannot share the water amicably. The meaning of Jala Yagnam is ‘water as an offering to the gods’ or ‘prayer for water’.The narrative on irrigation as a solution to the problem of drought and poverty thus mingles praying rituals from Hindu religion expressing water as a link to the divine realm, with the engineering discourse on how to harness water most efficiently, not letting the rivers go to waste. In the particular case of the Polavaram project, the construction of canals started before the construction of the dam. By 2015, 30 per cent of the left canal and 60 per cent of the right canal had been completed. Secondary irrigation channels have not been constructed. Pattiseema, a lift irrigation project downstream the site of the Polavaram dam, meant to transfer water from the Godavari to the Krishna, is being completed at a fast pace, and is being connected with the right canal. It will be inaugurated as the Godavari–Krishna link in the National River Linking Project, which means that it fulfils a function which was formerly part of the Polavaram project, being the river water stored in the reservoir and transferred by the right canal. Transferring drinking water to Amaravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh planned on the banks of the Krishna river, is one of the stated purposes. The Bachawat Award requires Andhra Pradesh to build embankments along the Godavari and its tributaries in the two upstream states so that no submergence takes place above 45 meters (MSL, mean sea level). The Award also requires operation of the reservoir in such a way that backwaters do not exceed that upper limit. The Government of Andhra Pradesh would in any case have to follow the orders of the Central Water Commission (CWC), the national authority with expertise on dams and river projects (GWDT Award 1980: 3–4). In 2001, studies on backwater effects carried out by the engineers of Andhra Pradesh were found deficient by the CWC. For all major policies and projects affecting adivasis, Dalits and other groups belonging to the categories of Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes, the Commission was to be consulted. According to the petitioners, nothing of the sort happened in the case of the Polavaram project. Two former chief engineers of the Government of Andhra Pradesh, M. Dharma Rao and T. Hanumantha Rao had each proposed an alternative outlay which they had argued would make available the same amount of water. Dharma Rao proposed a scheme which would utilise existing hydroelectric schemes, adding a number of barrages and small reservoirs (Rao 2006). Hanumantha Rao proposed to build a series of barrages across the Godavari, which would lead to much less submergence (Rao 2006e, 2012). On the official design, Hanumantha Rao said: ‘Such a proposal could have been implemented some fifty years back (e.g. Nagarjuna Sagar Dam) when several Acts (e.g. Forest Conservation Act, Wildlife Protection Act, Tribal Consent Act, Forest Rights Act, etc.) were not there’ (Rao 2012: 12). See also (Environics Trust 2011) on the alternative designs. Now AP Water Resources Department. In fact, the Maharashtra Rehabilitation policy (the Maharashtra Project Affected Persons Rehabilitation Act, 1999 Act 11 of 2001) is considered more progressive as everybody who is displaced would get land as compensation. The landless person is also entitled to get half an acre. Medha Patkar actually led protests against the Polavaram dam in 2005, and in 2010 she wrote: ‘The time has come for the wider mobilisation in which judgements can be 9780367371753_C010.indd 229 09-04-2021 09:12:31 230 Mieke van Hemert et al. challenged, as in the Polavaram Case’ (Benjamin 2010: 232). Patkar has perhaps been consulted, but this does not mean that she supports the project. 12 The Forest Rights Act aimed to redress historical injustices committed against tribal people and other forest dwellers, who had been treated as forest encroachers by the government.The Act grants the ‘right to hold and live in the forest land under the individual or common occupation for habitation or for self-cultivation for livelihood by a member or members of a forest dwelling Scheduled Tribe or other traditional forest dwellers’ (GoI 2006) and ‘right of ownership, access to collect, use, and dispose of minor forest products that have been traditionally collected within or outside village boundaries’ (idem). Both individuals and communities can thus claim ownership of forest land, and these forest rights would have to be settled before the government can displace them for the purpose of development projects. 13 The decades after World War II saw a succession of the British colonial large-scale canal irrigation paradigm by one modelled on the multi-purpose Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) scheme (D’Souza 2003: 3786). Hydraulic engineers and planners made comprehensive plans to develop whole river basins for navigation, irrigation, flood control and power generation by means of engineering structures. The TVA model was emulated as Multi-Purpose River Valley Development all over the world (idem Klingensmith 2007). 14 According to a recent report of the Human Rights Law Network (September 2017) Andhra Pradesh achieved zero per cent of the potential for community forest rights; the national average is a dismal three per cent. 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A Man-Made Disaster in the Making: Polavaram Project and the Tribals. Powerpoint Presentation. Rao, Jayaprakash P. 2006c. Polavaram Project and the Tribal Displacement. Unpublished manuscript. Rao, T. Hanumantha. 2006e. ‘Hydrologically Sound?’ in Biksham Gujja, S. Ramakrishna, Vinod Goud, and Sivaramakrishna (eds), Perspectives on Polavaram. A Major Irrigation Project on Godavari, pp. 83–90. New Delhi: Academic Foundation. Rao, Jayaprakash P. 2010. Polavaram in Doldrums. Unpublished Report. Rao, T. Hanumantha. 2012. Polavaram Project. Why an Alternative Design for Head Works. Secunderabad: Knowledge in Civil Society. Reddy, Ch. Sudhakar, M.S.R. Murthy and C.B.S. Dutt. 2002. ‘Vegetation Diversity and Endemism in Eastern Ghats, India’, Proceedings of National Seminar on Conservation of Eastern Ghats. Hyderabad: EPTRI, pp. 109–134. Reddy, V.K. Rakesh. 2015. ‘Polavaram Project by 2018: Devineni’, The Hindu, 2 March 2015, https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/polavaram-project-by-2018-devineni/ article6951524.ece (accessed on 28 January 2019). Richards, Alan and Nirvikar Singh. 2002. ‘Inter-State Water Disputes in India: Institutions and Policies’, International Journal of Water Resources Development, 18(4): 611–625. Rupavath, Ramdas. 2015. ‘The Persistence of Land Alienation: The Experience of Tribal People of Andhra Pradesh’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 50(3): 259–275. Shah, Mihir. 2013. ‘Water:Towards a Paradigm Shift in the Twelfth Plan’, Economic and Political Weekly, 48(3). Sharma, B.D. 2006. ‘Chhattisgarh Not Consulted’, in Biksham Gujja, S. Ramakrishna,Vinod Goud, and Sivaramakrishna (eds), Perspectives on Polavaram. A Major Irrigation Project on Godavari, pp. 227–228. New Delhi: Academic Foundation. Shukla, A.C. and Vandana Asthana. 2005. Anatomy of Interlinking Rivers in India: A Decision in Doubt. Champaign, Il: ACDIS. Stewart, Tony and V. Rukmini Rao. 2006. India’s Dam Shame. Why Polavaram Dam Must Not be Built. Secunderabad: Gramya Resource Centre for Women. Supreme Court of India (SCoI). 2006a. Dr. Bramha Dev Sharma & Ors. vs. Union of India & Ors., Under Article 32 of the Constitution of India. Supreme Court of India (SCoI). 2006b. CEC Order, Application Nos. 839, 875 and 944 filed before the CEC regarding construction of Indira Sagar Project (Polavaram Project), 15 November 2006 Surepally, Sujatha, M. Bharat Bushan and Vidya Bushan Rawat. 2012. Special Economic Zones in India.A Study with Special Reference to Polepally SEZ in Andhra Pradesh. Delhi: Daanish Books. 9780367371753_C010.indd 232 09-04-2021 09:12:31 The negation of change as a narrative strategy of control 233 The New Indian Express. 2015. ‘No Move to Change Design of Polavaram Project: Andhra Pradesh’, 4 January 2015, http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/andhrapradesh/2015/jan/04/No-Move-to-Change-Design-of-Polavaram-Project--AndhraPradesh-701123.html (accessed on 28 January 2019). Werner, Hanna. 2014. ‘Rivers, Dams and Landscapes: Engaging with the Modern on Contested Grounds’ in Marcus Nüsser (ed.), Large Dams in Asia. Contested Environments between Technological Hydroscapes and Social Resistance, 125–148. Dordrecht: Springer. 9780367371753_C010.indd 233 09-04-2021 09:12:31 Conclusion DEEPENING THE CONVERSATION AROUND WATER CONFLICTS Deepening the conversation K.J. Joy1 Introduction Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, while inaugurating the large, multi-purpose Hirakud dam project in 1957, called it one of the modern temples of newly independent India. Exactly 50 years later, in 2007, thousands of farmers from the Hirakud command area gathered at the same place from where Nehru gave the historic speech while dedicating the Hirakud project to the nation. Instead of celebrating the grandiosity of the dam, however, they took a pledge not to allow water to be taken away from agriculture and be given to industry (Choudhury, Sandbhor and Satapathy 2012), contesting the policy of the Government of Odisha to reallocate water from agriculture to industry. This event, and similar protests that the farmers from the Hirakud command area organised between 2005 and 2010, was the first organised attempt to resist water diversion, a growing phenomenon in India over the last two decades. However, the way the Hirakud conflict is framed, narrated and acted upon, tells us a story that is too standardised, too ‘single’. It tells us not only the story of the Hirakud conflict, but also the way the story of a water conflict is narrated. This idea of a conflict was a powerful one indeed, as it forced the Government of Odisha to enter into negotiations with the agitating farmers. Still, the question remains whether this overarching framing of the conflict as one of agriculture versus industry captures all the contradictions and complexities present in the Hirakud case. Or, to put it differently, we could ask whether or not this single-story narration of the conflict inhibited other contradictions and interests from gaining visibility and legitimacy. To answer this, while not dismissing the power of the single-story narrations, we need to problematise the idea of water conflict itself and also how it unfolds and pursues certain interests and legitimises specific historical, technological and environmental relations. In other words, as my co-editor Cortesi says in 9780367371753_C011.indd 234 09-04-2021 09:12:55 Deepening the conversation around water conflicts 235 her introductory essay, we need to engage with the ‘social life of the idea of water conflict’. This book is an effort in this direction. In the introductory chapter, Cortesi has engaged with all the case studies and brought out the key insights of this book for re-reading water conflicts in conversation with the idea of it. She organised them around the three ways in which the idea of water conflict gets understood and manifested, namely, (i) the agential purchase of the idea of water conflict; (ii) the instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict; (iii) the naturalisation of environmental, ecological, technological, and historical relations. As Cortesi has mentioned, these are not mutually exclusive and most case studies presented in this book highlight all three phenomena. In this concluding chapter, I propose to use the diversity and the richness of the case studies as well as the experience of the Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India (Water Conflicts Forum) in engaging with water conflicts over the last 15 years to make a case for deepening the conversation around water conflicts among scholars and activists. This I would do by first locating this book in the real-world experiences of the Water Conflicts Forum of engaging with different types of water conflicts in India, and second, drawing from some scholarly work on environmental conflicts in India, I would argue for the need as well as the opportunity to deepen the conversation between scholars and activists, which I believe is an important step in the actualisation of the transformative potential of conflicts. Locating the book in the work of the Water Conflicts Forum I write this concluding chapter from the position of a person straddling the arenas of both activism and research. I have spent nearly a decade at the beginning of my professional life as a full-time activist with a new social movement in Maharashtra built around drought, dams and displacement, equitable water access and alternative agriculture, and, later, as part of a research-based, non-governmental organisation (NGO) working in the arena of environment, water and development. Over the last 15 years, I have been actively involved with the issue of water-related conflicts through the Water Conflict Forum—primarily a network of activists and academics—which has documented nearly 125 cases of water-related conflicts from India, written by academics, activists and media persons.2 A close perusal of these case studies shows that they were straightforward narrations of the positions taken by the different conflicting parties, providing summarised accounts of the conflicts, the issues they bring forth and their current status (Joy et al. 2008). Till the new millennium, water conflicts in India, unlike conflicts around land and forest, had not received a systematic treatment by either academics or activists (Joy et al. 2008). Hence, many civil society organisations (CSOs) and a few concerned academics felt the need to systematically engage with different types of water-related conflicts—literally a million revolts—unfolding in the country. The Water Conflicts Forum was set up as a response to this realisation of the need for a systematic and collective engagement with water-related conflicts in the country. The main motivation behind this exercise was to make the public discourse around 9780367371753_C011.indd 235 09-04-2021 09:12:55 236 K.J. Joy water conflicts more informed, eventually leading to an informed dialogue among the conflicting parties and possibly facilitating their resolution (Joy et al. 2008). It is from the extensive documentation of water-related conflict cases in India by the Water Conflicts Forum, and my conversations with Luisa Cortesi about it during the last decade or so, that the idea to engage with how water conflicts get understood and narrated emerged organically. We realised that the narration that had been taken up till then was straightforward, with positions or perceptions of the actors taken at face value and accepted as a given, making no serious efforts to further interrogate the positions taken by different actors. In other words, why water conflicts get narrated the way they do and the implications of such narrations in the way the conflicts are managed, was not problematised. The need to do so became very sharply evident during our engagement with the Hirakud conflict. Hirakud conflict and its narration3 The Hirakud dam in the state of Odisha (India) on the Mahanadi river is a very large, multi-purpose dam project, used for flood control, irrigation and hydropower generation. By all standards, it is a mega project: it has Full Reservoir Level (FRL) at an impressive 192.02 meters, a capacity to store 8.14 MCM (Million Cubic Meters) of water, an installed capacity of 347.86 MW and it can produce 1,051 MU (Million Units) of electricity in a year, irrigate about 267,500 ha in the Hirakud command area and another 363,980 ha in the delta command area, which is primarily irrigated by water released through the tailrace after power generation, and potentially protect 950,000 ha from floods (Government of Odisha 2009 as cited in Choudhury, Sandbhor and Satapathy 2012; Panda 2010). The flip side is that the Hirakud dam has transformed the Odisha delta region from a flood dependent agrarian regime to a flood vulnerable landscape (DSouza 2006). The initial conflict around the Hirakud dam broke out right at the time of the construction of the dam itself, on the issue of compensation to the project affected persons (PAPs). It is reported that many PAPs have not been compensated even after more than 60 years of their displacement. In the initial phase of the project, there does not seem to have been any problems. Only after 1990 do we see discontent brewing among the farmers of Hirakud command area as they started experiencing water shortage due to a combination of factors. Intensification in agriculture and shift from the designed cropping pattern, urbanisation and capacity increase of hydropower generation, all resulted in these sectors demanding more water. The year 1990 seems to be a watershed year as the government for the first time earmarked 0.350 MAF (million acre feet) of water to industries though industrial use was not part of the project design (Panda 2010; Choudhury, Sandbhor and Satapathy 2012; Dsouza et al. 2017). Since then, water has been allocated to industry as per the demand put up by the new industries (including mining) that have been rapidly growing in Odisha. Probably as a proportion of total water use, the allocation towards industrial and commercial use is relatively small. However, the increase in industrial and commercial allocation and use since the late 1990s 9780367371753_C011.indd 236 09-04-2021 09:12:55 Deepening the conversation around water conflicts 237 increased substantially. Over a period of 10 years, from 1997 to 2006–07, the water withdrawal permission granted to industrial and mining units by the state government went up by about 255 per cent (Panda 2010), the bulk of this water being drawn from the Hirakud reservoir. This substantial jump in industrial allocation and the aggressive behaviour of some of the industries in accessing the Hirakud water did unnerve the farmers. For example, Bhushan Steel Ltd., which built a twokilometre long approach road inside the reservoir thus blocking the water inflow into the areas which feed the Sasan canal, one of the main water distribution systems of Hirakud irrigation command and also the epicentre of the farmers’ protests. Farmers from this area think that this was the primary reason for the delay of two to three weeks in releasing water into the canal at the beginning of 2006–07 kharif season (Panda 2010). This apprehension of the farmers got further compounded by the active encouragement of the state government to attract more and more industries, especially mineral-based ones, to set up business in Odisha, as it is supposed to be a mineral-rich state. This increasingly led to the entry of large mineral-based extractive industries, especially thermal and aluminium industries, quickly transforming the region into the largest conglomerate of smelter and power industrial units in the world, placing increasing demands on water from the Hirakud reservoir and polluting both the reservoir and the river Mahanadi (Choudhury, Sandbhor and Satapathy 2012). There were other problems too. The dam, over a 50-year period, had lost about 20 per cent of its storage capacity (DoWR 2007) because of siltation as a result of the degradation of the catchment area of the dam. Studies also indicate a reduction in the inflow into the reservoir (Das 2007 as cited in Panda 2010; Choudhury, Sandbhor and Satapathy 2012).4 Degeneration of the water distribution system due to lack of timely maintenance and also mismanagement of irrigation water only exacerbated the situation.The end result of all these—intensification of water use by different sectors, increasing water allocation to industries and aggressive behaviour of some of the industries in accessing water, reduced storage capacity of the reservoir and decreased inflows, degraded water distribution system and mismanagement of irrigation water—was the heightened water insecurity and discontentment among the farmers of the Hirakud command. This discontentment of the farmers manifested itself in the form of an intense movement of the farmers against the Government of Odisha and the industries that lasted for about five to six years, starting from 2005. In fact, the farmers’ movement had actually started a few years earlier, around 1999–2000, when they took up issues of remunerative price of paddy, its public procurement and exploitation of the farmers at the mandi (market yard)—something that continues till today. The farmers’ organisations took up water-related issues in 2003 when they intervened to ensure quality of the renovation of the Sasan branch of the water distribution system. In 2006, the farmers’ organisations in the region challenged the government’s decision to allocate increasing amounts of water to the industries and also decided to launch a struggle till the allocations made to the industries after 2003 were cancelled. In the same year, all the organisations 9780367371753_C011.indd 237 09-04-2021 09:12:55 238 K.J. Joy in the region came together and formed the ‘Paschim Odisha Krushak Suraksha Sangathan’ (Western Odisha Farmers Protection Organisation or POKSS) and since then, it is the POKSS which has led the struggle against water diversion. The movement resorted to a wide variety of actions—writing letters to the Chief Minister of the state by each family in the region, organising protest rallies, forming human chains, conducting campaigns and awareness meetings, and starting a civil disobedience. In October 2006, nearly 20,000 people participated in the human chain protest from one end of the dam to the other. In November 2007, about 30,000 farmers marched to the dam site, a prohibited area, and the police resorted to violence, injuring many of the protesters. This was a turning point as it rocked the Odisha assembly. The government had to order an inquiry into the police violence, put an immediate stop to further water allocation to the industries, promise that water would be provided to the industries only after irrigating the designated command area, announce a financial package for modernisation of the water distribution system, appoint a High-Level Technical Committee to look into the issues raised by the famers’ organisations, and also review and streamline the intersectoral water allocation and use, especially the industrial allocation. Thus, we can say that the farmers’ movement successfully resisted water diversion from agriculture to industry. The overarching framing and narration of the conflict as one of water (re)allocation from agriculture to industry helped the POKSS to overcome various fault lines within the farmers and mobilise them as one constituency against the twin common enemies—the Government of Odisha and the industries. Agriculture vs industry is a powerful imagery that not only mobilised the farmers of the Hirakud command but also mobilised public opinion within and outside the state in favour of the farmers. Fearing that this would erode its legitimacy, the Government of Odisha was forced to negotiate, and eventually roll back part of the water allocation. However, such a framing (of the conflict as farmers against industry) seems to foreclose any discussion on other substantive issues or inhibit them from surfacing (Choudhury, Sandbhor and Satapathy 2012). Internal equity and the diverging interests of the farmers of the upper reaches and tail-end regions of the project area is one such issue. The tail-end farmers have not been receiving irrigation water, thus suffering from what is generally known as tail-ender deprivation (DSC 2003). Though this issue did not become a source of overt conflict, it brings to the fore the issue of internal equity within the command area as it is primarily a consequence of upper reach farmers using more water than what they are entitled to. It is also related to changes in cropping patterns, agronomical practices, land ownership, and peasantry composition (Choudhury, Sandbhor and Satapathy 2012). Water intensive, mono-cultural cropping pattern and chemical-intensive agronomical practices are also issues that are of immediate relevance to the Hirakud command. In other words, agriculture in the Hirakud command is a good example of ‘green revolution agriculture’ (read capitalist agriculture) built around intensive use of water, agro-chemicals and hybrid seeds. It is reported that a large number of farmers from coastal Andhra Pradesh, known for their long history of irrigated paddy cultivation, 9780367371753_C011.indd 238 09-04-2021 09:12:56 Deepening the conversation around water conflicts 239 moved to the Hirakud command in large numbers and they are said to have played a significant role in stabilising a paddy-centric cropping pattern in the Hirakud command area. As time went by, ironically, the Telugu farmers bought land from the local Odia farmers, who in turn became labourers in their previously owned farms.Thus, with the Hirakud dam, we find the agriculture scenario—both in terms of agrarian relations as well as production system—getting completely transformed. Framing the Hirakud conflict within its larger political economy and ecology context can probably build a more nuanced and realistic narrative and, in the process, confront the mainstream ‘developmentalism’—capitalist agriculture and extractive industries—followed by the state. While giving all credit to the farmers’ movement in successfully resisting corporate interests in the Hirakud waters, one cannot, however, deny that the farmers’ movement could have elevated a couple of notches higher the transformative potential of the conflict if the movement had taken up other substantive issues that we have discussed earlier, in addition to linking the issue of farmers’ not getting water to the issue of water diversion to industries. Having been part of a social movement myself, I know it is not easy to confront the accepted narrative and it is much more complex than it sounds. It is also a rather unexplored area and that is what motivated the Water Conflict Forum to look at water conflicts more closely in terms of how they get framed and narrated by looking at the social life of the idea of water conflicts through case studies across the globe, with the hope that this exercise would offer us insights into how to deepen and broaden our conversations around water conflicts. Deepening and broadening the conversation among activists and researchers It is not easy for scholars who are empathetic to social movements to interrogate the framings by the activists.There is a dilemma that researchers face while engaging with the idea of water conflict, especially if they have to confront the way activists frame and narrate conflicts and struggles. It is a situation of tight rope walking for the researcher: between the sensitivity that his/her research should not in any way compromise the ongoing movement or struggle on the one hand, and the need to bring to the fore what gets hidden in meta and often binary framings and their implications on the other. How a conflict gets framed and narrated influences the ways in which it is understood, made public, as well as mediated and regulated, privileging certain interests and values. The space to open up critical conversations on these issues is rather limited and, if one does, then there is always a possibility that the person doing so is branded ‘anti-movement’, there is an ‘othering’ that takes place, resulting in rigid, solidified positions, as Hemert, Polsani and Ramnath say (Chapter 10, this volume), ‘carved in stone’. To borrow an Indian expression, to critically engage with and/or come up with a different view than the ‘accepted’ one or the one that is handed down, is a ‘holy cow’, a ‘forbidden’ subject. It assumes a hegemonic character. This lack of ‘democratisation’ of the conversation around conflicts is not only an issue between researchers and activists but it is also an issue 9780367371753_C011.indd 239 09-04-2021 09:12:56 240 K.J. Joy between different social movements and between activists within the same movement. This restriction of space for critical engagements results in shutting out of all voices that may go against the handed down narrative and often results in hearing only what we want to hear. The conversation tends to end there. The idea of water conflicts is, in a way, shaped by how the activists work and this engenders a lot of consequences. In the case of the Hirakud dam, as we discussed earlier, the leading activists seem to have consciously chosen water diversion from agriculture to industries as the one-point agenda or the superordinating principle for mobilising farmers, probably with the apprehension that getting into issues of internal equity (for example, the issue of tail-ender deprivation) and sustainability (such as water-intensive cropping pattern and agrochemical intensive agricultural practices) can fragment their primary constituency, the farmers of Hirakud command. On the contrary, in the case of the Narmada struggle led by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), a movement that Cortesi describes in her introductory essay ‘as one of the most celebrated struggles against large dams in India as well as outside’, the narration of the conflict went beyond the impact of the dam on the lives, livelihoods and culture of the people (because of which the people resisted it in the first place) to an overarching narration of a cultural critique of the ‘development’ paradigm by adivasis (Baviskar 1995). There have also been cases of a particular conflict getting narrated and named differently. The Chipko movement (literally meaning ‘hugging trees’) in the Garhwal Himalayas in the early 1970s, one of the most famous first-generation movements in the country, with an environmental content, a movement against commercial felling of trees by contractors has been narrated as women’s environmentalism, ethnic environmentalism or grassroots environmentalism and also as a struggle for control over local resources. ‘As the story of the Chipko spread around the world and was retold time and again, it became detached from its specific demands regarding access to forest resources and local economic development’ (Rangan 1996: 217). Part of the problem lies in the tendency among certain scholars to pigeonhole or straitjacket social movements into one or the other category by labelling them as feminist or ‘environmentalist’. As Omvedt says, very often the ‘green movements’ are actually survival movements of the rural poor (Omvedt 1987 as cited in Baviskar 1995). Instead of taking them for granted, theorising these consequences is an important contribution to the work of activists. However, while doing so, the researchers need to be conscious about their own positionality and interests that drive the narration in particular directions, often moving it away from the contexts, demands, concerns, aspirations, and also contradictions—the everyday life and struggles—of the subject of the struggles and enquiry, meaning the local people. In the more than three decades of my experience in activism, I recognise a certain rigidity that informs our work. Perhaps motivated by the challenges we face in standing against powerful forces such as the state or the neoliberal economic ideologies, or corporate interests, we tend to lean on less nuanced positions, which results in resistance to academic inquiry and surprise at reading accounts that may be counter to our (activists’) narrative. 9780367371753_C011.indd 240 09-04-2021 09:12:56 Deepening the conversation around water conflicts 241 One example to further illustrate this is the 1995 book In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley, by Amita Baviskar, a sympathiser of the Narmada movement, and how the book was received by activists and some scholars. By Narmada movement, we mean the around 30-year struggle against the mega, multipurpose Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) on the Narmada river, spearheaded by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA). In her book, Baviskar essentially challenges the overarching framing of the Narmada struggle—by the leading activists of the NBA (mostly well educated, and belonging to the urban middle class) and also the theorisation by intellectuals—as being a ‘cultural critique’ of the ‘development’ paradigm by adivasis who are marginalised by ‘development’ and who live in harmony with nature, combining reverence for nature with the sustainable management of resources. She also critically examines the way in which adivasis are represented by intellectuals who speak ‘on their behalf ’. According to her, adivasi politics cannot be reduced to an opposition between ‘development’ and ‘resistance’. The book forces us to re-examine the politics of representation within the ideology of progressive movements. The Narmada struggle mainly consists of three constituents, namely, the adivasis in the hills who are not actually impacted by the dam by way of submergence, the adivasis in the valley (of the Narmada) and the Patidars in the plains of Nimar, the last two bearing the brunt of the submergence. While Baviskar appreciates the position of the NBA that the dam is environmentally disastrous, she is not so convinced about the ecological sustainability of current natural resource use practices in the valley, in the hills, and especially in the plains of Nimar—something that is central to the framing of the NBA. Also, ‘the attempt to cast the movement in the valley as representing a critique of development disregards the class basis of the Andolan [NBA] in Nimar, and the dominant presence of Patidars whose mode of production is the antithesis of sustainability and social justice’ (Baviskar 1995: 234). One of the critical insights of the book, having relevance outside the Narmada movement, is that ‘there is a difference between people’s own perceptions of what they are fighting for and the claims made by activists and intellectuals. While the Adivasis fight for their very survival that is being denied by the state through projects like the SSP, the activists and intellectuals narrate these struggles as a comprehensive critique of development based on the traditional Adivasi (tribal) way of life. And the Adivasi way of life, according to them, is the hallmark of reverence for nature, simplicity and values that challenge the dominant worldview’s desire for mastery over nature and material wealth. This conceptualisation is called upon by the movement in the valley (Narmada valley) to gain the sympathy of urban supporters’ (1995: 237).There seems to be some truth in what Guha says, ‘…the Indian environmental debate is an argument in the cities about what is happening in the country side’ (Guha 1992, as cited in Baviskar 1995).5 The point here is that ‘to retrieve the peasant or indigenous discourses on nature (or its elements), regulation of resource use and management and so on need not romanticize the pre-capitalist (or pre-modern) relations of society and nature’ (Peet and Watts 1996: 38). To reposition the movement as a transformative one, there is a need to bridge this gap between what is understood, privileged and narrated and what is instead 9780367371753_C011.indd 241 09-04-2021 09:12:56 242 K.J. Joy misunderstood or purposely hidden—it is necessary to deepen and broaden the conversation around how issues get framed and narrated and for what purpose. For this to happen, there is a need to step out of the sanctified and romanticised ideas of what an adivasi life is or ought to be as perceived and narrated by the activists and intellectuals, and really engage with the aspects that matter to the adivasis. As Baviskar says, ‘the three aspects central to adivasi life—the gods that are nature, land and forest, community—hold the potential to form a challenge and an alternative to development when supported by the activists and the intellectuals who listen and observe as much as they speak and write. It must be our task to transform our understanding into action and aid, and together forge a future that is more just—to people and to nature’ (1995: 244). When this book came out, it did create a stir among the activists of the NBA and beyond—it was sacrilege to question the narrative of the movement (more correctly, the movement’s leadership) as this narrative is more like a handed down truth, and also the only truth. All essays in this collection try to question the existence of a solid single story. All the essays go beyond the positions that the various actors take and unearth the underlying interests, needs and values that shape those positions/narratives and also what all the different actors employ (nature, knowledge, culture, history and so on) to legitimise their positions/narrations. What does it mean for activists that we are perhaps stuck in an idea of water conflict? What if, as Cortesi suggests on the basis of her work and that of the authors of this book, this idea has consequences for the conflict itself? Without pointing fingers, those of us who self-identify as activists, as I do, need to reflect on the consequences of our work. Similarly, my experience with scholars led me to appreciate more engaged, empirically based forms of research that combined actual practice with scholarly writing. Baviskar’s book, despite the harshness of her critique, undeniably results from a deeper knowledge of the adivasis’ environmental practices and social priorities. The point of this discussion is to make manifest the role of critical engagement as a transformative, if painful, methodology for both knowledge production and activism. I thus suggest deepening and broadening the conversation at two levels: one, among the academic researchers themselves and two, between researchers and activists (or between knowledge and politics). Conventionally, water research has been carried out within disciplinary boundaries that broadly divide the bio-physical sciences from social sciences, and they have, over the last couple of decades, been increasingly questioned by a push for interdisciplinarity, an awareness that is now increasingly reflected in actual practices too. Such boundaries have been enforced by the misconception of water ‘only’, water as a separate matter—an issue both the editors of this book have engaged with on various occasions (Sangameswaran, Narain and Joy 2013; Cortesi 2012; Camargo and Cortesi 2019). The essays in the book also bring out how water conflicts are not only about water—water is consistently mixed with identity, culture, history, worldviews, geopolitics, and so on. While we can see how hierarchies of knowledge have privileged hard, number-based sciences over social, qualitative 9780367371753_C011.indd 242 09-04-2021 09:12:56 Deepening the conversation around water conflicts 243 knowledge—often accused of being anecdotal—and traditional knowledge—often accused of being contextual and practical, forgetting that any knowledge formation is subjected to political issues, related to what ‘is deemed to be important by a particular researcher, but is also more often than not related to her/his social and political position’ (Sangameswaran, Narain and Joy 2013). Interdisciplinarity, according to Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt,6 is to be pursued in collaborations not only with the practioners of different disciplines, but also between academics and activists. In order to get out of their comfort zone, ask new questions, ask right questions, or even question the kind of question that is needed, the academic needs to work more closely with the activist. For this conversation to be meaningful, according to Lahiri-Dutt, it is important to make the positionality of the researcher more explicit (Sangameswaran, Narain and Joy 2013). Yet, this book, though more academically oriented, suggests the need and the opportunity for the activists to rethink the way in which they do movements and frame issues. This is particularly crucial in the present context of climate crises and the ever-expanding frontiers of imperialist capitalism, where a rigidity of position and a lack of collaboration between activists and scholars would make activism static, isolated, and perhaps unaware of its own limitations. Social movements need new, more nuanced conceptualisations and narratives, and thus need to construct an interdisciplinarity of practice with empirical, engaged scholarship. While it was visible to me that the framing of the Hirakud conflict as one of farmers against industries was limiting, it was a game changer to consider, as Cortesi does in the introduction, the power of the idea of water conflict as a way to reflect on the commonalities between water conflicts around the world, on the consequences of their narratives and conceptualisations, and on the interactions between conflicts and their ideologies. By helping activists to understand the biophysical and sociocultural peculiarities of water, interdisciplinarity between research and practice elevates movements above polarised, sectarian discourses, interests, and different developmental programmes (Sangameswaran, Narain and Joy 2013). Conclusion Conflict narratives are icebergs.7 We see only the positions that different conflicting parties take above the water, while the substantial part of the iceberg—in this case, interests, needs, worldviews, and values—remain invisible under the water.The water conflict gets narrated as well as manifested at the level of the positions the different actors take. I shall go further: there is an idea of water conflicts that floats in many narrations of water conflicts, and in the conflicts themselves. No meaningful, transformative conversation can take place unless we dig deeper, unearth the pattern of conflicts for how we conceptualise and engage with them. This critical engagement with the idea of water conflicts can open a much larger canvas of conversation for and between academic researchers and activists alike. This is the central argument this concluding chapter makes. At the same time, I recognise that the critical engagement I call for is far from easy, with many barriers 9780367371753_C011.indd 243 09-04-2021 09:12:56 244 K.J. Joy to be crossed, including the hierarchies and boundaries discussed above, the hidden identity and politico-conceptual positionality of the scholar and of the activist, and the sweeping scepticisms among activists and movements about academics and their usefulness for change. Through my work for the last 30–35 years in the water and allied sectors as an activist and as a researcher, I have become convinced that knowledge and politics (social movements) need to come together if we have to make a difference in the real world. Water conflicts are a paradigmatic example of this. Knowledge is important and is a necessary condition for transforming the conflict but not a sufficient one: it has to feed into the political processes. Far from saying that all researchers need to become activists, I believe they would be better knowledge-producers if they produce knowledge in collaboration (co-production of knowledge) with sociopolitical movements. Similarly, movements and activists need to engage with the reflexive insights about the patterns of our work that scholars produce. In fact, we may need to go beyond this polarisation between philosophers8 (read academics) and activists, and ask the question as to whether what we do merely makes the world around us more understandable or whether we contribute towards changing it, and vice versa, whether trying to change the world wouldn’t deserve the specialised understanding of it that academics pursue. To realise the transformative potential of the idea of conflict, we need to straddle both knowledge and politics, a goal this book actively pursues by deepening and broadening the conversation among activists and academic researchers. Notes 1 I am thankful to my co-editor, Luisa Cortesi, for her valuable comments and suggestions on the different drafts of this concluding essay. 2 The documentation includes two formally published books (Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts in the Making and Water Conflicts in Northeast India), three compendium of case studies (‘Water Conflicts in Odisha: A Compendium of Case Studies’, ‘Agony of Floods: Flood Induced Water Conflicts in India’ and ‘Conflicts around Domestic Water and Sanitation in India: Cases, Issues and Prospects’) and standalone essays and technical reports on individual water conflict cases (‘Floods, Fields and Factories: Towards Resolving the Conflicts around Hirakud Dam’, ‘Linking Lives – Reviving Flows: Towards Resolving Upstream-Downstream Conflicts in Chalakudy River Basin’ and ‘From Conflict to Co-production: A Multi-stakeholder Analysis in Preserving the East Kolkata Wetlands’. All these publications, except the two books, are available at https:// waterconflictforum.org/books-reports (accessed on 22 August 2019). 3 The narration of the Hirakud conflict is mostly based on the insights that I gathered from fieldwork and interactions with the leadership of the farmers’ movement spanning over a decade or so. I have also used insights from Choudhury, Sandbhor and Satapathy (2012) based on a four-year (2008–2012) action-research programme on Hirakud water conflict by the Water Conflict Forum and its Odisha State Resource Centre. 4 The decrease in the inflow is attributed mainly to a decline in the rainfall and increased upstream storage by Chhattisgarh.The Water Conflict Forum’s analysis of the data (1959– 2008) using the Flood Report shows a gradual decrease in the monsoon inflow, while the 9780367371753_C011.indd 244 09-04-2021 09:12:56 Deepening the conversation around water conflicts 245 5 6 7 8 non-monsoon flow remains static till the mid-1980s followed by a gradual increase till the end of 1990 and then a decline till 2008 (Dsouza et al. 2017). I am aware that the Indian environmental debate has moved much beyond such a formulation over time. I have reproduced this quote here to illustrate the point that there was often a tendency by the urban intelligentsia, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, to frame the movements of the toiling rural masses (including adivasis) for their lives and livelihoods or for control over local resources as deep environmental movements. From her speech in the panel discussion on the topic ‘Social Movements for Democratising Water Resources: Relevance of Academic Research’ organised as part of the SaciWATERs’ conference, ‘International Conference on Interdisciplinarity in Water Education: Challenges, Perspective and Policy Implications’, 3–6 October 2010, Kathmandu, Nepal, captured in Sangameswaran, Narain and Joy (2013). The first time I came to know about the ‘iceberg model’ in relation to conflicts was from Lambrecht Wessels when he and Ashok Swain ran a one-day training programme at the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NOW), Den Haag in April 2016 as part of the ‘Conflict and Cooperation in the Management of Climate Change’ (CCMCC) research projects coordinated and anchored by NOW. It is detailed in the note, ‘Conflict Analysis: A Practical Tool for Adding a Conflict Map to Written Analyses NWO CoCoon 2016’, prepared by Lambrecht Wessels and circulated to all participants. This is a take-off from the famous saying of Karl Marx, ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it’ (1845). References Baviskar, Amita. 1995. In the Belly of the River–Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley. Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras: Oxford University Press. 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