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Co-creating Water Commons: Civics, Environmentality, and "Power With”
Bryan [email protected]
Society for Applied AnthropologyPittsburg, March 24-28, 2015
OverviewCo-creating Water Commons
• Background– Challenges of groundwater
governance– Water Commons Project
• Environmentality: Seeing Commons– Shifting perceptions and values
• Civics: Creating Citizenship– Inclusive governance through
universal membership• “Power With”: Working on
Watersheds– Efficacy in changing flows and
stocks
Challenges of Groundwater Governance
• Wells and pumps improve livelihoods, but risk depletion
• Groundwater provides over 60% of India’s irrigation
• Common pool resource– One person’s use subtracts water
from others– Hard to exclude– Hard to monitor use, understand
aquifers• Few successful examples of
groundwater governance
Water Commons:Influencing Practice and Policy
• FES: Foundation for Ecological Security
• Practitioner perspective as a consultant
• Funding from– HUF: Hindustan Unilever
Foundation– NABARD: National Bank for
Agriculture and Rural Development
• 5 states, 8 districts, 700+ villages (habitations)
Water Commons:Activities and Results
Environmentality: Seeing Commons
• Changing environmentality: – Perceptions and values– What people see, and what they want
• PRA: Sketch mapping, transect walks, etc.
• Participatory hydrological monitoring: – measuring local rainfall and well water
levels, – wall paintings
• Simulation: groundwater game• Crop-water budgeting:
– rainfall, storage versus crop demand– Coordination crop choices
• Watershed conservation planning: – bunds, ponds, trenches, tanks, etc. for
reducing runoff, – increasing storage in soil, surface water
bodies, and aquifers
Civics: Creating Citizenship
• Habitation-level governance: – Village Organizations
• Universal membership: – Inclusion in terms of gender,
caste, indigeneity (tribals), poverty
– Inclusion in voice, action, and benefits
• Polycentric governance– Linkages with smaller and larger
scales and groups– Hamlets, user groups, revenue
villages, panchayats, blocks, sub-basins, districts, states, basins
“Power With”: Working on Watersheds
• Improving collective action• Power with, by acting together
– Interacts with “power to,” capabilities
– And with “power over” authority, sanctions, etc.
• Water harvesting• Ecological restoration: forests,
pastures• Balancing water demand and
supply• Claiming commons
Monitoring
• Process– Sequence of activities,
meetings, plans, agreements, resolutions
• ResultsTriple bottom line: – social: equity, governance
organizations, rules– Economic: crops and income – environmental: water
storage capacity, water levels
ConclusionsCo-creating Water Commons
• Environmentality:– Changes in environmental
perceptions and values• Citizenship:
– Changes in governance: – inclusive organization in
habitations• Power with:
– Cooperation to balance water supply and demand,
– claim commons, – ecological restoration
OverviewCo-creating Water Commons:
Civics, Environmentality and “Power With”
• In Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, and other parts of India, the Foundation for Ecological Security is working with communities to develop better institutions for managing surface and groundwater.
• Sketch mapping, participatory hydrological monitoring, experimental games, crop-water budgeting, watershed conservation, and other activities develop shared knowledge of water resources and consider options for improvement.
• Habitations, containing dozens to hundreds of households, organize based on universal membership, within nested contexts of larger landscapes and social networks.
• From a practitioner's perspective, this paper explores ways of facilitating the co-creation of citizenship in water commons.