Developing global institutions for governing water.

AuthorLangridge, Ruth
PositionGoverning Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building - Book review

Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building

Ken Conca

(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), 466 pages.

The problem is acute: how to develop global institutions to mediate competing demands on the world's water resources. In his thoughtful and cogent book, Ken Conca sees the dilemma of water governance as illustrative of the broader issue of "protecting the planet's places" where environmental problems may manifest over a spatially limited area, but the life-supporting natural cycles of local ecosystems and the socioeconomic impacts of resource use and allocation have a global dimension. (1) In the case of freshwater systems that are geographically bounded, conflicts over governance play out in a transnational arena. While the era of "damming, draining, diverting" received considerable financial and technical support during the 20th century, the cumulative effects of dramatically altering the world's river basins not only brought about the rapid decline of freshwater biodiversity and the destruction of wetlands and floodplains, but also generated widespread social and economic dislocations. (2) This phenomenon illustrates the maxim that the redistribution of water is always a redistribution of people and wealth.

Actors, primarily representing nation-states, have responded to recognized global environmental problems with the formation of a range of international regimes and negotiated agreements among sovereign states that have defined rules agreed upon in the global arena. Conca posits that while these regimes have been applicable to issues of "pollution beyond borders," they are a poor fit for the general problems inherent in protecting the planet's places. (3) This is clearly highlighted in the case of water governance, in which accepted formulations about established state authority and territory are less pertinent to water's more complex local-global interface and non-state actors continue to challenge the hegemony of sovereign states in negotiations over water conflicts. Along with the issues of state authority and territoriality, Conca posits that regime formation around water governance confronts the additional problem of the legitimacy of knowledge, an essential ingredient in the negotiations that precede regime formation. Thus, the assumptions underlying the causes of water problems and their solutions remain highly contested. This is illustrated first where the dynamic nature of river ecosystems generates uncertainties around the management of water, and second, where major tensions exist over the socioeconomic valuation of water. These issues prevent the development and stabilization of a common understanding of water problems and solutions. In so doing, they militate against a regime form of global governance where the validity and stability of shared knowledge and rationalist discourse among participants are essential.

While scholars...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT