Ebbs and Flows of Authority: Decentralization, Development and the Hydrosocial Cycle in Lesotho

Cassandra L. Workman

doi:10.3390/w11020184

Abstract

Dominant development discourse holds that water scarcity reflects geophysical limitations, lack of infrastructure or lack of government provision. However, this paper outlines the ways in which scarcity can only be fully explained in the context of development, specifically, neoliberal economic policies and related notions of good governance. Water is Lesotho’s primary natural resource, yet many of its inhabitants remain severely water insecure. Presently, decentralization and Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) are embraced in Lesotho as a philosophy and method to engage varied stakeholders and to empower community members. Using a water committee in Qalo, Lesotho as a case study, this paper explores the micro-politics of water governance. As individuals contest who is responsible for managing water resources for the village—by aligning themselves with traditional chiefs, elected officials, or neither—they transform or reinforce specific hydro-social configurations. While decentralized resource management aims to increase equity and local ownership over resources, as well as moderate the authority of traditional chiefs, water access is instead impacted by conflicts over management responsibility for water resources. Drawing on theories of political ecology and governmentality to extend recent scholarship on IWRM, this paper re-centers the political in water governance by situating local tensions within national policies and development agendas and demonstrating how scarcity is hydro-social.

Highlights

A recent report by the Lesotho Global Water Partnership affirmed the country’s commitment to the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goal to provide clean, accessible water [1].To achieve this, Lesotho will recommit to the existing hydro-policy and more fully embrace IntegratedWater Resource Management (IWRM, or Integrated Catchment Management (ICM)), an approach and philosophy of water resource management that engages myriad stakeholders in the provision of water.Lesotho is one of the few countries to export water
Beginning with the understanding that the state can only exist in relation to the people governed, we examine how this relationship changes in the face of international calls for smaller, less intrusive governments in resource management
In thinking of how water flows from Lesotho into South Africa and how water flows within communities, we begin with the understanding that such flows are both physical and cultural, both literal and figurative

Summary

Introduction

A recent report by the Lesotho Global Water Partnership affirmed the country’s commitment to the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goal to provide clean, accessible water [1].To achieve this, Lesotho will recommit to the existing hydro-policy and more fully embrace IntegratedWater Resource Management (IWRM, or Integrated Catchment Management (ICM)), an approach and philosophy of water resource management that engages myriad stakeholders in the provision of water.Lesotho is one of the few countries to export water. Water has been a major focus of Lesotho’s development agenda and over three-quarters of Basotho, or the people of Lesotho, have access to a safely managed water source [3]. The availability of groundwater resources and safely managed sources is uneven, and Basotho, in the lowlands, experience routine water insecurity [4]. According to dominant development discourse, water scarcity reflects geophysical limitations, lack of infrastructure or lack of government provision [5]. While such reasoning situates scarcity within its social context, i.e. through the failure of the government to provide water, scarcity is only fully explained through an examination

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