Fragmentation in Urban Water Governance

Abstract

Urban water governance has moved from the modality of large statutory agencies with comprehensive legislative functions to source, supply, manage, and retail water to more fragmented patterns of public and private entities engaged in urban water management. The water law underpinning such systems has changed in focus and content. The changed terrain of urban water law reveals the spectrum of formal legal measures and informal normative modes that constitute the “rules,” the institutions, the networks, and the actors that govern water in urban settings. Decentralised provision includes multinational corporations and local water businesses, while statutory agencies take on quasi-corporate form, and NGOs play an intermediary role. Against this backdrop, the chapter outlines water law models for urban water quality and distribution and transformations occurring in the institutional structures for water governance. It considers the role of legal and financial measures in entrenching institutional agency forms. It explores particular challenges for cities of the Global South and the response of transnational human rights and social equity norms to globalisation and urbanisation trends. Urban water governance must contend with pressures, such as climate change impacts, and legal movements, such as the “right to water.” Finally, it examines the scope for a dynamic socio-ecological approach to urban water governance.