Abstract
Over the last two decades, politics of scale and rescaling processes in relation to water have been debated by several scholars, especially by geographers and political ecologists, who emphasized their socio-political nature and their interactions with the environment. By contributing to this debate, this paper analyses rescaling processes in water governance in relation to the implementation politics of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in Uzbekistan. IWRM and related initiatives were promoted worldwide, especially in the “Global South”. These initiatives proposed the shift in water governance from administrative to hydrographic, or river basin, units. Empirically, the analysis focuses on the Middle Zeravshan valley in Uzbekistan, where IWRM was promoted as a part of post-Soviet water reforms. The analysis demonstrates that rescaling water governance towards IWRM and hydrographic units is inherently political. The evidence shows that the process is deeply interlinked with interests and power of Uzbek hydraulic bureaucracies at multiple scales. Firstly, the IWRM sponsored establishment of hydrographic units coincided with a recentralization of water management, supported by national hydraulic bureaucracies. Secondly, the design of the hydrographic unit and related boundaries in the Middle Zeravshan valley was driven by controversial multi-scalar power dynamics and relations between national and province levels, which emphasized the complexity and the multi-scalar nature of rescaling processes rooted in Post-Soviet political transformations.
Highlights
Over the last two decades, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) has achieved the status of the global water paradigm
We discussed politics of scale and water governance rescaling processes oriented towards Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in Uzbekistan
In conflict with the IWRM depoliticized rationale, that redrawing unit and boundaries for water governance is not a merely technical and administrative process, but results in complex and conflicting multi-scalar rescaling processes
Summary
Over the last two decades, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) has achieved the status of the global water paradigm. It aims to discuss the social and spatial assumptions that guide the formulation of IWRM pillars, and in particular the shift from administrative to hydrographic water governance It aims to contribute and further debates on politics of scale and rescaling processes in water governance through the focus on IWRM implementation processes and the adoption of a multi-scalar qualitative approach in a specific case study. We explore these processes in the context of the Central Asian region, and in Uzbekistan. Our analysis of the Uzbek context is followed by a discussion and conclusions on IWRM and water governance rescaling processes
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