Abstract
AbstractThis chapter explores conflict and cooperation around water infrastructure in relation to contestations over water and land in peri-urban Khulna, Bangladesh. It analyses how these contestations, together with the effects of climate change and urbanization, contribute to water insecurity. These dynamics are explored by viewing the peri-urban space as a hydro-social system where physical infrastructure (a sluice gate), hydrological processes and various actors interact. Through participatory appraisal, stakeholder analysis and social power mapping, we analyse the emergence, manifestations and implications of conflicts, and how power relations influence the conflict dynamics. The chapter further presents the process and outcome of participatory actions for capacity-building of communities to facilitate their empowerment by elevating their knowledge level and negotiating capabilities toward securing water and resolving conflicts. We argue that conflicts and water insecurities of peri-urban communities largely emerge from the absence of their participation in the planning and management of water infrastructure, and their limited capacity to resist changes in the control of water and agricultural land. The chapter concludes that peri-urban communities lack the power and agency to mitigate the impacts of urbanization and climate change, while neither urban nor rural planning processes formally recognize the peri-urban and its specific water security problems and needs. This policy gap leads to increasingly complex conflicts and water insecurities. Success and sustainability of alternative livelihood choices and collective action by marginalized communities depend much on continued advocacy, cooperation among and between communities and government agencies, commitment of a trusted neutral actor, and mutual understanding and respect for each other’s positions.
Highlights
Management of freshwater, wastewater, storm runoff and river salinity has played a central role in the emergence and evolution of conflict and cooperation in the urban and peri-urban areas of Khulna
In this chapter we explore the different forms of conflicts and cooperation, how and why they have changed over time, and how the communities have mobilized to deal with these conflicts
While the sluice gate primarily serves the urban area for wastewater and storm water management, the downstream peri-urban concerns of water quality, water availability and water logging are ignored in gate operation
Summary
Management of freshwater, wastewater, storm runoff and river salinity has played a central role in the emergence and evolution of conflict and cooperation in the urban and peri-urban areas of Khulna This water management largely depends on how and to what purpose the water infrastructure, in this case sluice gates, have been designed and are operated and maintained, and to what extent these meet the needs and priorities of communities and other stakeholders. Conflicts started to emerge around the sluice gate as its control was taken over covertly by powerful urban elites together with local powerful groups, to ensure saline water availability in their shrimp farms Such gate operation deprived the peri-urban population of freshwater needed for subsistence agriculture and freshwater fisheries. Similar interdisciplinary approaches to the interlinked social and hydrological processes in relation to negotiations, dialogues and conflict mitigation can be found in the literature (Boelens et al, 2016; Massuel et al, 2018, 2019; Wesselink et al, 2017)
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