Abstract
This paper considers how to achieve equitable water governance and the flow-on effects it has in terms of supporting sustainable development, drawing on case studies from the international climate change adaptation and governance project (CADWAGO). Water governance, like many other global issues, is becoming increasingly intractable (wicked) with climate change and is, by the international community, being linked to instances of threats to human security, the war in the Sudanese Darfur and more recently the acts of terrorism perpetuated by ISIS. In this paper, we ask the question: how can situations characterized by water controversy (exacerbated by the uncertainties posed by climate change) be reconciled? The main argument is based on a critique of the way the water security discourse appropriates expert (normal) claims about human-biophysical relationships. When water challenges become increasingly securitized by the climate change discourse it becomes permissible to enact processes that legitimately transgress normative positions through post-normal actions. In contrast, the water equity discourse offers an alternative reading of wicked and post-normal water governance situations. We contend that by infusing norm critical considerations into the process of securitization, new sub-national constellations of agents will be empowered to enact changes; thereby bypassing vicious cycles of power brokering that characterize contemporary processes intended to address controversies.
Highlights
The Advent of the Water Security NarrativeEconomic disparities and deeply entrenched post-colonial power differentials have effectively sheltered the global North from the impact of so-called global challenges
This paper considers how the inequities that are often associated with actions directed at climate change and water governance can be reconciled
There is a logical convergence between the water and climate change discourses owing to the intrinsic biophysical links between climate and the water cycles
Summary
Economic disparities and deeply entrenched post-colonial power differentials have effectively sheltered the global North from the impact of so-called global challenges. This repackaged narrative was no longer communicated as a future warning but rather as a contemporaneous state of emergency, a systemically interconnected trilogy of self-reinforcing global challenges, affecting the development agendas of the global North and South In all likelihood, it was the recasting of climate change mitigation as an act to safeguard human security that helped push COP 21, the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, over the finishing line, bringing about political consensus; a universal agreement between 196 nations to curb global warming at 1.5 ◦ C above pre-industrial levels. While COP 21 was heralded as a major break-through and offered some limited wins for stakeholders in the global South, it did not radically shift the unequal terrain or relinquish authority from main power-holders such as the US, China, EU and India [6]
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