Not Applicable

Water conflicts and negotiations between riparian states in the Nile Basin have mostly focused on legal, political, technical, and hydrological aspects of the river and dam construction. The contemporary cultural, emotional, and symbolic dimensions of the river and its dams have been largely overlooked. Therefore, this article explores how the Nile is portrayed, embedded, and perceived in Ethiopian popular culture, particularly popular songs. The Abbay, as the Nile is called in Ethiopia, is an integral part of the country’s identity, culture, history and politics. The river is at the heart of Ethiopian public space and popular songs, which both influence and are shaped by public opinion and official government discourses. The narratives communi- cated through these popular songs dramatically changed after construction began for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile in 2011. While most songs had previously lamented and cursed the river’s indifference to Ethiopians’ strife, newer narratives glorify and celebrate the river and the GERD. This study used discourse analysis to illustrate how popular songs shape public opinion about Abbay and mobilize popular support for the construction of the GERD. The article concludes with broader implications for water diplomacy and ongoing GERD negotiations.

A large sandy peninsula and beach were realized in Dutch coastal waters in the Sand Engine pilot project. In addition to the benefits for flood protection, the Sand Engine generates multiple other societal values. It provides a new type of landscape of uncommon size along the Holland coast where nature, culture, history and the future can come together. In this paper we discuss the added value of the Sand Engine for culture and the arts, its iconic value, and the development of knowledge in diverse sciences most notably morphology, archeology and paleontology, as well as its educational function. Then we explore how different governance modes can influence how the added value is generated and what type of societal value arises. We distinguish four different governance modes related to the level of control exercised and the level of autonomous societal development allowed by project initiators and managers: directive, co-creational, facilitatory and observational. Different modes can co-exist and may change over time. For the Sand Engine we find that the knowledge development was highly directed, archeology and paleontology were facilitated, while an observational mode was employed towards arts and culture. This leads to the inference that when the physical and societal space is created, societal value-added initiatives emerge. However, such emergence depends on the societal and institutional context as this can act to constrain or enable the type of societal value generated and the extent to which it is realized. Finally, we suggest that applying a more pro-active governance mode to the Sand Engine even at this stage could lead to more diverse and inclusive societal value generation.

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified periurban development as one of the major drivers of climate risk on vulnerable communities. At the same time, ‘grand challenges’ such as the Covid pandemic and urban–rural contestations create a new imperative for renewed attention to issues of periurban water insecurity by drawing attention to living conditions in periurban spaces where people live in crowded and often informal settlements with inadequate access to safe water. Understanding periurban water insecurity requires paying attention to the dynamic processes of change characterising periurban spaces that make access to water in periurban spaces uncertain and fluctuating. Rather than focus on quantitative indicators of periurban water insecurity or assume that reclassification of jurisdiction status will improve periurban water security, action research with robust partnerships across academia, government and civil society organisations should inform approaches to improve water governance in periurban spaces.

The collaborative model for rural water supply (RWS), introduced at the behest of international funders in the 1990s, experienced only partial success owing to the low accept- ability of public managers and the slow process of community development (CD). This article goes into the empirical findings of a study that is based on in-depth interviews with 20 staff and line public managers of the four RWS in different regions as well as on content analysis of policy documents and funding organizations’ reports. The results indicate that appropriate CD, reforms in internal organization arrangements, and understanding of context-specific social, economic, and political diversity remain necessary in collaborative compliance with institutions for RWS sustainability. The study aims at making a contribution to the theory of collaborative governance and the practice of collaborative implementation in developing countries.

This paper provides a historical perspective on the evolution of water governance in the Republic of Ireland where long-term shifts in agricultural activities, demographic characteristics, water and debates over drinking water supply charges have influenced water resources governance and the integration of management practices. Drawing on threads from the past, the paper first describes how water governance from the early 1950s focused on rural access to water, pollution control and monitoring. With the advent of the Water Framework Directive in 2003, the crux of policy and management practices changed, with 81% of present policies mirroring Integrated Water Resource Management principles. However, issues such as the implementation of drinking water supply water charges and equitable access to water resources remain controversial. Looking to the future, the effects of climate change and land use planning, as well as demographic changes and international legislation are among those factors influencing water policy and management in the Republic of Ireland. Structured stakeholder engagement and further research directed at improving water quality is advocated to promote a sustainable and equitable water future.

This article examines the final years of colonialism and the establishment of independent government in East Africa, particularly Uganda. It finds that the British broke from the Nile Wa- ters Agreement by not only ceasing to recognize it but by also circumventing the process for ensuring treaty compliance. They did so on behalf of foreign investors seeking irrigation water. Furthermore, this article shows why the colonial government in Uganda integrated the proposal to flood Lake Albert – which would displace many Ugandans – into discussions about the treaty. The government based this decision on Cold War politics, the personal biases of its advisers and technocratic designs for resettling the region. To contextualize the lack of scholarly analysis re- garding these issues, this article examines how former colonial officials became diplomats, then scholars, who downplayed their treaty breakage and their roles supporting the proposal to flood Lake Albert. Providing further context for the lack of analysis regarding Uganda, it shows how the independent Ugandan government navigated the ambiguous situation that the British left. It also finds that scholars have reproduced the Lake Albert proposal without considering its local signifi- cance. I conclude that although the colonial breakage from the Nile Waters Agreement left the in- dependent governments with no relationship to it, the present role of the Ugandan government in Nile governance is part of a resurgence of foreign investments in East Africa. Outsider control of Lake Victoria is becoming entrenched even as the influence of the Nile Waters Agreement wanes.

The COVID-19 crisis has caused a major reshuffle in the core of water governance principles, including food security, water productivity, self-sufficiency and water allocation to high-value us- ers. The pandemic, as a sudden external driver, impacted such principles; this impact was noticed through the effects of the lockdown on exports of crops and supplies, as well as the reduced labour workforce. This article introduces a framework to analyse the effects of the pandemic on the water sector since traditional indicators and data do not capture the initial shock of the first wave of the pandemic. The framework is operationalized and applied to study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Egyptian water sector and on how it shapes water governance. The article analyses those changes in the urban water sector and in the agricultural sector. It analyses the effects it has on the urban water system, as the sector moves towards digitalization and safe- guarding urban water supplies. In the agricultural sector, Egypt’s position on self-sufficiency and food security policy changes in food imports and exports is analysed. Analysing the two sectors will allow us to see how COVID-19 could have changed the present and translated it into possible pathways for future water governance in Egypt. Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis has created op- portunities for sustainable water governance in Egypt that can help deal with future crises. In ad- dition, there are slow, creeping effects of climate change that Egypt has experienced when Cairo experienced a severe urban flood. The article draws insights from the past on how COVID-19 has changed the present and translates them into future pathways for possible water governance in Egypt. Assessment of the reliability of the water sector undergoing crises or pandemic situations is crucial to facilitate decision-making so as to evolve action plans that can maintain the water availability for the people and safeguard essential services.

We proudly relaunch the International Journal of Water Governance. Free to read, free to publish in and peer reviewed as ever, it is now also open to practitioner contributions and commentaries. We (non-exhaustively) lay out some of our key water governance concerns and interests in the interrelationships between nature, society and technology that produce water governance, such as emerging ideas and imaginaries, ‘institutional spaghetti’, representation, recognition and (re)distribution as well as sociotechnical systems. We invite a range of potential approaches but would encourage power-sensitivity in the analysis. Your contributions are most welcome, whether insightful overviews or groundbreaking ideas, no matter how contrarian, as long as they are well argued and based in fact!

Land and water acquisitions exacerbate the complexity of the water allocation challenges in the Nile region and consequently have contributed to the growing tensions along the Nile River. Smallholders are especially negatively affected by the increase in water use by foreign investors, the loss of access to the commons, and disposition of ownership. This policy brief is a result of a scenario workshop organized in early 2020 in Leiden, the Netherlands, during which some 30 young scientists from a variety of disciplines joined forces to develop four plausible Nile-futures in 2050. The exercise revealed new challenges and potential knowledge gaps in four areas of policy-based research: local innovation and technology, institutional capacity, gover- nance, and investment regulation. Most urgent was the recommendation to have a unified basin- wide university, which would support basin-wide legislation to promote sustainable farming and reduce the negative impacts of land and water acquisitions.