From The Heavens to the Markets: Development, Nation, and the Mediation of Water in Northwest China

Over the past 20 years the relationship between peasants and water in the semi-arid Zuli Valley of Northwest China has been radically altered by a series of state-backed development projects. 20 years ago peasant grew primarily rain-fed subsistence crops and relied on centuries-old rainwater harvesting techniques for their domestic water supplies. Following a series of state-backed interventions, peasants today grow primarily cash crops and depend on state-backed projects for their domestic water supplies. These changes were brought about through development projects. In the Reform and Opening Period a series of spatial hierarchies has emerged--westernness, rurality, and poverty--that categorized certain regions of China as backwards and in need of modernization through state-backed development. The Zuli valley was categorized as backwards based on each of these criteria, and the solution to its poverty was believed to be solving the problem of water shortages. As a result, a series state actors aimed to change how peasants related to water by providing irrigation water, changing the crops that they grew, improving rainwater harvesting technology, and providing running water. This dissertation examines these changes from the perspective of the governance of the aleatory--the element of risk and chance. The aleatory is an important, yet underdeveloped, element of Foucault\u27s examination of governmentality. Each of the interventions made in human relationships with water in the Zuli Valley was designed to reduce the chances of or ameliorate the effects of potential water shortages. Yet, each of the programs ultimately shifted risk to other areas, particularly variations in market prices and the dependability of state water supplies

State Development and the Rescaling of Agricultural Hydrosocial Governance in Semi-Arid Northwest China

Over the past 20 years, agriculture in the semi-arid Zuli river valley in Northwest China has been transformed from subsistence to commercial production. Instead of spring wheat and millet, peasants now grow maize, potatoes, and cabbage for national markets. This transformation has been facilitated by a series of interventions that have rescaled agricultural hydrosocial relations in the valley. Many of these interventions, such as alternative cash crops, do not fall under what is traditionally considered water governance, but have altered peasants’ relationship with agricultural water nonetheless. This article (1) calls for a broadening of our understanding of scale in hydrosocial relations that gives more attention to the socioeconomic interactions that facilitate human relationships with water in the absence of the biophysical resource of water; (2) illustrates that state-backed rescaling of hydrosocial relations comprises contingent processes, which may or may not be planned; and (3) examines how water governance can mean examining what people do without water, as well as what they do with water. This article illustrates that a diverse set of state actors govern farmers’ relationships with agricultural water in often conflicting ways by rescaling both the biophysical resource of water, and socioeconomic institutions that affect agricultural water use

Grantocracy: Conservation grant-making and the territorialization of neoliberalism in Michigan\u27s Keweenaw Peninsula

This paper uses the concept of grantocracy as an analytic to understand a form of governance through grant-making by state actors as one aspect of the reregulation wrought by neoliberalization of the state. We explore this idea through a case study of conservation grant making in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan\u27s Upper Peninsula, a highly rural and remote forestry-dependent economy. Grantocracy requires the disaggregation and rescaling of the public good, as grants are provided to address specific problems and provide single-purpose solutions. We found that while grants were intended for single purposes, in practice the use of partnerships and matching funds espoused by these programs resulted in funding programs being recombined in often conflicting and unstable ways. Moreover, limited transparency in the grant-making process restricted opportunities for public input and has helped to elide the role of the state in land conservation, undermining democratic environmental governance. This further promotes a neoliberal ideology that government is the problem, never the solution. Many of these difficulties, we conclude, arise from reliance upon the territorial strategy of private property to achieve land conservation goals. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd

The Impact of Green Water Management Strategies on Household-Level Agricultural Water Productivity in a Semi-Arid Region: A Survey-based Assessment

This study evaluates the effect of policies that encourage farmers to shift to crops with higher water productivity (CWP) on the farm-level CWP of agricultural systems in a semi-arid region of western China. We combine survey results of farmers’ historical cropping decisions from a 2010 survey with estimates of CWP from agronomic experiments analogous to actual cultivation practices in the region to model CWP at the farm level and understand changes driven by shifting crops. Policies designed to replace subsistence agricultural systems with two cash crops; potatoes and maize; resulted in an increase in the CWP of semi-arid agricultural systems of approximately 30% between the years 1990–2010. This change was driven by shifting to crops that have a peak water demand that occurs in the portions of the growing season with the highest rainfall. The results of this article illustrate the potential of shifts in cropping patterns to increase the CWP of agricultural systems in semi-arid regions

Estimating Changes in the Green Water Productivity of Cropping Systems in Northern Shaanxi Province in China’s Loess Plateau

Water shortages limit agricultural production in the world’s arid and semi-arid regions. The Northern region of China’s Shaanxi Province, in the Loess Plateau, is a good example. Raising the water productivity of rainfed grain production in this region is essential to increase food production and reduce poverty, thereby improving food security. To support efforts to increase crop water productivity (CWP), we accounted for limitations of most existing studies (experimental studies of specific crops or hydrological modeling approaches) by using actual field data derived from statistical reports of cropping patterns. We estimated the CWPs of nine primary crops grown in four counties in Northern Shaanxi from 1994 to 2008 by combining statistics on the cultivated area and yields with detailed estimates of evapotranspiration based on daily meteorological data. We further calculated both the caloric CWP of water (CCWP) and the CWP of productive water (i.e., water used for transpiration). We found that regional CWP averaged 6.333 kg mm–1 ha–1, the CCWP was 17,683.81 cal mm–1 ha–1, the CWP of productive green water was 8.837 kg mm–1 ha–1, and the CCWP of productive green water was 24,769.07 cal mm–1 ha–1. Corn, sorghum, and buckwheat had the highest CWP, and although potatoes had the largest planted area and relatively high CWP, they had a low CCWP

Carbon inequality at the sub-national scale: A case study of provincial-level inequality in CO2 emissions in China 1997-2007

This study asks whether sub-national inequalities in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions mirror international patterns in carbon inequality using the case study of China. Several studies have examined global-level carbon inequality; however, such approaches have not been used on a sub-national scale. This study examines inter-provincial inequality in CO2 emissions within China using common measures of inequality (coefficient of variation, Gini Index, Theil Index) to analyze provincial-level data derived from the IPCC reference approach for the years 1997-2007. It decomposes CO2 emissions inequality into its inter-regional and intra-regional components. Patterns of per capita CO2 emissions inequality in China appear superficially similar to, though slightly lower than, per capita income inequality. However, decomposing these inequalities reveals different patterns. While inter-provincial income inequality is highly regional in character, inter-provincial CO2 emissions inequality is primarily intra-regional. While apparently similar, global patterns in CO2 emissions are not mirrored at the sub-national scale.China Climate change Inequality

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