Paradigm Lost: On the Value of Lost Causes in Transforming Cities and Water Systems’ Development Pathways

In the last decades, thousands of socio-environmental conflicts have spawned, especially at the sub-national scale. Among these, water conflicts are especially complex and multifaceted, since most are driven by a combination of socio-economic dynamics that increase pressure on natural resources, more extreme hydro-climatic trends, outdated or biased legal frameworks, large power asymmetries between actors, and the dominance of sociotechnical paradigms that reduce the decision space of water policies. Although water conflicts often receive a lot of attention, public scrutiny, and media exposure, this has not necessarily transcended into improving our understanding of their relation to the coupled human-water systems in which they are embedded, and even less of their transformative potential to open the decision space on the development pathways of cities and water systems. Furthermore, if a conflict drags on, it creates the notion of conflict impasse, of a static nature and confined to a narrowed space. This can further obstruct our understanding of what the conflict is really about, what are its root causes, what are the motivations of key actors, how do actors mobilize different capitals to achieve their goals and coalesce in networks, and what are the best ways to move forward and find transformative alternatives. This PhD thesis aims to reveal that water conflicts are highly dynamic and the result of a complex web of events influenced by social and natural long-term dynamics, knowledge controversies, and actors and network dynamics that widen the perception of the boundaries of water conflicts. To map out and navigate these turbulent waters of water conflicts, new transdisciplinary methods and action research are necessary. The realization that conflicts are complex and dynamic, and that transdisciplinary and action methods are needed to transform them has many implications. First, given the longterm dynamics that determine a conflict, it is necessary to analyze its history beyond the “official” start of the conflict, even before the involvement of the main actors in the conflict. Therefore, a water conflict involves much more than only just a dispute between parties, but also wider and more transcendent discussions of sustainability of cities and water systems and fairness of socio-political systems. Second, these long-term dynamics are both social and natural, thus, water conflicts need to be analyzed in an interdisciplinary manner to better deal with controversies composed of different kinds of uncertainties and ambiguity in the coupled human-water systems. The development of new hybrid disciplines like socio-hydrology and hydrosocial studies are a step forward, but they keep being dominated by either a natural sciences or social sciences epistemology. Third, further analyzing the conflict in a transdisciplinary and longitudinal manner, by involving actors in knowledge co-production, can improve our understanding of knowledge controversies, which in turn increases the reflectivity of the role of science and scientists in these conflicts.Water Resource

Unraveling intractable water conflicts: The entanglement of science and politics in decision-making on large hydraulic infrastructure

The development of large infrastructure to address the water challenges of cities around the world can be a financial and social burden for many cities because of the hidden costs these works entail and social conflicts they often trigger. When conflicts erupt, science is often expected to play a key role in informing policymakers and social actors to clarify controversies surrounding policy responses to water scarcity. However, managing conflicts is a sociopolitical process, and often quantitative models are used as an attempt to depoliticize such processes, conveying the idea that optimal solutions can be objectively identified despite the many perspectives and interests at play. This raises the question as to whether science depoliticizes water conflicts or whether instead conflicts politicize science-policy processes. We use the Zapotillo dam and water transfer project in Mexico to analyze the role of science-policy processes in water conflicts. The Zapotillo project aims at augmenting urban water supply to Guadalajara and León, two large cities in western Mexico, but a social and legal conflict has stalled the project until today. To analyze the conflict and how stakeholders make sense of it, we interviewed the most relevant actors and studied the negotiations between different interest groups through participant observation. To examine the role of science-policy processes in the conflict, we mobilized concepts of epistemic uncertainty and ambiguity and analyzed the design and use of water resources models produced by key actors aiming to resolve the conflict. While the use of models is a proven method to construct future scenarios and test different strategies, the parameterization of scenarios and their results are influenced by the knowledge and/or interests of actors behind the model. We found that in the Zapotillo case, scenarios reflected the interests and strategies of actors on one side of the conflict, resulting in increased distrust of the opposing actors. We conclude that the dilemma of achieving urban water security through investing in either large infrastructure (supply augmentation) or alternative strategies (demand-side management) cannot be resolved if some key interested parties have not been involved in the scientific processes framing the problem and solution space.Water Resource

Can grassroots movements in water conflicts drive socio-technical transitions in water management systems?

Water conflicts open windows of opportunity for grassroots movements to transform water systems. However, academic fields studying social movements in socio-environmental conflicts are not well equipped to deal with complexity, non-linear dynamics, and emergent properties. Therefore, these fields rarely engage with long-term complex social processes and dynamics leading to systemic socio-technical changes. Researching water conflicts driven by grassroots movements, we ask whether and how the latter can influence a socio-technical transition of a water management regime. Through an emblematic water conflict in Mexico, we analyse the grassroots movement's trajectory since the conflict´s inception by following the dynamic process of developing agency. Our findings show that throughout the conflict, the grassroots movement accumulated and mobilized diverse capitals to initiate water management strategies and practices that catalysed change in the water management regime by stalling the implementation of large infrastructures. Eventually, this led to the inception of a sustainable and just transition.Water Resource

The limits to large-scale supply augmentation: exploring the crossroads of conflicting urban water system development pathways

Managers of urban water systems constantly make decisions to guarantee water services by overcoming problems related to supply–demand imbalances. A preferred strategy has been supply augmentation through hydraulic infrastructure development. However, despite considerable investments, many systems seem to be trapped in lacklustre development pathways making some problems seem like an enduring, almost stubborn, characteristic of the systems: overexploitation and pollution of water sources, distribution networks overwhelmed by leakages and non-revenue water, and unequal water insecurity. Because of these strategies and persistent problems, water conflicts have emerged, whereby social actors oppose these strategies and propose alternative technologies and strategies. This can create development pathway crossroads of the urban water system, defined as a critical point whereby actors in conflict will either reinforce the current business-as-usual pathway based on large supply augmentation or implement alternative solutions for the urban water system. To study this development pathway crossroads, we selected the Zapotillo conflict in Mexico where a large supply augmentation project for two cities experiencing water shortages is at stake. The paper concludes that urban water systems that are engaged in a trajectory characterized by supply-side strategies may experience a temporal relief but neglect equally pressing issues that stymie the human right to water in the medium and long run. However, there is not a straightforward, self-evident development pathway to choose from, only a range of multiple alternatives with multiple trade-offs that need to be thoroughly discussed and negotiated between the stakeholders. We argue that this development pathway crossroads can cross-fertilize contrasting disciplines such as socio-hydrology and critical studies on water because both can complement technical and socio-political analyses to make their knowledge actionable and relevant.Water Resource