Governing Water Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building

1. Governing WaterContentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building Dr. Ken Conca University of Maryland kconca@gvpt.umd.edu

3. Protesters strip at a global meetThe Hague, Netherlands Two naked protesters confront Egyptian water resources minister during his speech at the Second Water Forum. (AP) The opening session of an international conference on global water problems was disrupted on Friday when protesters ripped off their clothes to protest a Spanish dam project.

4. Egyptian water minister Mahmoud Abu Zeid looked on in silence as a man and woman disrobed in front of the speakers’ podium to reveal the name of the controversial dam painted on their backs and buttocks.Other activists did not strip, but scaled the walls of the conference hall and hung from the ceiling to protest what they claimed was the conference’s intention to sidestep crucial environmental issues like the Itoiz dam project in northern Spain’s Navarra province.Dutch Crown Prince Willem Alexander stepped to the podium and asked for restraint from the protesters. The protest overshadowed the start of the five-day, UN-sponsored Second World Water Forum, which will discuss new ways to ease water shortages and improve environmental and sanitary conditions worldwide.The police had to use a bolt-cutter to remove one protester who chained herself to a chair.(AP)

6. Transnational contentious environmental politics Critical ecosystem Rivers, lakes, forests, grasslands, soils, wetlands, deserts, coastal zones, … Scarce commodity with market value Anchor of local livelihoods and cultural systems

7. The foundations of successful interstate environmental diplomacy • Consensual/shared knowledge framework • Clear delineation between what is “domestic” and what is “international” • Domain in which states can legitimately exercise authority

8. Network-based forms of institutional development • Expert networks for “Integrated Water Resources Management” • “Watershed democracy”/anti-dams movement • Water neoliberalism and its discontents

9. Brazil South Africa

10. Common content: OWNERSHIP: water as national resource THE STATE: from provider of public goods to guardian of public trust MANAGEMENT: river basin as primary unit; basin-level management & planning processes WATER RIGHTS: end of riparianism as water-rights basis

11. Common content: PRIORITIES: basic human needs prioritized over other uses ECONOMICS: toward full-cost pricing; “cobrança” schemes PARTICIPATION: ambitious participatory mechanisms for civil society, “stakeholders”

12. Key themes from the cases: • Sources of policy innovation: Informal linkages growing out of social conflict outstripping formal cooperative diplomacy • Transnational expert networks: tearing down the old versus building up the new

13. Key themes (cont’d): • Key role of courts in context of democratization • Domestic policy entrepreneurs exploit fashion trends in int’l policy circles • International debates on water as resources that tip the balance of domestic struggles—both materially and rhetorically

14. Concluding observations • Making progress on contentious transnational socio-environmental controversies is THE challenge of global environmental governance • We are seeing not necessarily, resolution but institutionalization, of conflicts—and thus conflict as a source of institution building • Progress means nurturing process mechanisms: stakeholder dialogues, conflict resolution, cooperative knowledge building