Olivier Graefe

Assessing the sustainability of water governance systems: the sustainability wheel

We present and test a conceptual and methodological approach for interdisciplinary sustainability assessments of water governance systems based on what we call the sustainability wheel. The approach combines transparent identification of sustainability principles, their regional contextualization through sub-principles (indicators), and the scoring of these indicators through deliberative dialogue within an interdisciplinary team of researchers, taking into account their various qualitative and quantitative research results. The approach was applied to a sustainability assessment of a complex water governance system in the Swiss Alps. We conclude that the applied approach is advantageous for structuring complex and heterogeneous knowledge, gaining a holistic and comprehensive perspective on water sustainability, and communicating this perspective to stakeholders.

Competition and cooperation: can South African business create synergies from BRIC+S in Africa?

The relationship of cooperation and competition between South African private businesses and Asian companies has become more complex in the last 20 years. With South Africa joining what became BRICS in early 2011, it now represents the African continent with its growing market potential. However, South African medium and large size companies (SA MLCs) seem to perceive the positioning of BRIC businesses rather as a challenge than as a window of opportunity. This article identifies the need for a deeper understanding of the adaptive capacity and practices of South African private companies which play a significant role for job creation in South Africa. What we hereby present is in fact a first foray into companies’ pragmatic engagements for achieving relative stability in increasing competitive markets. This is consequent of empirical research in its initial stages. The theoretical framework applied picks up recent debates revolving around the ‘practice turn.’ First evidence from business corroborates an alternative field-specific approach referring to Fligstein’s relational sociology of markets and Thévenot’s concept of pragmatic regimes of justification.

Surviving in the BRICS: the struggle of South African business in coping with new partners and investors

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to improve our understanding of how South African economic actors react to the gradual entry of non-South African BRICS firms in their established business areas. Throughout the twentieth century, South Africa’s trade and investment activities were conducted overwhelmingly with Western countries. However, the end of apartheid coincided with significant shifts as new players had a wider and growing presence. South Africa entering the BRICS alliance is symbolic of the change. Ease of entry into the South African economy has increased greatly. South African businesses in key subsectors in the mining and capital equipment industry have had to adapt to new players, and find space in new structures, value chains and initiatives. This paper presents the results of this research activity from the perspective of the South African political economy. Practice-oriented research investigated how six local companies forge new partnerships and how well South African firms adapt and cope with an altered and often unstable environment. It assumed that entrepreneurial activity is not autonomous but takes place within a larger organisational framework. Entrepreneurial activity facilitates the effective exploitation of particular niches and relationships with service providers.

Integrated water resources management as a new approach to water security

Access to safe water is a worldwide problem facing three quarters of a billion people every day. The problem of access to water is not primarily due to an overall scarcity of water, but rather the unequal geographical and seasonal distribution of the water resources. The key issue at stake here is, how to make water available. The new approach presented by international institutions for improving water access is Integrated Water Resource Management. This chapter questions this new approach and highlights the depoliticizing implications.

Montanaqua: tackling water stress in the alps: water management options in the crans-montana-sierre region (valais)

MontanAqua: Tackling Water Stress in the Alps. Water Management Options in the Crans-Montana-Sierre Region (Valais) GAIA 25/3(2016): 191–193 |

Water Management Options Under Climate Change in the Swiss Alps

The touristic region of Sierre–Crans-Montana–Plaine Morte is located in one of the driest valleys of Switzerland. In the MontanAqua project, researchers analysed how climate change and socio-economic changes are likely to affect water availability and water use in the region by 2050, based on four development scenarios. The analyses generated five key governance messages for sustainable water management. Water Management Options Under Climate Change in the Swiss Alps

What Is Water? The History of a Modern Abstraction

the experiences of everyday people. The great paradox is the construction of Appalachia as a national sacrifice zone, a place where economy and citizenship can only be gained by destroying environment and locality. Environmental justice provides a space for stories of community and landscape. It can reach across differences to bring about cultural understanding and self-acceptance which can lead to more sustainable livelihoods. The issues Scott confronts in Appalachia connect to broader questions about environmental politics, economic crisis, and national culture within the USA. Scott creates lush and detailed explanations of Appalachian place and culture. However, her argument could be strengthened by more nuanced discussion of American ‘national’ culture. She also needs to show more in her gendered discussions of unions, entitlements, and poverty illustrating a complex and multicultural vision of US society as a solution, particularly since she looks toward environmental justice as a solution. Scott’s book fits within a larger literature that looks at environment and society as coconstructions producing multiple, contested meanings. The book takes on linkages between environment, democracy, and capitalism through the creation of a national sacrifice zone and its concomitant ‘jobs versus environment’ debate. Narratives of corporations are heard loudest of all, leading to a willing embrace of a modernization that destroys the local in order to claim American status. Previous work on this theme, such as Hennen’s The Americanization of West Virginia (1996), has not addressed the gender and sustainability impacts of these issues. In this sense, the book does something exceptionally original; it uses gender to shed light on the highly technical topic of mining. Scott provides a similar, but more theoretical, examination of gender in Appalachian place than Weinbaum’s (2004) work on plant closings in the face of corporate globalization. While several studies use gender to understand Appalachia itself (e.g., Williamson 1995) and others use Appalachian gender as a lens to explore other issues, like trauma in coal mining communities (e.g., Giesen 1995), Scott brings these themes together using gender to explore Appalachian themes that resonate with issues beyond the region.