Peter Mollinga

'Follow the Innovation‘ - a Joint Experimentation & Learning Approach to Transdisciplinary Innovation Research

In 2008, the research project on Sustainable Management of Land and Water Resources in Khorezm/Uzbekistan at the Center for Development Research, Germany initiated a participatory approach to innovation development and diffusion with local stakeholders. Selected agricultural innovations, developed by the project and identified as ‘plausible promises’, are since then tested and modified accordingly by teams of researchers, local farmers and water users. This paper discusses the challenges faced in this process of joint experimentation and learning between researchers and local stakeholders whose behaviours, attitudes and actions are heavily shaped by the local context, academic discipline and hierarchical culture of knowledge governance.

Modules for modernisation. Colonial irrigation in India and the technological dimension of agrarian change

‘Water control’ is central to the political economy of water distribution in large‐scale irrigation in India. The changes in water distribution, irrigation technology, and agrarian development ‐through the introduction of the ‘block system’, technical devices called ‘modules’ and volumetric water pricing ‐ in the Nira Left Bank Canal (Bombay Presidency) in the period 1900–40, are discussed to show the relationship of the three dimensions of water control: technical, managerial and socio‐political. This analysis points to the crucial, but contradictory role of the state in triggering processes of agricultural modernisation through intervention in water management. The debate on the ‘success’ of the block system continues to the present day, but little progress has been made in designing solutions for inequality in water distribution. The article suggests that liberalisation policies create political and institutional space for changing accountability relations, and agricultural price regimes relevant to wa...

Water and politics: levels, rational choice and South Indian canal irrigation

Abstract The first part of the paper gives an overview of the “water and politics” literature, by distinguishing three levels: (1) official state and inter-state politics regarding water (or hydropolitics), (2) the politics of water resources policy (policy formulation and implementation as politically contested terrain), and (3) the everyday politics of water use (the day-to-day contestation of water resource use). The paper does not discuss the emerging level of the global politics of water. The second part of the paper discusses the dominance of the “new institutionalism” paradigm in debates on water resources management and politics. The appeal of the paradigm, despite the existence of fundamental critiques is analysed. Limitations of “new institutionalism” are located in limited concepts of human agency, the desire to universalise, absence of the concept of social power, and the problem of commensuration. Its appeal for policy makers lies in its suitability for designing standardised policy prescriptions, and its exclusion, or rephrasing, of the issues of power and politics. In the third part of the paper these considerations are illustrated through the discussion of a case: the Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal irrigation system in South India. In the fourth concluding section it is argued that there is not just a multitude of levels and diversity in approaches, but that there is a connection between “politics and method.” Research on water and politics might benefit from more explicit engagement with the question from which political standpoint that research is undertaken, and whether and how that is related to method, approach and policy recommendations. This is all the the more necessary in an era with strong calls for institutional reform, to address the challenges of an increasingly problematic water future.

Transdisciplinary innovation research in Uzbekistan – one year of ‘Follow-the-Innovation’

In 2008, a German-funded interdisciplinary research project in Khorezm province, Uzbekistan, initiated a participatory approach to innovation development and diffusion with local stakeholders. Selected agricultural innovations, developed by the project and identified as ‘plausible promises’, have since then been tested and modified accordingly by teams of researchers, local farmers and water users. This paper discusses the challenges faced in this process of joint experimentation and learning between researchers and local stakeholders whose behaviours, attitudes and actions are heavily shaped by the local context, academic discipline and hierarchical culture of knowledge governance.

Water Policy – Water Politics

The contribution maps the ‘politics of water’ as a field of research. Water control is understood as politically contested resource use. Contestation is mapped along two axes: (1) different levels or domains of water politics; (2) issue-networks encompassing processes of contestation within or across levels and domains. The four domains are: the everyday politics of water control, the politics of national water policy, inter-state hydropolitics, and the global politics of water. These have different space and time scales, are populated by different configurations of main actors, have different types of issues as their subject matter, involve different modes of contestation and take place within different sets of institutional arrangements. Some of the most important questions in water policy and water politics involve the interlinkages across domains, around certain issues. Among the plethora of issue-networks of concrete water politics policy, the chapter focuses on two main ‘sticking points’ in present-day water policy reform processes. (1) The internalization of ‘new concerns’, notably environment and human development, into the mainstream water sector organizations’ professional practice, and (2) the transformation of state-centered water resources policy processes into society-centered policy processes. The chapter provides a critique of the dominant social engineering approaches to institutional transformation, and argues that unless a self-consciously political strategic action approach to institutional transformation is taken, the deadlock in water sector reform may continue for some time.

Lost in transition? The introduction of water users associations in Uzbekistan

A “policy as process” perspective is adopted to analyze the early period of water users associations (WUAs) in Uzbekistan (2000–2006). The article is based on extensive fieldwork (in 2005–2006) and analysis of policy and other relevant documents. It is shown that WUAs have a role and logic beyond water management and are used by the state as instruments with which to monitor and regulate “state-ordered” agricultural production. Through a state-centric policy process with room for local experimentation, the WUA was fit into the socio-political landscape of continued state control and the increased role of individualized risks and benefits.

Water Supply or ‘Beautiful Latrines’? Microcredit for Rural Water Supply and Sanitation in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam.

Around half of the Mekong Delta’s rural population lacks year-round access to clean water. In combination with inadequate hygiene and poor sanitation this creates a high risk of diseases. Microcredit schemes are a popular element in addressing such problems on the global policy level. The present paper analyses the contradictory results of such a microcredit programme for rural water supply and sanitation in the context of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, through a qualitative study primarily based on semi-structured interviews in rural communes of Can Tho City. We come to the conclusion that the programme has a positive effect regarding the safer disposal of human excreta as well as surface water quality, but a marginal impact on poverty reduction as it only reaches better-off households already having access to clean water. The paper shows how the outcome of rural water supply and sanitation policies are strongly infl uenced by the local ecological, technological, and social settings, in particular by stakeholders’ interests. The authors challenge the assumption that water supply and sanitation should be integrated into the same policy in all circumstances.

Politics of Agricultural Water Management in Khorezm, Uzbekistan

On the basis of intensive fieldwork in the period 2002–2006, which combined interviews with direct observations, the implementation of two policies in the field of agricultural water management in Uzbekistan is analysed: the reform of the water bureaucracy along basin boundaries and the establishment of Water Users Associations. It is shown that the Uzbek government used these policies creatively for addressing some pressing issues, while the inherent decentralisation objective was pushed to the far background. Both reforms are used to strengthen the state’s grip on agricultural production regulation. The latter is at the centre of day-to-day agricultural water management dynamics. It is shown that decentralisation policies originally developed in society-centric policy processes cannot be easily applied in countries with state-centric politics such as Uzbekistan.

Towards systematic comparative water and health research

The cases in this issue cover a range of water and health challenges in various socio-political and geographical contexts. Past attempts to bring more analytical rigor to the field of comparative water and health research or to integrate various methods systematically have not yet been very successful. Drawing from the collection of papers in this special issue, an approach for future systematic stepwise small-and-medium-N comparative water and health research is developed.

Secure rights and non-credibility: the paradoxical dynamics of canal irrigation in India

This paper contributes to the collection on institutional form versus function by looking at the opposite side of the conceptual equation: clear and formal property rights coupled to low credibility. Since colonial times the formal property rights of the means of agricultural production are clear in South Asian large-scale canal irrigation. However, legal entitlements to water are routinely violated, while canal irrigation exhibits a series of ‘performance problems’. Legally clearly and securely defined entitlements to water co-exist with unequal distribution in the Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal irrigation system in south India. Neither the formal institutions nor their insecurity or lack of clarity can explain the existing dynamics and functions of canal irrigation. This lack of analytical purchase derives both from the limitations of property-focused theory and from the inherent characteristics of canal irrigation. Critiques of reductionist approaches have provided a richer conceptual vocabulary, which emphasises the plurality of rights/entitlements as well as that of the causalities at work. Such critiques and the elaboration of alternative frameworks for analysis remain relevant as discourses and practices of ‘marketisation’ of water may be gaining relevance for canal irrigation (reform) in India.