Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building

by Ken Conca

Overview

Water is a key component of critical ecosystems, a marketable commodity, a foundation of local communities and cultures, and a powerful means of social control. It has become a source of contentious politics and social controversy on a global scale, and the management of water conflicts is one of the biggest challenges in the effort to achieve effective global environmental governance.

In Governing Water, Ken Conca examines political struggles to create a global framework for the governance of water. Threats to the world's rivers, watersheds, and critical freshwater ecosystems have resisted the establishment of effective global agreements through intergovernmental bargaining because the conditions for successful interstate cooperation—effective state authority, stable knowledge frameworks, and a territorialized understanding of nature—cannot be imposed upon water controversies. But while interstate water diplomacy has faltered, less formalized institutions—socially and politically embedded rules, roles, and practices—have emerged to help shape water governance locally and globally.

Conca examines the politics of these institutions, presenting a framework for understanding global environmental governance based on key institutional presumptions about territoriality, authority, and knowledge. He maps four distinct processes of institution building: formal international regimes for shared rivers; international networking among water experts and professionals; social movements opposing the construction of large dams; and the struggle surrounding transnational water "marketization." These cases illustrate the potential for alternative institutional forms in situations where traditional interstate regimes are ineffective.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262532730
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	09/30/2005
Series:	Global Environmental Accord: Strategies for Sustainability and Institutional Innovation
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	486
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ken Conca is Associate Professor of Government and Politics and Director of the Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda at the University of Maryland.

Table of Contents

	Series Foreword	ix
	Preface	xi
	Acknowledgments	xv
1	Managing the Global Environment or Protecting the Planet's Places? Institutional Forms of Global Environmental Governance	1
2	Toward a Social Theory of International Institutions	35
3	Pushing Rivers Around: The Cumulative Toll on the World's Watersheds and Freshwater Ecosystems	73
4	Swimming Upstream: In Search of a Global Regime for International Rivers (with Fengshi Wu and Joanne Neukirchen)	93
5	Expert Networks: The Elusive Quest for Integrated Water Resources Management	123
6	The Ecology of Human Rights: Anti-Dam Activism and Watershed Democracy	167
7	Invisible Hand, Visible Fist: The Transnational Politics of Water Marketization	215
8	Brazil: Innovation through Conflict	257
9	South Africa: "With Water We Will Wash Away the Past"	311
10	Institution Building as the Social Embedding of Political Struggle	373
	Notes	391
	References	425
	Index	459

What People are Saying About This

Anthony Turton

The hydropolitics literature is characterized by basin-level studies, usually from areas of conflict, mostly written by scholars from disciplines other than IR. It therefore comes as a breath of fresh air when an empirical study is done at a global level of scale, by an IR specialist. This work is of great significance to both academic and water resource manager alike, because it shows deep insight into a complex subject. This contribution by Ken Conca to the field of Environmental Security and Hydropolitics is substantial.

Paul Wapner

There is hardly a more critical issue today than ensuring just and sustainable access to water. Governing Water explains the challenges of safeguarding such access and charts the emergence of genuinely innovative forms of global water governance. Theoretically sound and impressively researched, it represents a major achievement in rethinking the prospects for global environmental protection in general.

Jan Aart Scholte

An excellent eye-opener. Conca's study of water produces a compelling critique of prevailing modes of global governance and a hopeful exploration of a nonterritorialist, nonstatist, nonfunctionalist social ecology.

Margaret Keck

This is an outstanding contribution to the study of international environmental politics and world politics more generally. In clear language and moving seamlessly between theory and cases, Conca takes us beyond regime theory to the guts of the messy struggles over power and meaning that shape practices, whose routinization may give rise to institutions. He does an admirable job of keeping domestic and international politics visible in the same lens. This is the best treatment I know of the increasingly important international politics of water.

Endorsement

There is hardly a more critical issue today than ensuring just and sustainable access to water. Governing Water explains the challenges of safeguarding such access and charts the emergence of genuinely innovative forms of global water governance. Theoretically sound and impressively researched, it represents a major achievement in rethinking the prospects for global environmental protection in general.

—Paul Wapner, School of International Service, American University

From the Publisher

An excellent eye-opener. Conca's study of water produces a compelling critique of prevailing modes of global governance and a hopeful exploration of a nonterritorialist, nonstatist, nonfunctionalist social ecology.

—Jan Aart Scholte, Codirector, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick

This is an outstanding contribution to the study of international environmental politics and world politics more generally. In clear language and moving seamlessly between theory and cases, Conca takes us beyond regime theory to the guts of the messy struggles over power and meaning that shape practices, whose routinization may give rise to institutions. He does an admirable job of keeping domestic and international politics visible in the same lens. This is the best treatment I know of the increasingly important international politics of water.

—Margaret Keck, Department of Political Science, John Hopkins University

This excellent book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the shape and evolution of the global water regime. Authoritative, nuanced, and comprehensive in its coverage, it should be on the reading list of anyone concerned with water management and politics.

—Ashok Swain, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University

Conca has convincingly captured the complex transnational dynamics and changing governance architectures of water in world affairs. Scholars, students, practitioners, and all those who care about sustainable development, human security, and democratization should read this book.

—Sanjeev Khagram, Faculty Director, Lindenberg Center for International Development, University of Washington, and author of Dams and Development

A major achievement in rethinking the prospects for global environmental protection in general.

—Paul Wapner, School of International Service, American University

The hydropolitics literature is characterized by basin-level studies, usually from areas of conflict, mostly written by scholars from disciplines other than IR. It therefore comes as a breath of fresh air when an empirical study is done at a global level of scale, by an IR specialist. This work is of great significance to both academic and water resource manager alike, because it shows deep insight into a complex subject. This contribution by Ken Conca to the field of Environmental Security and Hydropolitics is substantial.

—Anthony Turton, Gibb-SERA Chair in IWRM, Environmentek, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa

There is hardly a more critical issue today than ensuring just and sustainable access to water. Governing Water explains the challenges of safeguarding such access and charts the emergence of genuinely innovative forms of global water governance. Theoretically sound and impressively researched, it represents a major achievement in rethinking the prospects for global environmental protection in general.

—Paul Wapner, School of International Service, American University

Ashok Swain

This excellent book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the shape and evolution of the global water regime. Authoritative, nuanced, and comprehensive in its coverage, it should be on the reading list of anyone concerned with water management and politics.

Sanjeev Khagram

Conca has convincingly captured the complex transnational dynamics and changing governance architectures of water in world affairs. Scholars, students, practitioners, and all those who care about sustainable development, human security, and democratization should read this book.