Author: michael ko

Upcoming event: Watersheds 2016

Watersheds 2016 registration is now open! This forum offers panel sessions, field trips, breakout workshops, structured peer-to-peer learning and networking to help strengthen capacity for watershed governance in BC. Registration is now open but space is limited. We encourage you to register early, and take advantage of the reduced early-bird rate!

Website: https://watersheds2016forum.wordpress.com/

Registration: https://www.gifttool.com/registrar/ShowEventDetails?ID=2159&EID=22120

Watersheds 2016 is a 1.5 day forum designed to build on learnings from Watersheds 2014. It will bridge and complement with the Living Waters Rally, an event to be hosted by the Canadian Freshwater Alliance from September 27th – 30th, 2016 in Vancouver. The combination of events creates a fantastic opportunity for 5 days of learning to improve the health of Canadian waters!

Through panel sessions, field trips, breakout workshops, structured peer-to-peer learning and networking, participants will build skills and enhance capacity for watershed governance in British Columbia. Core themes in the preliminary program include: Indigenous-led governance initiatives, collaborative watershed governance, and sustainable funding.

WHEN: September 30th – October 1st

WHERE: SFU Wosk Centre for Dialogue, Vancouver, B.C.

Watersheds 2016 is co-organized by four core partners: The POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, The Canadian Freshwater Alliance, The Fraser Basin Council, and The First Nations Fisheries Council. A number of additional partners have also confirmed their support to-date including: Simon Fraser University’s Pacific Water Research Centre, the University of Victoria’s Centre for Global Studies, WWF-Canada, the Forum for Leadership on Water, Evergreen, and Water Canada.

 

New article by L Rodina & L Harris on water service provision and citizenship

Lucy Rodina and Leila Harris recently published an article on the relationship between urban water service infrastructures and narratives of the state and citizenship.

The full text version of this article is freely available on the Water Alternatives website: http://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol9/v9issue2/319-a9-2-9

Rodina, L. and Harris, L. (2016). Water services, lived citizenship, and notions of the state in marginalised urban spaces: The case of Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. Water Alternatives 9(2): 336-355.

ABSTRACT: In this paper we argue that in South Africa the state is understood and narrated in multiple ways, notably differentiated by interactions with service provision infrastructure and the ongoing housing formalisation process. We trace various contested narratives of the state and of citizenship that emerge from interactions with urban water service infrastructures. In effect, the housing formalisation process rolls out through specific physical infrastructures, including, but not limited to, water services (pipes, taps, water meters). These infrastructures bring with them particular logics and expectations that contribute to a sense of enfranchisement and associated benefits to some residents, while others continue to experience inadequate services, and linked exclusions. More specifically, we learn that residents who have received newly built homes replacing shack dwellings in the process of formalisation more often narrate the state as legitimate, stemming from the government role as service provider. Somewhat surprisingly, these residents at times also suggest compliance with obligations and expectations for payment for water and responsible water consumption. In contrast, shack dwellers more often characterise the state as uncooperative and neglectful, accenting state failure to incorporate alternative views of what constitutes appropriate services. With an interest in political ecologies of the state and water services infrastructures, this paper traces the dynamic processes through which states and citizenship are mutually and relationally understood, and dynamically evolving. As such, the analysis offers insights for ongoing state-society negotiations in relation to changing infrastructure access in a transitioning democracy.

New article by R Simms and colleagues on collaborative watershed governance

Rosie Simms and colleagues recently published an article on collaborative watershed governance with First Nations in BC, based on research conducted with the Lower Similkameen Indian Band in 2013. The full text can be accessed via Geoforum: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515300701

The article draws on the research Rosie conducted for her Masters thesis, which can be accessed here.

Simms, R., Harris, L., Joe, N., and Bakker, K. (2016). Navigating the tensions in collaborative watershed governance: Water governance and indigenous communities in British Columbia, Canada. Geoforum, 73: 6-16.

First Nations in British Columbia (BC), Canada, have historically been—and largely continue to be—excluded from colonial governments’ decision-making and management frameworks for fresh water. However, in light of recent legal and legislative changes, and also changes in water governance and policy, there is growing emphasis in scholarship and among legal, policy and advocacy communities on shifting water governance away from a centralized single authority towards an approach that is watershed-based, collaborative, and involves First Nations as central to decision-making processes. Drawing on community-based research, interviews with First Nations natural resource staff and community members, and document review, the paper analyzes the tensions in collaborative water governance, by identifying First Nations’ concerns within the current water governance system and exploring how a move towards collaborative watershed governance may serve to either address, or further entrench, these concerns. This paper concludes with recommendations for collaborative water governance frameworks which are specifically focused on British Columbia, but which have relevance to broader debates over Indigenous water governance.

Community Based Research and Water Workshop, May 16th

The Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES–UBC), the Program on Water Governance (UBC) and the UNESCO Chair on Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education (UVic) are pleased to invite you to the workshop Community Based Research and Water on May 16 from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.

The event will consist of two different sessions combining theory and practice of community-based research (CBR). In the morning session (9:00 am – 12:00 pm), several panels and roundtables will present and discuss relevant issues regarding CBR theory and practice, with a special focus on water. On the afternoon (1:00 pm – 3:00 pm), two interactive workshops will be offered to learn and explore different research methodologies and approaches to CBR.

To register and for a more detailed description of the workshop, please click here.

We hope this event, and others to follow, will continue to build on our UBC Water Ways workshop held last month.

New article on gender & water by L. Harris and colleagues

Dr. Leila Harris and colleagues recently published an article on gender and water in the Journal of Gender Studies, based on household surveys conducted in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa in 2012. The full text can be accessed via http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09589236.2016.1150819

Harris, L., Kleiber, D., Goldin, J., Darkwah, A. & Morinville, C. (2016) Intersections of gender and water: comparative approaches to everyday gendered negotiations of water access in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa. Journal of Gender Studies: 1-22.

A large and growing body of literature suggests that women and men often have differentiated relationships to water access, uses, knowledges, governance, and experiences. From a feminist political ecology perspective, these relationships can be mediated by gendered labour practices (within the household, at the community level, or within the workplace), socio-cultural expectations (e.g. related to notions of masculinity and femininity), as well as intersectional differences (e.g. race, income, and so forth). While these relationships are complex, multiple, and vary by context, it is frequently argued that due to responsibility for domestic provision or other pathways, women may be particularly affected if water quality or access is compromised. This paper reports on a statistical evaluation of a 478 household survey conducted in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa in early 2012. Interrogating our survey results in the light of the ideas of gender differentiated access, uses, knowledges, governance, and experiences of water, we open up considerations related to the context of each of our study sites, and also invite possible revisions and new directions for these debates. In particular, we are interested in the instances where differences among male and female respondents were less pronounced than expected. Highlighting these unexpected results we find it helpful to draw attention to methods – in particular we argue that a binary male–female approach is not that meaningful for the analysis, and instead, gender analysis requires some attention to intersectional differences (e.g. homeownership, employment, or age). We also make the case for the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative work to understand these relationships, as well as opening up what might be learned by more adequately exploring the resonances and tensions between these approaches.

 

 

 

Participatory videos on water and sanitation

PoWG post-doctoral fellow Crystal Tremblay recently completed the participatory video component of a community-based research project on water and sanitation in Teshie, Ghana and Khayelitsha, South Africa.  Both videos are now final and available on YouTube. ‘Water is Life’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVZblhLGNqU) documents the situation of water and sanitation in Teshie, Accra and ‘It’s Your Chance’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbG_ljQ-hVo) is a co-production with the Iliso Care Society in Khyaletisha based on youth interviews on water and sanitation concerns in the community (Site C, Khayletisha).

More information on the participatory videos from Teshie and Khayelitsha and the community-based research project can be found on Crystal’s website http://www.crystaltremblay.com/

Upcoming Event: UBC Water Workshop

Water Ways: Understanding the Past, Navigating the Future

March 9-10, 2016
Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre

This workshop is intended to bring together leading water experts from UBC and the global academe to share knowledge and advance emerging ideas. The workshop aims to connect the diverse community of water researchers at UBC across multiple disciplines.

In doing so, the workshop and the post-workshop strategy session will aim to generate a practical roadmap for building a cohesive and comprehensive water research cluster.

For more information about the workshop, including topics to be covered and keynote speakers, please visit our website: https://research.ubc.ca/workshop/water-ways

Workshop Registration

WORKSHOP REGISTRATION NOW OPEN! We invite the UBC community of staff, faculty, and students involved in water research to attend the workshop.

Register Now

This workshop is being developed in partnership with Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and UBC100.

New Book: Leaky Governance by K. Furlong

Dr Kathryn Furlong, Assistant Professor of Geography at the Université de Montréal and Program on Water Governance alumnus, has just published her new book titled ‘Leaky Governance’ with UBC Press. Congratulations Kathryn!

About the Book

Municipalities face important water supply challenges. These are widely attributed to local government politicization. Neoliberal reforms have only exacerbated the strained relationships between water utilities and local governments. In response, organizational reform to increase utility autonomy through alternative service delivery (ASD) has been promoted around the world. For its proponents, ASD offers independence from municipal government without relinquishing control over the utility; for its detractors, it is privatization under another name. Yet the organizational barriers offered by ASD are at best leaky. Deeply interdependent, both water management and municipal governance must be strengthened to meet contemporary water supply needs.

Leaky Governance explores ASD’s relation to neoliberalization, water supply, and local governance. Drawing on economic geography and political ecology, Kathryn Furlong examines organizational models for water supply and how they are affected by shifting governance and institutional environments. Her analysis of Ontario paints a complex picture of both ASD and municipal government.

Leaky Governance addresses urgent and topical questions in urban governance and water management, tackling increasingly pressing environmental, political, and social issues surrounding water supply and their relationship to urban governance and economics, as well as to broader issues in public policy.

For further information and a time-limited discount, see the attached flyer.

Two new publications by PoWG member Graham McDowell

New PoWG graduate student Graham McDowell has just published two co-authored papers on climate change adaptation in Nature Climate Change and WIREs Climate Change. Congratulations Graham!

Ford, J., McDowell, G., Pearce, T. (2015) The adaptation challenge in the Arctic. Nature Climate Change 5: 1046-1053.

It is commonly asserted that human communities in the Arctic are highly vulnerable to climate change, with the magnitude of projected impacts limiting their ability to adapt. At the same time, an increasing number of field studies demonstrate significant adaptive capacity. Given this paradox, we review climate change adaptation, resilience and vulnerability research to identify and characterize the nature and magnitude of the adaptation challenge facing the Arctic. We find that the challenge of adaptation in the Arctic is formidable, but suggest that drivers of vulnerability and barriers to adaptation can be overcome, avoided or reduced by individual and collective efforts across scales for many, if not all, climate change risks.

Ford, J. D., Stephenson, E., Cunsolo Willox, A., Edge, V., Farahbakhsh, K., Furgal, C., Harper, S., Chatwood, S., Mauro, I., Pearce, T., Austin, S., Bunce, A., Bussalleu, A., Diaz, J., Finner, K., Gordon, A., Huet, C., Kitching, K., Lardeau, M.-P., McDowell, G., McDonald, E., Nakoneczny, L. and Sherman, M. (2015). Community-based adaptation research in the Canadian Arctic. WIREs Climate Change

Community-based adaptation (CBA) has emerged over the last decade as an approach to empowering communities to plan for and cope with the impacts of climate change. While such approaches have been widely advocated, few have critically examined the tensions and challenges that CBA brings. Responding to this gap, this article critically examines the use of CBA approaches with Inuit communities in Canada. We suggest that CBA holds significant promise to make adaptation research more democratic and responsive to local needs, providing a basis for developing locally appropriate adaptations based on local/indigenous and Western knowledge. Yet, we argue that CBA is not a panacea, and its common portrayal as such obscures its limitations, nuances, and challenges. Indeed, if uncritically adopted, CBA can potentially lead to maladaptation, may be inappropriate in some instances, can legitimize outside intervention and control, and may further marginalize communities. We identify responsibilities for researchers engaging in CBA work to manage these challenges, emphasizing the centrality of how knowledge is generated, the need for project flexibility and openness to change, and the importance of ensuring partnerships between researchers and communities are transparent. Researchers also need to be realistic about what CBA can achieve, and should not assume that research has a positive role to play in community adaptation just because it utilizes participatory approaches.

New funded graduate student position: Indigenous Water Co-Governance Research Project

We are excited to announce a new Program on Water Governance funded graduate student position in the Indigenous Water Co-Governance Research Project.

The Program on Water Governance is currently conducting a Canadian governmentfunded research study in partnership with the First Nations University of Canada, Northwest Indian College, and a British Columbia First Nations community. Our project identifies and analyzes pathways whereby Indigenous Law and Indigenous Water CoGovernance might enable more sustainable, equitable water management. Our research collective is committed to Community-Based and decolonizing research methods in the spirit of reciprocal learning and engagement.

The project provides funding for a graduate student, starting in September 2016. The student will be working under the supervision of Dr. Karen Bakker.

The deadline for application is January 4th (Department of Geography) or January 18th (Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability).

For more information, please consult the position advertisement.