IUKWC Workshop Nov16: Developing Hydro-climatic Services for Water Security – Session 3 – Item 4 Bharucha

Editor's Notes

• #2: Good afternoon, thank you for having me. In this paper, I will introduce some critical reflections on the development of hydro-climatic tools for agricultural water management, drawing on findings from two recent research projects in which I have explored the social and political dimensions of water security amongst rainfed farmers in India. I will begin by giving a very short introduction to my theoretical lens. I will then quickly outline the empirical material, and I will end by reflecting on the lessons learnt which, I hope, will be of some practical help as we work through the challenge of developing new hydro-climatic services.
• #3: My theoretical perspective is informed by insights from resilience theory and political ecology.   I draw on insights from resilience theory (cf Holling and the Resilience Alliance) that treat environmental problems as essentially: Social-ecological in origin: Composed of an integrated mix of social, economic, political, cultural and ecological variables in tight integration, resulting in emergent properties and systems in dynamic equilibrium. … and thus, essentially, complex and multi-scalar: Operating at multiple, nested, temporal and spatial scales. Resilience in these systems is achieved by management that takes cognizance of this nature of environmental problems, with inappropriate simplification leading to perverse impacts.
• #4: This perspective on social-ecological problems resonates very well with emerging work within the environmental social sciences that calls for deeper attention to the social, political and economic dimensions of environmental change, risk and management.   Specifically, political ecology takes the view that resource governance is inherently and inescapably political. What do I mean by ‘political’? I mean it involves the exercise of power over people and landscapes. It is tied up with our identities, our practices, and with wider social goals around ‘the good life’, ‘development’, ‘equality’, and ‘wellbeing’.   For political ecologists too, the environmental is social-ecological in nature. Political ecology brings two things to resilience analysis – and sustainability science more generally – Informed application of issues of power, equality, distribution, political-economy, governance regimes, and culture which affect all processes of environmental change and influence environmental management. The tools to unpack issues of constructedness: Recognizing this political dimension of resource governance leads us to pay attention to how knowledge about resources – or indeed the wider ‘environment’ is produced. What do we know, how do we come to know it, what are the implications of different interpretations, and whose knowledge matters? These questions matter because knowledge shapes action. “Discourses situate and control how we think about environmental crises, and what we do (or do not do) about them.”
• #5: For political ecologists concerned with resource-‘security’ (whether of food, water or energy), naturalized insecurity is a key concern.   In a nut-shell this means that while acknowledging planetary limits and finite resources, political ecologists also point out that issues of scarcity (and resource insecurity) have “become increasingly intertwined with ideas of growth, progress, abundance and sustainability” (Ibid), and is perceived as a “natural, universal and self-evident characteristic of the human condition” (Ibid). For Nicholas Xenos, ‘scarcity’ is a child of modernity, an “open-ended myth… (of) an antagonist in the human story, a story with a happy ending, vanquishing of the antagonist and a life of happiness ever after and abundance for all” (Xenos 1989, p. 35).   This matters, because our determinations of causation influences action. A number of studies in political ecology have shown how assigning risk or scarcity to ‘natural’ causes has tended to lead to inappropriate or even perverse solutions because they eclipse the social-ecological dynamics of resource (in)security and contribute to pathologies of natural resource management.
• #6: Rainfed landscapes have been overwhelmingly marginalized in agricultural and rural development policy in India. The dominant model since Independence has focused almost exclusively on intensive irrigation: India has 5000 large dams for perennial irrigation US$21.4 billion on major irrigation projects between 1991 and 2007 22x more investment on irrigation than rainfed systems   This in itself has imposed heavy social-ecological costs: 10% of the amount required for the maintenance of this irrigation infrastructure is actually available 1 million hectares of Green Revolution lands are degraded – over-irrigation and salinization have taken lands out of production 40 million Indians have been displaced by large dam and canal projects since 1947. A vanishingly small minority have ever received legally-mandated compensation. //INSERT: Image of large dam from existing .ppt//   This is broader culture of water management against which debates about Indian water security must be viewed.
• #7: Therefore new models needed for water security, and also even if country’s full irrigation potential is reached, 40% of the country would still be rainfed.
• #9: Existing studies have mainly attributed this situation to poorly designed or executed projects. My work, however, finds that it is the very understanding of ‘water security’ and its presumed determinants – rainfall and water supply – that are at the heart of continued vulnerability following watershed development.   For the purpose of this paper I will quickly go over a few key pieces of qualitative data derived from interviews with farmers and other stakeholders, which show how people are using climate knowledge – or rather – how ‘climate’ is being experienced and how narratives about climate and water availability have been developed.
• #10: Multiple drivers at multiple scales are influencing increased water use on farms. Watershed development is entrenched within a broader water narrative and management culture that prioritizes increased irrigation and intensive agronomies.