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Water Governance Actors in Southern Africa Field Surveys, Between Interdisciplinarity and Contemporary Issues
Nicolas Verhaeghe, Paul-Malo Winsback In this issue of Lesedi, which reflects on the agents of freshwater governance in Southern Africa, water resources are the subject of rich interactions on account of the great social, institutional, geographic as well as climatic diversity of the subcontinent. While it is marked by a highly variable raininess, the region shares a situation of water stress, i.e. a general tendency to freshwater 1 scarcity (Msangi 2014) . Faced with these a priori natural conditions, the political response of the countries of the region is paradoxically caught between what appears to be good regional co-operation as regards water governance, and the persistent difficulties experienced by the populations in accessing water (Swatuk 2017). Yet, this might not necessarily be a contradiction but, rather, the product of an illusion of unicity and institutional coherence. Indeed, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the water environment of which has been the subject of a study by Agathe Maupin (2013), gathers together the entire subcontinent under a common label hiding a diversity of situations.The processes at play have, in fact, already been the subject of many studies on the formal structures that conceive and circulate water management paradigms and models (Msangi 2014), as well as on emergent engineering innovations in this regard (Bourblanc 2015). Often introduced as being virtuous by certain international institutions, Southern Africa has also given rise to research works on the deployment of global policies, and on their local and regional translations (Mehta, Derman, and Manzungu 2016; 2017).
1. 2.
As highlighted by Larry Swatuk (2002; 2005; 2017), water governance in Southern Africa brings actors with different knowledge, abilities and degrees of recognition to confront one another, actors that constantly negotiate and renegotiate their role and their right to water. Their interactions, against a background of complex and interdependent problems, are part of governance networks involving various agents (Meissner and Jacobs 2016). To date, institutional structures organised at the national or transnational level, on the scale of the 2 catchment area , work on the assumption that “stakeholders” are able to voice their opinions adequately, within formal frameworks where main decisions are taken on water allowance, usage and management in the subregion (Merrey et al. 2017). Yet, these decisions are imbued with the political, normative, ethical and subjective considerations of actors that are subjected to specific forces and found in unusual contexts. In this complex configuration, the so-called “civil society” structures and institutions outside the continent play a role which is far from insignificant. In Southern Africa, regional and international organisations with federative roles, such as the Global Water Partnership Southern Africa or Global Environment Facility, have a major influence on national NGOs and other hybrid, public-private type (semi-public) structures. Likewise, sponsors, and those from European Union countries in particular, have played and continue to play a crucial role in concluding agreements on freshwater management, as well as in financing projects and their implementation (Merrey et al. 2017). This is the case of SADC subsidiary
On the debates around water stress and water security, see Cook and Bakker (2012). A water catchment area or drainage basin is a geographic unit that gathers a watercourse and its tributaries, and is considered as a coherent whole.
Lesedi #22 | Carnets de terrain | IFAS-Recherche | Octobre 2020
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