In recent weeks, people all over the world have been settling into a ‘new normal’ of restricted mobility, online working, social distancing and enhanced hand hygiene. As part of the global fight ...against the spread of COVID-19 (the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2), we are repeatedly reminded by public health authorities that frequent and thorough hand-washing with soap and water is one of the best ways of limiting transmission. The rationale behind this is clear: washing regularly and thoroughly physically degrades and removes viral particles from hands, and therefore lowers the likelihood of infection transmission. Many health agencies are recommending washing hands for a minimum of 20 seconds up to 8–10 times per day. If washed in running water, the average hand basin tap uses 2–3 litres per minute, which implies a total water requirement of 8–10 litres of clean water per person per day, as well as appropriate soap and drying facilities (i.e. not a reused and possibly contaminated towel or rag). Achieving clean hands is not difficult in wealthier households that have long enjoyed water services so reliable that they have stopped thinking much about it. But if hand-washing is so important to the fight against COVID-19, what does this mean for the many people around the world who do not have access to a sufficient and secure supply of safe water to support this life-critical activity? According to UNICEF and WHO (2019), as many as one in three of the world’s people do not enjoy access to safe and reliable water services, and 3 billion people across the world do not have basic hand-washing facilities (soap and water) in their home. Research published by the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) Research Coordination Network shows that rates of household water insecurity vary greatly between and within developing nations, with urban and rural areas often faring quite differently (Young et al., 2019). This research also reveals that many households depend on multiple sources of water, including tap stands and kiosks as well as environmental sources such as streams and springs, further complicating not just hand-washing but also the challenge of social distancing. Consequently, these populations bear a disproportionate share of the global health burdens from viral and bacterial pathogens, including COVID-19. Even before the current crisis, we knew that every minute three people die from diarrhoeal illnesses (1.6 million per year), and six from respiratory diseases (3 million per year), and that both types of mortality are linked to lack of access to clean water and household hygiene. Now the risk is even greater because of the emergence of new zoonotic viral diseases like SARS (2003), MERS (2012) and now COVID-19. For the strategy of viral suppression to work, we all need to be able to practice hand hygiene and social distancing. If too many people cannot, then the spread of such diseases will neither be slowed in less wealthy parts of the world nor entirely suppressed in wealthier areas.
The culturally and ecologically diverse region of the Eastern Himalayas is the target of ambitious hydropower development plans. Policy discourses at national and international levels position this ...development as synergistically positive: it combines the production of clean energy to fuel economic growth at regional and national levels with initiatives to lift poor mountain communities out of poverty. Different from hydropower development in the 20th century in which development agencies and banks were important players, contemporary initiatives importantly rely on the involvement of private actors, with a prominent role of the private finance sector. This implies that hydropower development is not only financially viable but also understood as highly profitable. This paper examines the new development of hydropower in the Eastern Himalayas of Nepal and India. It questions its framing as green energy, interrogates its links with climate change, and examines its potential for investment and capital accumulation. To do this, we also review the evidence on the extent to which its construction and operation may modify existing hydrogeological processes and ecosystems, as well as its impacts on the livelihoods of diverse groups of people that depend on these. The paper concludes that hydropower development in the region is characterized by inherent contentions and uncertainties, refuting the idea that dams constitute development projects whose impacts can be simply predicted, controlled and mitigated. Indeed, in a highly complex geological, ecological, cultural and political context that is widely regarded to be especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, hydropower as a development strategy makes for a toxic cocktail.
This paper critically explores the politics that mediate the use of environmental science assessments as the basis of resource management policy. Drawing on recent literature in the political ecology ...tradition that has emphasised the politicised nature of the production and use of scientific knowledge in environmental management, the paper analyses a hydrological assessment in a small river basin in Chile, undertaken in response to concerns over the possible overexploitation of groundwater resources. The case study illustrates the limitations of an approach based predominantly on hydrogeological modelling to ascertain the effects of increased groundwater abstraction. In particular, it identifies the subjective ways in which the assessment was interpreted and used by the state water resources agency to underpin water allocation decisions in accordance with its own interests, and the role that a desocialised assessment played in reproducing unequal patterns of resource use and configuring uneven waterscapes. Nevertheless, as Chile's 'neoliberal' political-economic framework privileges the role of science and technocracy, producing other forms of environmental knowledge to complement environmental science is likely to be contentious. In conclusion, the paper considers the potential of mobilising the concept of the hydrosocial cycle to further critically engage with environmental science. All rights reserved, Elsevier
In Latin America, payment for environmental services (PES) is a tool for watershed conservation that is becoming increasingly promoted by some government agencies, international development ...organisations and environmental NGOs. However, in pursuit of conservation, PES initiatives implemented at the watershed level may conceal the environmental impacts on local communities of private actors funding PES initiatives. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, focus groups and archival research in the Cauca Valley, Colombia, we present the case of a PES scheme in which several commercial water users paid for the conservation of the upper part of the Nima watershed as a means of securing the flow of water upon which they rely. We show how the scheme was predicated upon very selective interpretations of degradation and conservation, and the roles of those deemed responsible for them, that were mobilised by those groups paying for environmental services to the detriment of other water users.
•We studied a payment for environmental services project in the Nima watershed.•We show how the PES project is shaped by the interests of large scale water users.•Its conservation foci are selective and overshadow other environmental impacts.•The outcomes are better explained by power relations than project characteristics.•PES schemes are very diverse and do not always comprise commodification or markets.
•Management models for socio-ecological landscapes can be inconsistently applied.•Assessments can be too partial to assist responsive management decision-making.•Normative ideas about the value of ...nature influence interpretation of evidence.•Conservation management tends toward a historical-contemporary hybrid.
Contemporary practice in the conservation of socio-ecological landscapes draws on both a model of responsive management, and also on ideas about historic management. This study considered what evidence might exist for the exercise of these approaches to management in the conservation of floodplain meadows in England, in order to inform understanding and knowledge of conservation management and assessment practice.
Evidence for a model of responsive management was limited, with managing stakeholders often alternating between this model and an alternative approach, called here the ‘traditional management approach’, based on ideas, narratives and prescriptions of long-established land management practices. Limited monitoring and assessment appeared to undermine the former model, whilst uncertainty over past long-standing management practices undermined the latter. As a result of the relative power of conservation actors over farmers delivering site management, and their framings of meadows as ‘natural’ spaces, management tended to oscillate between aspects of these two approaches in a sometimes inconsistent manner.
Conservation managers should consider the past motivating drivers and management practices that created the landscapes they wish to conserve, and bear in mind that these are necessarily implicated in aspects of the contemporary landscape value that they wish to maintain. They should ensure that assessment activity captures a broad range of indicators of site value and condition, not only biological composition, and also record data on site management operations in order to ensure management effectiveness.
ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, international water sector reforms have centred heavily on economic and market approaches. In regard to water resources management, tradable water rights have been promoted, ...often supported by the neoliberal model adopted in Chile. Chile's 1981 Water Code was reformed to comprise a system of water rights that could be freely traded with few restrictions. International financial institutions have embraced the Chilean model, claiming that it results in more efficient water use, and potentially fosters social and environmental benefits. However, in Chile the Water Code is deeply contested. It has been criticised for being too permissive and has produced a number of problems in practice. Moreover, attempts to modify it have become the focus of a lengthy polemic debate. This paper employs a political ecology perspective to explore the socio‐environmental outcomes of water management in Chile, drawing on a case study of agriculture in the semi‐arid Norte Chico. The case illustrates how large‐scale farmers exert greater control over water, while peasant farmers have increasingly less access. I argue that these outcomes are facilitated by the mode of water management implemented within the framework of the Water Code. Through this preliminary examination of social equity and the environmental aspects of water resources management in Chile, I suggest that the omission of these issues from the international debates on water rights markets is a cause for concern.
•Abandonment is a key risk to the management of some high nature value grasslands.•Risks result from the difficulty in recruiting and retaining managing farmers.•Farmers’ motivations to participate ...are limited by marginal economic benefits.•Trend towards increased financial incentivisation of farmers to improve retention.
Future sustainability of the conservation management of socio-ecological landscapes is typically reliant on on-going agricultural management. Such management may be threatened by changes in the drivers of management and the fragility of the stakeholder networks that deliver management. This study examined evidence for the risk of abandonment in a series of case study high nature value (HNV) grassland sites. The work found that the motivation of farmers to participate in the conservation management was typically limited and often marginal. Landowners and conservation stakeholders who relied on partner farmers to manage such sites often struggled to recruit and retain their participation, leading to increased turnover among managing farmers and to some sites being under-managed. Primary reasons for difficulty of recruitment and farmer turnover included a lack of candidate farmers in the local landscape, and the marginal and fluctuating economics of grassland management. A trend towards greater financial incentivisation of farmers was evident, which policy-makers responsible for agri-environment schemes should note, and elsewhere some conservation organisations were seen to be bringing grassland management in-house. Farmers’ motivations to participate in conservation management of such systems may continue to weaken and abandonment may therefore become a significant risk to the successful conservation of such systems. Conservation stakeholders need to foster good relations with their farmer-manager partners and not further depress their limited motivations to participate, as well as consider carefully whether farmer stakeholders are being adequately compensated for their efforts.
This paper has two principal aims: first, to unravel some of the arguments mobilized
in the controversial privatization debate, and second, to review the scale and
nature of private sector provision ...of water and sanitation in Africa, Asia and Latin
America. Despite being vigorously promoted in the policy arena and having been
implemented in several countries in the South in the 1990s, privatization has
achieved neither the scale nor benefits anticipated. In particular, the paper is
pessimistic about the role that privatization can play in achieving the Millennium
Development Goals of halving the number of people without access to water and
sanitation by 2015. This is not because of some inherent contradiction between
private profits and the public good, but because neither publicly nor privately
operated utilities are well suited to serving the majority of low-income households
with inadequate water and sanitation, and because many of the barriers to service
provision in poor settlements can persist whether water and sanitation utilities are
publicly or privately operated. This is not to say that well-governed localities
should not choose to involve private companies in water and sanitation provision,
but it does imply that there is no justification for international agencies and
agreements to actively promote greater private sector participation on the grounds
that it can significantly reduce deficiencies in water and sanitation services in
the South.
Payments for environmental services (PES) schemes are widely promoted to secure ecosystem services through incentives to the owners of land from which they are derived. Furthermore, they are ...increasingly proposed to foster conservation and poverty alleviation in the global South. In this article, we analyze the social relations that have shaped the design, implementation, and outcomes of a PES scheme in Pimampiro, Ecuador. While previous studies describe this case as successful, we show that the PES scheme reinforces existing social differences, erodes community organization, undermines traditional farming practices, and perpetuates inequalities in resource access in the "working" landscape inhabited by the upstream peasant community paid for watershed management. We argue that PES schemes are thus not neutral initiatives imposed upon blank canvases, but intersect with existing development trajectories and power relations. We conclude that analyses of PES need to look beyond conservation to critically examine local resource management and distribution.
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