- King's College
Strand Campus
United Kingdom
Maria Rusca
Uppsala University, Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty Member
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Coupled human-water systems (CHWS) are diverse and have been studied across a wide variety of disciplines. Integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives on CHWS provides a comprehensive and actionable understanding of these complex... more
Coupled human-water systems (CHWS) are diverse and have been studied across a wide variety of disciplines. Integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives on CHWS provides a comprehensive and actionable understanding of these complex systems. While interdisciplinary integration has often remained elusive, specific combinations of disciplines might be comparably easier to integrate (compatible) and/or their combination might be particularly likely to uncover previously unobtainable insights (complementary). This paper systematically identifies such promising combinations by mapping disciplines along a common set of topical, philosophical and methodological dimensions. It also identifies key challenges and lessons for multidisciplinary research teams seeking to integrate highly promising (complementary) but poorly compatible disciplines. Applied to eight disciplines that span the environmental physical sciences and the quantitative and qualitative social sciences, we found that promisi...
What role can a speculative political ecology play in (re)imaging urban futures of climate extremes? In recent years, narratives of dystopian futures of climate extremes have proliferated in geosciences, and across the media and creative... more
What role can a speculative political ecology play in (re)imaging urban futures of climate extremes? In recent years, narratives of dystopian futures of climate extremes have proliferated in geosciences, and across the media and creative arts. These anxiety-fueled narratives often generate a sense of resignation and unavoidability, which contributes to foreclosing the possibility of radically different political projects. In this article, we argue that these narratives conceal the coproduction of nature and society and treat nature as the problem, thereby locking futures into dystopic configurations. Political ecology scholarship can contribute to generate a politics of possibility by reconceptualizing the relations that constitute urban futures under climate extremes as socionatural. This, we argue, calls for a more experimental political ecology and new forms of theorizing. To this aim, we develop a speculative political ecological approach grounded on a numerical model that exami...
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<div> <p><em><span>In a rapidly changing world, what is today an unprecedented environmental extreme event may... more
<div> <p><em><span>In a rapidly changing world, what is today an unprecedented environmental extreme event may soon</span> become the norm. Such unprecedented events, and the related disasters, will likely have highly unequal socio-economic impacts. We investigate the relation between genesis of unprecedented events, accumulation and distribution of risk, and recovery trajectories across different societal groups, thus conceptualising the events as social-environmental extremes. We specifically propose an analytical approach to unravel the complexity of future extremes and multiscalar societal responses-from households to national governments and from immediate impacts to longer term recovery. This combines the physical characteristics of the extremes with examinations of how culture, politics, power and policy visions shape societal responses to unprecedented events. As end result, we build scenarios of how different societal groups may be affected by, and recover from, plausible future unprecedented extreme events. This new approach, at the nexus between social and natural sciences, has the concrete advantage of providing an impact-focused vision of future social-environmental risks, beyond what is achievable within conventional disciplinary boundaries. In this presentation I will illustrate an application to a future extreme flooding event in Houston. However, the approach is flexible and applicable to a wide range of extreme events.</em></p> </div><p> </p>
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<p>Millions of people around the world are affected by water crises manifesting at different scales, such as increasing drought severity and flood risk, groundwater depletion, ecological degradation, poor sanitation, water pollution and its impact on human health. This global water crisis is increasingly interconnected and growing in complexity. Negative effects often result from a lack of understanding of wider economic and socio-cultural perspectives. More specifically, water crises can be deemed the intended or unintended consequences of long-term changes of social norms and values (or, more broadly, culture), ideology or political systems, which are not typically anticipated or accounted for in coping with water-related issues. Sociohydrology engages with these principles by examining the outcomes of water management and governance processes –successes and failures as well as the distribution of costs and benefits across social groups— themselves as subjects of scientific study. In this presentation, we show how feedback mechanisms between human and water systems can generate a wide range of phenomena (including crises) in different places around the world. Moreover, we argue that a generalized understanding of sociohydrological phenomena has an important role to play in informing policy processes while assisting communities, governments, civil society organizations and private actors to address the global water crisis and meet the Sustainable Development Goals, the societal grand challenge of our time.</p>
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<p>Cities face increasing droughts and water shortages as a result of extreme meteorological conditions and expanding human pressure. Future projections estimate that over one billion urban residents will experience... more
<p>Cities face increasing droughts and water shortages as a result of extreme meteorological conditions and expanding human pressure. Future projections estimate that over one billion urban residents will experience severe droughts and water shortages in the near future. Most scientific and policy debates emphasize climate change, population growth and urbanization as the major forces at the genesis of this apocalyptic future. In this paper we argue instead that the root causes of urban water crises have to be retraced in the socioenvironmental injustices enmeshed with the development of a city. For it is not society as a whole that reshapes drought events or trigger water shortages. Usually, the most powerful groups with greater privileges and access to resources, are those who play a more prominent role in decisions on water resource use and allocation, thereby shaping the propagation of drought phenomena more significantly.  Accounting for the heterogeneity of human societies is thus key to understand the dynamics of human-water systems and, more specifically, the temporal and spatial propagation of drought phenomena. Sociohydrological models have not yet accounted for the manners in which heterogeneous social groups intersect with drought propagation. This work advances current analyses by modelling heterogenous interactions between human and water systems alongside their unequal influences on the transformation of drought into uneven water crises. The Day Zero crisis in Cape Town constitutes the empirical basis of this work. On the one hand Cape Town’s urban geography epitomizes an unequal landscape of water access and vulnerabilities. On the other hand, Day Zero exemplifies an extreme drought event that will most likely occur across many urban areas. Using a system-dynamic framework we retrace the uneven consumptions of water across Cape Town metropolitan area and estimate the drought resilience trajectories for different social groups. In turn, the socio-hydrological model explores the distinctive implication that each trajectory has for the sustainability of urban water systems. Ultimately, we argue that the unsustainable water uses of the elite can transform a meteorological drought into an urban water crisis.</p>
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<p>Economic inequality is a reality in many countries and is also increasing in many contexts. The consequences of economic inequality are multifaceted and, for instance, relate to issues of justice, access to welfare,... more
<p>Economic inequality is a reality in many countries and is also increasing in many contexts. The consequences of economic inequality are multifaceted and, for instance, relate to issues of justice, access to welfare, long-term health and human well-being. Economic inequality within countries can also affect how susceptible populations are to flood hazards, both directly and indirectly. A large body of research has shown that the pre-disaster economic distribution within a society can affect the disaster outcomes. One example is that unequal societies tend to exhibit physical marginalization, and if these areas are burdened with malfunctioning infrastructure it affects the ability to withstand an extreme weather event.</p><p>In this work, we highlight the role of economic inequality in explaining flood losses worldwide. We conduct a statistical cross-country comparison and show that the distribution of income matters for reducing human flood losses, and that this applies at all levels of economic development. We then discuss how our results stand in contrast to some of the most common disaster reduction recommendations from flood management studies, particularly from studies conducted at large scales.</p>
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<p>Coupled human water systems (CWHS) are distinctive in their diversity. Humans both affect and are affected by water across multiple, and sometimes interacting spatial, temporal, management and governance scales. These... more
<p>Coupled human water systems (CWHS) are distinctive in their diversity. Humans both affect and are affected by water across multiple, and sometimes interacting spatial, temporal, management and governance scales. These relationships pertain to multiple characteristics of both the human (e.g., culture, institutions, historical processes, power relations, and economic incentives) and water (e.g., abundance, scarcity, quality) components of CWHS. Changes in any of these characteristics might ripple through CWHSs to affect key societal outcomes, such as the distribution of hydrological risk and access to water and sanitation. The complexity of understanding and predicting hydrological and social changes lies in the fact that there are multiple, interwoven CHWS, each of which has been examined through a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives.&#160;<br>This chapter synthesizes existing CHWS frameworks across the social, environmental and engineering sciences. We first propose a typology for the CHWS themselves by identifying both their defining and differentiating characteristics. We then develop a typology for the frameworks used to study them, based on philosophical perspectives and methodological approaches. We then identify promising approaches (what &#8220;worked&#8221;) and outstanding gaps for future work on CHWS. Finally, we leverage the two previously defined typologies to propose a general structure around which to synthesize knowledge in the subsequent topical chapters of the book.&#160;</p>
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&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;am... more
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Millions of people around the world are affected by water crises manifesting at different scales, such as increasing drought severity and flood risk, groundwater depletion, ecological degradation, poor sanitation, water pollution and its impact on human health. This global water crisis is increasingly interconnected and growing in complexity. Negative effects often result from a lack of understanding of wider economic and socio-cultural perspectives. More specifically, water crises can be deemed the intended or unintended consequences of long-term changes of social norms and values (or, more broadly, culture), ideology or political systems, which are not typically anticipated or accounted for in coping with water-related issues. Sociohydrology engages with these principles by examining the outcomes of water management and governance processes &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#8211;successes and failures as well as the distribution of costs and benefits across social groups&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#8212; themselves as subjects of scientific study. In this presentation, we show how feedback mechanisms between human and water systems can generate a wide range of phenomena (including crises) in different places around the world. Moreover, we argue that a generalized understanding of sociohydrological phenomena has an important role to play in informing policy processes while assisting communities, governments, civil society organizations and private actors to address the global water crisis and meet the Sustainable Development Goals, the societal grand challenge of our time.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
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Over the past two decades, more than 80 metropolitan cities across the world have faced severe water shortages due to droughts and unsustainable water use. Future projections are even more alarming, since urban water crises are expected... more
Over the past two decades, more than 80 metropolitan cities across the world have faced severe water shortages due to droughts and unsustainable water use. Future projections are even more alarming, since urban water crises are expected to escalate and most heavily affect those who are socially, economically and politically disadvantaged. Here we show how social inequalities across different groups or individuals play a major role in the production and manifestation of such crises. Specifically, due to stark socioeconomic inequalities, urban elites are able to overconsume water while excluding less-privileged populations from basic access. Through an interdisciplinary approach, we model the uneven domestic water use across urban spaces and estimate water consumption trends for different social groups. The highly unequal metropolitan area of Cape Town serves as a case in point to illustrate how unsustainable water use by the elite can exacerbate urban water crises at least as much as...
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This paper conceptualises droughts as socioecological phenomena coproduced by the recursive engagement of human and non-human transformations. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates political ecology, material geographies... more
This paper conceptualises droughts as socioecological phenomena coproduced by the recursive engagement of human and non-human transformations. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates political ecology, material geographies and hydroclimatology, this work simultaneously apprehends the role of politics and power in reshaping drought, along with the agency of biophysical processes – soil, vegetation, hydrology and microclimate – that co-produce droughts and their spatiotemporal patterning. The drought-stricken Ladismith in Western Cape, South Africa, is the instrumental case study and point of departure of our empirical analysis. To advance a materiality of drought that seriously accounts for the coevolution of biophysical and political transformations, we alter the spatiotemporal and empirical foci of drought analyses thereby retracing Ladismith’s socioecological history since colonial times. In turn, such extended framework exposes the agency of soil, vegetation, hydrol...
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Human activities have increasingly intensified the severity, frequency, and negative impacts of droughts in several regions across the world. This trend has led to broader scientific conceptualizations of drought risk that account for... more
Human activities have increasingly intensified the severity, frequency, and negative impacts of droughts in several regions across the world. This trend has led to broader scientific conceptualizations of drought risk that account for human actions and their interplays with natural systems. This review focuses on physical and engineering sciences to examine the way and extent to which these disciplines account for social processes in relation to the production and distribution of drought risk. We conclude that this research has significantly progressed in terms of recognizing the role of humans in reshaping drought risk and its socioenvironmental impacts. We note an increasing engagement with and contribution to understanding vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation patterns. Moreover, by advancing (socio)hydrological models, developing numerical indexes, and enhancing data processing, physical and engineering scientists have determined the extent of human influences in the propaga...
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&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Cities face increasing droughts and water shortages as a result of extreme meteorological conditions and expanding human pressure. Future projections estimate that over one billion urban residents will experience... more
&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Cities face increasing droughts and water shortages as a result of extreme meteorological conditions and expanding human pressure. Future projections estimate that over one billion urban residents will experience severe droughts and water shortages in the near future. Most scientific and policy debates emphasize climate change, population growth and urbanization as the major forces at the genesis of this apocalyptic future. In this paper we argue instead that the root causes of urban water crises have to be retraced in the socioenvironmental injustices enmeshed with the development of a city. For it is not society as a whole that reshapes drought events or trigger water shortages. Usually, the most powerful groups with greater privileges and access to resources, are those who play a more prominent role in decisions on water resource use and allocation, thereby shaping the propagation of drought phenomena more significantly. &amp;amp;#160;Accounting for the heterogeneity of human societies is thus key to understand the dynamics of human-water systems and, more specifically, the temporal and spatial propagation of drought phenomena. Sociohydrological models have not yet accounted for the manners in which heterogeneous social groups intersect with drought propagation. This work advances current analyses by modelling heterogenous interactions between human and water systems alongside their unequal influences on the transformation of drought into uneven water crises. The Day Zero crisis in Cape Town constitutes the empirical basis of this work. On the one hand Cape Town&amp;amp;#8217;s urban geography epitomizes an unequal landscape of water access and vulnerabilities. On the other hand, Day Zero exemplifies an extreme drought event that will most likely occur across many urban areas. Using a system-dynamic framework we retrace the uneven consumptions of water across Cape Town metropolitan area and estimate the drought resilience trajectories for different social groups. In turn, the socio-hydrological model explores the distinctive implication that each trajectory has for the sustainability of urban water systems. Ultimately, we argue that the unsustainable water uses of the elite can transform a meteorological drought into an urban water crisis.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;
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&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Economic inequality is today increasing in many contexts. Its consequences are multifaceted and relate to questions of justice, welfare, human well-being and health. Economic inequality also affects (directly or... more
&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Economic inequality is today increasing in many contexts. Its consequences are multifaceted and relate to questions of justice, welfare, human well-being and health. Economic inequality also affects (directly or indirectly) society&amp;amp;#8217;s vulnerability to flood disasters. Research has previously shown that the ex-ante economic distribution within a country may affect the disaster outcomes. For instance, unequal societies also tend to exhibit spatial marginalization. If these marginalized areas are burdened with neglected infrastructure they also have a lower ability to divert flood water.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Our work highlights the role that economic inequality plays in explaining human flood losses, worldwide. We perform a statistical analysis using data for over a hundred countries and illustrate the importance of considering income distribution when building flood resilient societies. We also show how our results vary between different levels of economic development and discuss implications of our results on disaster research and risk reduction.&amp;amp;#160;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;
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<p>This study aims at exploring whether changes in the spatial distribution of the human population and the built-up areas within floodplains can be associated with extreme flood events generating severe economic losses and... more
<p>This study aims at exploring whether changes in the spatial distribution of the human population and the built-up areas within floodplains can be associated with extreme flood events generating severe economic losses and fatalities. We relate economic losses and fatalities caused by floods during 1990&#8208;2000, with changes in human population and built&#8208;up areas in floodplains during 2000&#8208;2015 by exploiting global archives as the Global Human Settlement, GFPLAIN250m, and the EM-DAT datasets. Despite the frequent flood losses in the previous period 1990&#8208;2000, we found that population and built&#8208;up areas in floodplains increased in the period 2000&#8208;2015 for the majority of the analyzed countries. On the other hand, we observed a reduction in floodplains population after more severe flood losses that occurred in the period 1975&#8208;2000. Finally, floodplains population increased after a period of high flood fatalities in low&#8208;income countries, while built&#8208;up areas increased after a period of frequent economic losses in upper&#8208;middle and high&#8208;income countries. This study can be used as a general framework for advancing knowledge of human&#8208;flood interactions and support the development of sustainable policies and measures for flood risk management and disaster risk reduction.</p>
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This study presents a global explanatory analysis of the interplay between the severity of flood losses and human presence in floodplain areas. In particular, we relate economic losses and fatalities caused by floods during 1990–2000,... more
This study presents a global explanatory analysis of the interplay between the severity of flood losses and human presence in floodplain areas. In particular, we relate economic losses and fatalities caused by floods during 1990–2000, with changes in human population and built‐up areas in floodplains during 2000–2015 by exploiting global archives. We found that population and built‐up areas in floodplains increased in the period 2000–2015 for the majority of the analyzed countries, albeit frequent flood losses in the previous period 1990–2000. In some countries, however, population in floodplains decreased in the period 2000–2015, following more severe floods losses that occurred in the period 1975–2000. Our analysis shows that (i) in low‐income countries, population in floodplains increased after a period of high flood fatalities; while (ii) in upper‐middle and high‐income countries, built‐up areas increased after a period of frequent economic losses. In this study, we also provide...
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&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;am... more
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Millions of people around the world are affected by water crises manifesting at different scales, such as increasing drought severity and flood risk, groundwater depletion, ecological degradation, poor sanitation, water pollution and its impact on human health. This global water crisis is increasingly interconnected and growing in complexity. Negative effects often result from a lack of understanding of wider economic and socio-cultural perspectives. More specifically, water crises can be deemed the intended or unintended consequences of long-term changes of social norms and values (or, more broadly, culture), ideology or political systems, which are not typically anticipated or accounted for in coping with water-related issues. Sociohydrology engages with these principles by examining the outcomes of water management and governance processes &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#8211;successes and failures as well as the distribution of costs and benefits across social groups&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#8212; themselves as subjects of scientific study. In this presentation, we show how feedback mechanisms between human and water systems can generate a wide range of phenomena (including crises) in different places around the world. Moreover, we argue that a generalized understanding of sociohydrological phenomena has an important role to play in informing policy processes while assisting communities, governments, civil society organizations and private actors to address the global water crisis and meet the Sustainable Development Goals, the societal grand challenge of our time.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
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ABSTRACT Since the 1980s international development activities have increasingly been transferred from government organisations to International Non Government Organisations (INGOs). In this article we argue that the trend for NGOs to... more
ABSTRACT Since the 1980s international development activities have increasingly been transferred from government organisations to International Non Government Organisations (INGOs). In this article we argue that the trend for NGOs to increasingly undertake government-funded tasks leads to conflicts between the different sources on which the legitimacy of the NGO is based. In particular considerable friction may exist between output and normative legitimacy. Output legitimacy relates to the degree to which an organisation is able to achieve specified results. These results are supposed to coincide with specific performance indicators stipulated in project proposals. Normative legitimacy is based on values (as stated in the vision or mission of the organisation) on which the organisation is founded. We find that INGOs have an incentive to emphasise output legitimacy over normative legitimacy. Secondly, we argue that in response to this friction, NGOs are driven to actively &#39;create&#39; legitimacy by organisation presenting projects as being &#39;successful&#39;. Thirdly, we contend that this friction may also affect the approach developed by INGOs for specific projects. This approach will focus on those activities, target beneficiaries and select areas, which are seen as offering the greatest potential for a successful project. These arguments are developed by focusing on two water services projects undertaken by an international NGO in Lilongwe, Malawi and in Maputo, Mozambique. Fieldwork for developing the two case studies was undertaken from November 2008 to February 2009 (Lilongwe) and June 2009 to November 2009 (Maputo).
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Economic inequality is rising within many countries globally, and this can significantly influence social vulnerability to natural hazards. Through a global analysis of income inequality and flood disasters in middle- and high-income... more
Economic inequality is rising within many countries globally, and this can significantly influence social vulnerability to natural hazards. Through a global analysis of income inequality and flood disasters in middle- and high-income countries, we show that unequal countries tend to suffer higher flood fatalities. Based on our results, we argue that the increasingly uneven distribution of wealth deserves more attention within international disaster risk research and policy arenas.
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&lt;p&gt;This paper considers the theoretical and empirical potential of a focus on water justice to ground sociohydrology scholarship. The field of sociohydrology recognises the role of humans in altering &amp;#8211;... more
&lt;p&gt;This paper considers the theoretical and empirical potential of a focus on water justice to ground sociohydrology scholarship. The field of sociohydrology recognises the role of humans in altering &amp;#8211; deliberately or not &amp;#8211; hydrological flows and seeks to account for the feedbacks and interactions between human and water systems. This scholarship, however, tends to reduce the role of humans and societies to social variables and indicators and is anchored in the ontological separation of nature-society, with nature as the 'anchor' of truth claims. The preference is for larger datasets, and for knowers as positioned outside of (and as independent from) what they study. These approaches are less suited for unravelling the social processes generative of so-called global water challenges, while they also are difficult to translate into actionable insights and tools that are useful to those making actual water decisions (water managers, policy makers, and civil society actors). In our paper, we discuss possible ways of &amp;#8216;grounding&amp;#8217; sociohydrology in order to better capture sociohistorical contexts, recognize power relations and embrace multiple ways of knowing water. Conceptually, we examine how critical water studies &amp;#8211; focusing on water equity and justice - can provide ways of &amp;#8216;grounding&amp;#8217; sociohydrological understandings of water-society relations. We specifically consider how Haraway&amp;#8217;s (1988) notion of situated knowledges in helping do this methodologically and conceptually. Empirically, we draw on our own research expertise to argue that grounded, empirical case studies can significantly add to theorisations of socionatural change, providing critical insights into processes of societal inclusion and exclusion, and the production of social difference through water &amp;#8211; insights that can provide a good basis for imagining and helping develop just transformations to water sustainability.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;
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Inequalities in conditions of access to water are emblematic of contemporary urban life and have long been at the center of urban scholarship. This paper considers the theoretical and empirical potential of a focus on the everyday as a... more
Inequalities in conditions of access to water are emblematic of contemporary urban life and have long been at the center of urban scholarship. This paper considers the theoretical and empirical potential of a focus on the everyday as a contribution to critical urban water studies. Drawing on research in Political Ecology and Critical Institutionalism, we focus on the intersection of everyday urbanism and water to reflect on whether such perspectives can further understandings of socio‐natural inequalities and “real” governance challenges in the urban waterscape. We suggest that a focus on the everyday brings attention to the hybrid arrangements that constitute urban waterscapes and offers new insights to the polycentric nature of water governance, agency, and everyday urban struggles. However, we also outline limitations of these studies in unpacking the concept of the everyday and in capturing the practices through which everyday life is constituted. We explore the potential of an engagement with Practice Theory as a sensitizing lens for developing grounded understandings of everyday life, its constituent practices, and how these change over time. Concurrently, we argue that Practice Theory could be strengthened by drawing on critical approaches that explain everyday urban governance through: (1) the linking of practices to broader patterns of inequality; (2) the multiple social identities of practitioners and the variability in their exercise of agency; (3) the role of institutions as crucial mediating mechanisms and the processes through which practices become enduring institutional arrangements. We, thus, conclude that these approaches are complementary rather than competing.
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In many parts of Maputo, accessing water is a challenge. The documentary <em>Water at the margins</em> tells the stories of women and men living <em>at the margins</em> of the water supply network <em>and... more
In many parts of Maputo, accessing water is a challenge. The documentary <em>Water at the margins</em> tells the stories of women and men living <em>at the margins</em> of the water supply network <em>and beyond</em>, where chasing water is the norm. Their stories reveal the many ways in which water deeply marks people's life and their ability to live and settle in a place, take care of their family or develop a business. As these stories unfold, the question of why so many in Maputo are unserved or undeserved becomes more urgent. Water utility staff are faced with this question: is it possible to provide water more equitably? <em>Water at the margins</em> is produced by Whales that Fly and directed by Maria Rusca. It has received funding from EU Horizon 2020 under the Marie Curie project INHAbIT cities (No. 656738) by IHE Delft-DUPC.
This dataset is the result of nation-wide surveys conducted in Italy and Sweden between August 5th and August 19th 2020. The survey explores the respondents' risk perception, preparedness, knowledge, and experience regarding a set of... more
This dataset is the result of nation-wide surveys conducted in Italy and Sweden between August 5th and August 19th 2020. The survey explores the respondents' risk perception, preparedness, knowledge, and experience regarding a set of hazards, namely: epidemics, floods, drought, earthquakes, wildfires, terror attacks, domestic violence, economic crises, and climate change. The survey is expected to be repeated in 2021 to investigate how responses change over time. The data files include the questionnaire survey (the Italian and Swedish versions as well as the English translation) and the dataset of all the answers to the survey. Each column in the dataset refers to an item in the survey (e.g. a question or a sub-question), and each row represent a single respondent. The dataset will be updated after the second round of surveys.
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There are growing concerns about the impacts of climate change on equitable urban development. As cities are becoming increasingly exposed to anthropogenic droughts, stakes are particularly high in contexts of severe vulnerability. Yet,... more
There are growing concerns about the impacts of climate change on equitable urban development. As cities are becoming increasingly exposed to anthropogenic droughts, stakes are particularly high in contexts of severe vulnerability. Yet, the impacts of future urban droughts and the societal responses they will elicit remain poorly understood. Here we develop social-environmental scenarios of anthropogenic drought-related impacts in postcolonial cities, characterized by highly uneven development and differentiated levels of vulnerability. We show how unprecedented droughts are expected to polarize existing inequalities in water access and well-being across genders, race and socio-economic groups. Specifically, unprecedented droughts will likely exacerbate spatial inequalities, generate localized public health crises, and regress development progress in water access. These results suggest that effective climate policies must address water insecurity and other pre-existing inequalities,...
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As engines of economic growth and pollution hotspots, cities have been cited as a prime opportunity to address a host of environmental grand challenges. Yet action taken is not always universally beneficial, and inequalities are... more
As engines of economic growth and pollution hotspots, cities have been cited as a prime opportunity to address a host of environmental grand challenges. Yet action taken is not always universally beneficial, and inequalities are spiraling. This Voices seeks to uncover the heterogeneity of urban inequality and identify necessary actions for a fairer future.
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Over past decades strategies for improving access to drinking water in cities of the Global South have mainly focused on increasing coverage, while water quality has often been overlooked. This paper focuses on drinking water quality in... more
Over past decades strategies for improving access to drinking water in cities of the Global South have mainly focused on increasing coverage, while water quality has often been overlooked. This paper focuses on drinking water quality in the centralized water supply network of Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. It shows how microbial contamination of drinking water is unequally distributed to consumers in low-income (unplanned areas) and higher-income neighbourhoods (planned areas). Microbial contamination and residual disinfectant concentration were measured in 170 water samples collected from in-house taps in high-income areas and from kiosks and water storage facilities in low-income areas between November 2014 and January 2015. Faecal contamination (Escherichia coli) was detected in 10% of the 40 samples collected from planned areas, in 59% of the 64 samples collected from kiosks in the unplanned areas and in 75% of the 32 samples of water stored at household level. Differences in ...
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<p>Droughts have always been part of Earth climate, yet today these phenomena are becoming more alarming due to their increasing severity and their disastrous socio-ecological impacts. Different scientific definitions or diverse... more
<p>Droughts have always been part of Earth climate, yet today these phenomena are becoming more alarming due to their increasing severity and their disastrous socio-ecological impacts. Different scientific definitions or diverse understanding of drought risk have been proposed also because of the simultaneously social and ecological complexity which characterizes droughts relative to other hazards and/or vulnerabilities. This work sets out to confront the distinctive complexity of drought risk throughout a novel approach which combines political ecology perspectives with hydro-climatological insights. Our engagement with political ecologies of land, water, and vulnerability helps to explain the socio-political processes that intersect with the production of droughts and their consequences. Concurrently, hydro-climatology unravels the physical or material processes that both constitute and transform drought phenomena into socio-ecological disasters. The drought-stricken Ladismith in Western Cape, South Africa, is the point of departure of our empirical analysis which portrays the socio-ecological disruption reached by this rural community after five years of below-average rainfall (meteorological drought). We show that Ladismith socio-ecological crisis was mostly engendered by a distinct mechanism of capital accumulation through land and water dispossession, which emerged locally in the form of white commercial agriculture. Our interdisciplinary approach examines these socio-political processes in relation to the drought physical transformations over time and across space. By relating societal and physical processes we advance a novel understanding of drought that sheds light on the crucial interactions between social power, climate, land use, and hydrology, which all too often transform a meteorological event into a soil moisture drought, a hydrological drought, and eventually into a major socio-ecological crisis. Secondly, combining hydro-climatology with political ecology reveals that social power not only influences the vulnerability of the systems affected by droughts, but also shapes the occurrence and manifestation of the hazard itself. This novel conceptualization of drought risk as socially produced is key to intercept the material spaces and physical dynamics through which social power plays out in more extreme and disruptive drought events. A similar approach, by identifying unjust and unsustainable socio-ecological changes, can make drought management policies and strategies more proactive rather than constrain them to relief or adaptation measures.</p>
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Urban scholars have long proposed moving away from a conceptualisation of infrastructure as given and fixed material artefacts to replace it with one that makes it the very object of theorisation and explanation. Yet, very few studies... more
Urban scholars have long proposed moving away from a conceptualisation of infrastructure as given and fixed material artefacts to replace it with one that makes it the very object of theorisation and explanation. Yet, very few studies have seriously investigated the role of infrastructure in co-shaping and mediating inequities. We use this paper to propose a way to engage with the technical intricacies of designing, operating and maintaining a water supply network, using these as an entry-point for describing, mapping and explaining differences and inequities in accessing water. The paper first proposes a methodological approach to systematically characterise and investigate material water flows in the water supply network. We then apply this approach to the case of water supply in Lilongwe, Malawi. Here, strategies for dealing with challenges of water shortage in the city have often entailed the construction of large water infrastructures to produce extra water. We show that the ne...
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The Campaign against the Hereros in German South West Africa ABSTRACT: The article analyzes the Herero revolt against the German colonial power in South-West Africa. This colonial war has been a relevant case-study in military doctrine.... more
The Campaign against the Hereros in German South West Africa ABSTRACT: The article analyzes the Herero revolt against the German colonial power in South-West Africa. This colonial war has been a relevant case-study in military doctrine. The origins of the revolt lay in the colonial expropriation of the Herero lands, which were so essential to the surviving of this population that the Hereros decided to defend them fighting. In spite of their determination and courage the Hereros were defeated by the modern equipped and trained German troops with a great number of loss of African lives in battle and after, as the consequence of drastic rules in the camps where they were drawn in. The native policy and the campaign against the Hereros represent booth the colonial violence of the expropriation of lands and the bloodiest armed repression quite near to genocide of an anticolonial revolt in XIX Century Africa
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This special issue explores the realities of water provision in 'informal' urban spaces located in different parts of the world through eight empirical, case-based papers. The collection of articles shows that formality and... more
This special issue explores the realities of water provision in 'informal' urban spaces located in different parts of the world through eight empirical, case-based papers. The collection of articles shows that formality and informality are fluid concepts that say more about the authority to legitimate certain practices than describe the condition of that particular practice. In this introductory article we provide a historical overview that links the academic discussion on informality to urban water supply practices. Subsequently, we propose the concepts of disaggregation and co-production to describe how informality works, and how ideas about (in)formality are mobilised to label particular practices and service modalities. Disaggregation reveals that a single service delivery mechanism may incorporate activities, varying according to the degree to which they are formal or informal. Co-production describes a process where hybrid service provision modalities are produced as a...
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Knowing how people perceive multiple risks is essential to the management and promotion of public health and safety. Here we present a dataset based on a survey (N = 4,154) of public risk perception in Italy and Sweden during the COVID-19... more
Knowing how people perceive multiple risks is essential to the management and promotion of public health and safety. Here we present a dataset based on a survey (N = 4,154) of public risk perception in Italy and Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both countries were heavily affected by the first wave of infections in Spring 2020, but their governmental responses were very different. As such, the dataset offers unique opportunities to investigate the role of governmental responses in shaping public risk perception. In addition to epidemics, the survey considered indirect effects of COVID-19 (domestic violence, economic crises), as well as global (climate change) and local (wildfires, floods, droughts, earthquakes, terror attacks) threats. The survey examines perceived likelihoods and impacts, individual and authorities’ preparedness and knowledge, and socio-demographic indicators. Hence, the resulting dataset has the potential to enable a plethora of analyses on social, cultural an...
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Abstract In a rapidly changing world, what is today an unprecedented extreme may soon become the norm. As a result, extreme‐related disasters are expected to become more frequent and intense. This will have widespread socio‐economic... more
Abstract In a rapidly changing world, what is today an unprecedented extreme may soon become the norm. As a result, extreme‐related disasters are expected to become more frequent and intense. This will have widespread socio‐economic consequences and affect the ability of different societal groups to recover from and adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions. Therefore, there is the need to decipher the relation between genesis of unprecedented events, accumulation and distribution of risk, and recovery trajectories across different societal groups. Here, we develop an analytical approach to unravel the complexity of future extremes and multiscalar societal responses—from households to national governments and from immediate impacts to longer term recovery. This requires creating new forms of knowledge that integrate analyses of the past—that is, structural causes and political processes of risk accumulation and differentiated recovery trajectories—with plausible scenarios of future environmental extremes grounded in the event‐specific literature. We specifically seek to combine the physical characteristics of the extremes with examinations of how culture, politics, power, and policy visions shape societal responses to unprecedented events, and interpret the events as social‐environmental extremes. This new approach, at the nexus between social and natural sciences, has the concrete advantage of providing an impact‐focused vision of future social‐environmental risks, beyond what is achievable within conventional disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we focus on extreme flooding events and the societal responses they elicit. However, our approach is flexible and applicable to a wide range of extreme events. We see it as the first building block of a new field of research, allowing for novel and integrated theoretical explanations and forecasting of social‐environmental extremes.