Water politics and the construction of scale

Studies in Political Economy

Volumn , Issue 80, 2007, Pages 9-30

  Biro, Andrew ^a  

^a ACADIA UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 38349082435     PISSN: 07078552     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/19187033.2007.11675080     Document Type: Article

References (116)

1. Portions of this paper were presented at the SPE conferences in Ottawa (January 2003) and Toronto (February 2004). Helpful comments were provided by numerous participants at both conferences. I would also like to thank Karen Bakker, Matthew Paterson, and Lisa Mills for their comments on an earlier version of the full paper. This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program.
2. Vandana Shiva, Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002);
3. Diane Raines Ward, Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly, and the Politics of Thirst (New York, Riverhead Books, 2002);
4. Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold: The Batthe Against the Corporate Theft of the World's Water (Toronto: Stoddart, 2002);
5. Sandra Postel, Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997);
6. Marq de Villiers, Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (Toronto: Stoddart, 2000);
7. Constance Elizabeth Hunt, Thirsty Planet: Strategies for Sustainable Water Management (London and New York: Zed Books, 2004).
8. Mark Clayton, "Forget OPEC: The Next Cartel May Export Drinking Water," Christian Science Monitor (30 December 2004);
9. Maude Barlow, "We Are Running Out of Water," The Ecologist (May-June 1999), p. 182;
10. Aaron Freeman, "Blue Gold: The Political Economy of Water Trading in Canada," Multinational Monitor 20/4 (1 April 1999).
11. Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer, Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions 4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2004), pp. 337-338.
12. Stephen Libiszewski, "International Conflicts over Freshwater Resources," in Mohamed Suliman, (ed.), Ecology, Politics and Violent Conflict (New York: Zed, 1999), pp. 122-123.
13. World Water Assessment Program (WWAP), "Executive Summary," Water for People Water for Life: UN World Water Development Report (Paris: UNESCO, 2003).
14. Neil Brenner, "The Limits to Scale? Methodological Reflections on Scalar Struccuration," Progress in Human Geography 25 (2001), p. 600, emphasis in original.
15. For further examples of the burgeoning literature on the social construction of scale, see C. Flint, "Political Geography: Context and Agency in a Multiscalar Framework," Progress in Human Geography 27 (2003), pp. 627-636;
16. Hilda E. Kurtz, "Scale Frames and Counter-Scale Frames: Constructing the Problem of Environmental Injustice," Political Geography 22 (2003), pp. 887-916;
17. Sallie Marston, "The Social Construction of Scale," Progress in Human Geography 24 (2000), pp. 219-242;
18. Sallie Marston and Neil Smith, "States, Scales, and Households: Limits to Scale Thinking?" Progress in Human Geography 25 (2001), pp. 615-619;
19. James McCarthy, "Scale, Sovereignty and Strategy in Environmental Governance," Antipode 37 (2005), pp. 731-753;
20. Erik Swyngedouw, "Neither Global not Local: 'Glocalization' and the Politics of Scale," in Kevin Cox, (ed.), Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the Power of the Local (New York/London: Guilford/ Longman, 1997), pp. 137-166;
21. Erik Swyngedouw, " Scaled Geographies: Nature, Place, and the Politics of Scale," in E. Sheppard and R.B. McMaster, (eds.), Scale and Geographic Inquiry: Nature, Society, and Method (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 129-153;
22. George Towers, "Applying the Political Geography of Scale: Grassroots Strategies and Environmental Justice," Professional Geographer 52 (2000), pp. 23-36.
23. For critical applications of the "scale" literature to water issues, see Ken Conca, Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006);
24. Chris Sneddon, Leila Harris, Radoslav Dimitrov, and Uygar Ozesmi, "Contested Waters: Conflict, Scale, and Sustainability in Aquatic Socio-Ecological Systems," Society and Natural Resources 15 (2002), pp. 663-675.
25. Gleick's estimate is cited in Karen Bakker, "A Political Ecology of Water Privatization," Studies in Political Economy 70 (2003), pp. 35-58.
26. The groundwater estimate is from D. Pimentel, B. Berger, D. Filiberro, M. Newton, B. Wolfe, E. Karabinakis, S. Clark, E. Poon, E. Abbett, and S. Nandagopal, "Water Resources: Agricultural and Environmental issues," Bioscience 54/10 (2004), pp. 909-918.
27. James I. Linton, "Global Hydrology and the Construction of a Water Crisis," Great Lakes Geographer 11/2 (2004).
28. de Villiers, Water, pp. 276-277.
29. Oliver M. Brandes et al., At a Watershed: Ecological Governance and Sustainable Water Management in Canada (Victoria, BC: POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, 2005), p. 23.
30. "OPEC of Water" was used by National Post columnist Terence Corcoran in February 1999, cited in Barlow and Clarke, Blue Gold, p. 129.
31. Continental Waterboy is the title of a book by Donald Waterfield (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Co., 1970).
32. Arturo Escobar, "Culture Sits in Places: Reflections on Globalism and Subaltern Strategies of Localization," Political Geography 20 (2001), pp. 139-174.
33. Andrew Biro, "Human Needs and the Crisis of the Subject," Theory & Event 9/4 (2006);
34. Gordon Laxer, "Surviving the Americanizing New Right," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 37/1 (2000), pp. 55-75;
35. Gordon Laxer, "Radical Transformative Nationalisms Confront the US Empire," Current Sociology 51/2 (2003), pp. 133-152.
36. Mike Carr, Bioregionalism and Civil Society: Democratic Challenges to Corporate Globalism (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004); Conca, Governing Water.
37. Robert Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy (New York: Random House, 2000).
38. Aaron T. Wolf, "The Present and Future of Transboundary Water Management" in C.M. Figueres, C. Tortajade, and J. Rockstrom, (eds.), Rethinking Water Management: Innovative Approaches to Contemporary Issues (London: Earthscan, 2003), p. 165; emphasis in original.
39. On "glocalization," see Swyngedouw, "Neither Global nor Local," especially p. 158. The production of water scarcity by institutional and regulatory frameworks is discussed in Karen Bakker, "Privatizing Water, Producing Scarcity: The Yorkshire Drought of 1995," Economic Geography 76/1 (2000), pp. 4-27.
40. The discursive production of water scarcity at the global scale is discussed in Linton, "Global Hydrology." See also Andrew Biro, "Wet Dreams: Ideology and the Debates over Canadian Water Exports" in Josée Johnston, Michael Gismondi, and James Goodman, (eds.), Nature's Revenge: Reclaiming Sustainability in an Age of Corporate Globalization (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2006), especially pp. 99-104.
41. See, for example, Karen Bakker, "A Political Ecology of Water Privatization," Studies in Political Economy, 70 (2003), pp. 35-58;
42. Karen Bakker, An Uncooperative Commodity: Water Privatization in England and Wales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003);
43. Matthias Finger and Emanuele Lobina, "Managing Trade in a Globalizing World - Trade in Public Services and Transnational Corporations: The Case of the Global Water Industry," in Annie Taylor and Caroline Thomas, (eds.), Global Trade and Global Social Issues (New York: Routledge, 1999);
44. Matthias Finger and Jeremy Allouche, Water Privarisation: Trans-National Corporations and the Re-regulation of the Water Industry (London and New York: Spon Press, 2002);
45. Graham Haughton, "Market Making: Internationalisation and Global Water Markets," Environment and Planning A 34 (2002), pp. 791-807;
46. Emanuele Lobina, "Problems with Private Water Concessions: A Review of Experiences and Analysis of Dynamics," International Journal of Water Resources Development 21/1 (2005), pp. 55-87;
47. Erik Swyngedouw, "Dispossessing H2O: The Contested Terrain of Water Privatization," Capitalism Nature Socialism 16/1 (2005), pp. 81-98.
48. Popular accounts of struggles over water privatization include Barlow and Clarke, Blue Gold; Ann-Christin Sjolander Holland, The Water Business: Corporations Versus People (London and New York: Zed Books, 2005);
49. Shiva, Water Wars; and the documentary film Thirst (Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman, (directors), Bullfrog Films, 2004).
50. Peter Kang, "Water Investing Enters the Mainstream," Forbes Magazine (20 December 2004).
51. Patrick Bond, "Water Commodification and Decommodification Narratives: Pricing and Policy Debates from Johannesburg to Kyoto to Cancun and Back," Capitalism Nature Socialism 15/1 (2004), pp. 7-25;
52. Conca, Governing Water, pp. 215-255; Haughton, "Market Making."
53. Wolf, "Present and Future," p. 174.
54. Veolia Water, "Veolia Water - A Summary" (accessed 6 July 2006).
55. Conca, Governing Water, pp. 220-223.
56. On the contradictory imperatives of the capitalist state, see, for example, James O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St Martins Press, 1973),
57. and Claus Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984).
58. On the importance of environmental sustainability, as a state imperative, see James O'Connor, "The Second Contradiction of Capitalism" in Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism (New York: Guilford, 1998),
59. and Brent K. Marshall and Warren S. Goldstein, "Managing the Environmental Legitimation Crisis," Organization & Environment 19/2 (June 2006), pp. 214-232.
60. Neil Brenner, New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
61. On the use of water infrastructure as something that (at times) has created solidarity at the local level, see Matthew Gandy, "Rethinking Urban Metabolism: Water, Space, and the Modern City," City 8/3 (2004), pp. 371-387.
62. Mike Davis, "Las Vegas versus Nature," in Dead Cities (New York: New Press, 2002).
63. Josée Johnston, "Who Cares About the Commons?" Capitalism Nature Socialism 14/4 (2003), p. 1.
64. Census information is from Marc J. Perry and Paul J. Mackun, "Population Change and Distribution: 1990-2000: Census 2000 Brief," (Washington: US Census Bureau, April 2001), p. 4. Water consumption figures are from Davis, "Las Vegas," p. 87.
65. Data from California Dept. of Water Resources, California Water Plan Update Bulletin 160-98: Executive Summary (Sacramento: 1998), pp. ES1-2.
66. Villiers, Water, p. 328.
67. California Agricultural Statistics Service, California Agricultural Statistics 2003 (Sacramento, 2004).
68. Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1993), p. 334.
69. For more detailed information on pricing structures, see "Selected Water Prices in California" in California Department of Water Resources, California Water Plan Update 2005 (Public Review Draft) - Volume 4: Reference Guide (Sacramento, 2005).
70. Marion W. Jenkins, Jay R. Lund, and Richard E. Howitt, "Using Economic Loss Functions to Value Urban Water Scarcity in California," Journal of the American Water Works Association 95/2 (2003), pp. 58-70.
71. Tim Stroshane, "Water and Technological Politics in California," Capitalism Nature Socialism 14/2 (2003), pp. 34-76.
72. California Department of Water Resources, California Water Plan Update 2005 (Public Review Draft) - Volume 1: Strategic Plan (Sacramento, 2005), pp. 4-15.
73. Ibid., pp. 4-17.
74. California Agricultural Statistics Service, California Agricultural Statistics 2003.
75. Julie Guthman, Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
76. Reisner, Cadillac Desert, p. 10.
77. Kang, "Water Investing."
78. Libiszewski, "International Conflicts," p. 131.
79. Barlow and Clarke, Blue Gold, pp. 174-175;
80. Shiva, Water Wars, pp. 96-97.
81. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, "Global Capitalism and American Empire," in Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, (eds.), The New Imperial Challenge: Socialist Register 2004 (London, Merlin Press, 2003).
82. See also Leo Panitch, "The New Imperial State," New Left Review 2 (2000), pp. 5-20.
83. Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorsbip and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).
84. Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity and the Growth of the American West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 15.
85. Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990).
86. O'Connor, "Second Contradiction."
87. Carr, Bioregionalism and Civil Society.
88. Barry Rabe, "The Politics of Ecosystem Management in the Great Lakes Basin," The American Review of Canadian Studies 27 (1997), p. 412.
89. Dianne Meredith, "The Bioregion as a Communitarian Micro-Region (and Its Limitations)," Ethics Place and Environment 8/1 (2005), pp. 83-94;
90. Sneddon et al., "Contested Waters."
91. Felicity Barringer, "Growth Stirs a Battle to Draw More Water from the Great Lakes," The New York Times (12 August 2005).
92. All quotations and facts about the New Berlin diversion in this and the following paragraph are from Dan Egan and Darryl Enriquez, "Michigan Shuts Tap to Lake: New Berlin Blocked in Request to Divert Water," Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (30 June 2006).
93. See Ken Conca, "Growth and Fragmentation in Expert Networks: The Elusive Quest for Integrated Watershed Resources Management" in Peter Dauvergne, (ed.), Handbook of Global Environmental Politics (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2005), and the literature cited in note 7, above.
94. Meredith, "Bioregion."
95. Don Alexander, "Bioregionalism: The Need for a Firmer Theoretical Foundation," Trumpeter 13/3 (1996).
96. Wolf, "Present and Future."
97. William Blomquist and Edella Schlager, "Political Pitfalls of Integrated Watershed Management," Society and Natural Resources 18/2 (2005), pp. 101-117;
98. Conca, "Growth and Fragmentation";
99. Meredith, "Bioregion";
100. Sneddon et al., "Contested Waters."
101. Erik Swyngedouw, "Scaled Geographies: Nature, Place and the Politics of Scale," in E. Sheppard and R.B. McMaster, (eds.), Scale and Geographic Inquiry: Nature, Society, and Method (Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2004), p. 132.
102. Alexander, "Bioregionalism."
103. Egan and Enriquez, "Michigan Shuts Tap."
104. Alexander, "Bioregionalism."
105. Erin Manning, "I Am Canadian: Identity, Territory and the Canadian National Landscape," Theory & Event 4/4 (2000), para. 22.
106. Ibid., para. 19.
107. Ibid., para. 37.
108. Ibid., para. 67.
109. Andrew Biro, "Wet Dreams: Ideology and the Debates over Canadian Water Exports," Capitalism Nature Socialism 13/4 (2002), pp. 29-50;
110. Abraham Rotstein, "A Clash of Symbols" in Wendy Holm, (ed.), Water and Free Trade: The Mulroney Government's Agenda for Canada's Most Precious Resource (Toronto, James Lorimer & Company, 1988), pp. 137-145.
111. Gordon Laxer, "Surviving the Americanizing New Right," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 37/1 (2000), pp. 55-75;
112. Gordon Laxer, "Radical Transformative Nationalisms Confront the US Empire," Current Sociology 51/2 (2003), pp. 133-152.
113. Noel Castree, "Differential Geographies: Place, Indigenous Rights and 'Local' Resources," Political Geography 23 (2004), pp. 133-167;
114. E.M. DuPuis and D. Goodman, "Should We Go 'Home' to Eat?: Toward a Reflexive Politics of Localism," Journal of Rural Studies 21 /3 (2005), pp. 359-371;
115. Damien Grenfell, "Beyond the Local and the Global: Scales of Resistance, Repression, and Sustainability," in Johnston et al., Nature's Revenge,
116. Josée Johnston, Michael Gismondi, and James Goodman, "Politicizing Exhaustion: Eco-Social Crisis and the Geographic Challenge for Cosmopolitans," in Johnston et al., Nature's Revenge, pp. 13-35.