Co-creating Water Commons: Civics, Environmentality, and "Power With”

Bryan Brunsbryanbruns@bryanbruns.com

Society for Applied AnthropologyPittsburg, March 24-28, 2015

OverviewCo-creating Water Commons

• Background– Challenges of groundwater

governance– Water Commons Project

• Environmentality: Seeing Commons– Shifting perceptions and values

• Civics: Creating Citizenship– Inclusive governance through

universal membership• “Power With”: Working on

Watersheds– Efficacy in changing flows and

stocks

Challenges of Groundwater Governance

• Wells and pumps improve livelihoods, but risk depletion

• Groundwater provides over 60% of India’s irrigation

• Common pool resource– One person’s use subtracts water

from others– Hard to exclude– Hard to monitor use, understand

aquifers• Few successful examples of

groundwater governance

Water Commons:Influencing Practice and Policy

• FES: Foundation for Ecological Security

• Practitioner perspective as a consultant

• Funding from– HUF: Hindustan Unilever

Foundation– NABARD: National Bank for

Agriculture and Rural Development

• 5 states, 8 districts, 700+ villages (habitations)

Water Commons:Activities and Results

Environmentality: Seeing Commons

• Changing environmentality: – Perceptions and values– What people see, and what they want

• PRA: Sketch mapping, transect walks, etc.

• Participatory hydrological monitoring: – measuring local rainfall and well water

levels, – wall paintings

• Simulation: groundwater game• Crop-water budgeting:

– rainfall, storage versus crop demand– Coordination crop choices

• Watershed conservation planning: – bunds, ponds, trenches, tanks, etc. for

reducing runoff, – increasing storage in soil, surface water

bodies, and aquifers

Civics: Creating Citizenship

• Habitation-level governance: – Village Organizations

• Universal membership: – Inclusion in terms of gender,

caste, indigeneity (tribals), poverty

– Inclusion in voice, action, and benefits

• Polycentric governance– Linkages with smaller and larger

scales and groups– Hamlets, user groups, revenue

villages, panchayats, blocks, sub-basins, districts, states, basins

“Power With”: Working on Watersheds

• Improving collective action• Power with, by acting together

– Interacts with “power to,” capabilities

– And with “power over” authority, sanctions, etc.

• Water harvesting• Ecological restoration: forests,

pastures• Balancing water demand and

supply• Claiming commons

Monitoring

• Process– Sequence of activities,

meetings, plans, agreements, resolutions

• ResultsTriple bottom line: – social: equity, governance

organizations, rules– Economic: crops and income – environmental: water

storage capacity, water levels

ConclusionsCo-creating Water Commons

• Environmentality:– Changes in environmental

perceptions and values• Citizenship:

– Changes in governance: – inclusive organization in

habitations• Power with:

– Cooperation to balance water supply and demand,

– claim commons, – ecological restoration

OverviewCo-creating Water Commons:

Civics, Environmentality and “Power With”

• In Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, and other parts of India, the Foundation for Ecological Security is working with communities to develop better institutions for managing surface and groundwater.

• Sketch mapping, participatory hydrological monitoring, experimental games, crop-water budgeting, watershed conservation, and other activities develop shared knowledge of water resources and consider options for improvement.

• Habitations, containing dozens to hundreds of households, organize based on universal membership, within nested contexts of larger landscapes and social networks.

• From a practitioner's perspective, this paper explores ways of facilitating the co-creation of citizenship in water commons.