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Governing Water Security Across Scales
2020-Present
From the perspective of cities, regional water management addresses the question: Will there be water in the pipes? This question entered our global consciousness when São Paulo and Cape Town came close to experiencing “Day Zero” – when the taps run dry. For many residents in cities across the global South every day is Day Zero.
From a policy and governance perspective, urban water security requires undertaking activities to safeguard water sources, such as protecting forests and aquifer recharge areas, promoting reforestation, and improving agriculture practices. These issues are often overlooked by urban political leaders, policymakers, and change agents because they are located outside a city’s jurisdiction.
Key questions to be addressed include:
1. How do the key institutional design attributes within and across scales affect equitable access to, and environmentally sustainable management of, water?
2. How do the institutional design attributes lead to alignment, harmonization, cooperation, conflict, conflict resolution, and elite capture within and across scales?
3. How have these attributes changed over time and how has this affected equitable access to, and environmentally sustainable management of, water?
4. What are the major constraints at each scale to achieving equitable and sustainable water access?
5. How do contextual factors (geographical, environmental, economic, socio-political, cultural, historical) at each scale contribute to the outcomes in questions one and two?
A main objective of the project is to identify institutional design attributes that contributed to more equitable and sustainable water access under specific contextual conditions to help policy makers and planners better understand how innovations could be (or should not be) adapted to other locations.