Defining, researching and struggling for water justice: some conceptual building blocks for research and action

Abstract

This article provides a framework for understanding water problems as problems of justice. Drawing on wider (environmental) justice approaches, informed by interdisciplinary ontologies that define water as simultaneously natural (material) and social, and based on an explicit acceptance of water problems as always contested, the article posits that water justice is embedded and specific to historical and socio-cultural contexts. Water justice includes but transcends questions of distribution to include those of cultural recognition and political participation, and is intimately linked to the integrity of ecosystems. Justice requires the creative building of bridges and alliances across differences.

Keywords:

• water rights
• justice
• politics
• distribution
• recognition
• participation

Notes

1. The Justicia Hídrica/Water Justice alliance (www.justiciahidrica.org) is a research and action network that sets out to support water policies that contribute to an equitable distribution of water and democratic allocation procedures. As a broad alliance of researchers, policy makers, professionals and grass-roots organizations, its activities combine: interdisciplinary research on the dynamics and mechanisms of processes of water accumulation and conflicts; training and awareness-raising of a critical mass of water professionals, leaders and policy makers; and support for civil-society strategies that engage with the questions, needs and opportunities of marginalized groups.

2. A crucial difference between liberal theorists like Rawls and Miller on the one hand and Young and Fraser on the other is that the former, in their liberal search for perfect justice, assume and subsume recognition “within the distributive or procedural spheres of justice” (Schlosberg, 2004, p. 520).

3. These fairness or equity perceptions differ enormously; therefore, they cannot be reified or romanticized and constitute a power relation in themselves.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margreet Z. Zwarteveen

*Margreet Z. Zwarteveen is also at IHE-UNESCO, Delft, the Netherlands.

Rutgerd Boelens

Rutgerd Boelens is also at the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.