Phase 2 Small Grant

Dr Lyla Mehta,
Environment Group,
Institute of Development Studies,
at the University of Sussex,
Falmer,
Brighton BN1 9RE
l.mehta@ids.ac.uk

Water scarcity has emerged as a potential 'global crisis' with serious implications for food security, human health and social and economic development. The UN estimates that 2.7 billion people will face water scarcity by 2025.  Against a growing alarmism around 'water wars', global and national agencies have been concerned with the causality and solutions to water scarcity. But what is scarcity? How has it been conceptualised? Does the way the ‘problem’ is constructed shape the ‘solutions’?  Also do global or theoretical portrayals of scarcity match up to the way the issue is experienced locally and is there sometimes a disconnect between global and local ‘solutions’? This ESRC funded project sought to answer these questions by investigating the scientific, ideological and technological premises behind the ‘solutions’ to scarcity put forward by a range of global actors and examining what these mean in India and South Africa, two countries known for their water scarcity.

Specifically the project aimed to: (1) examine how engineering, economic, hydrological and other scientific perspectives define ‘scarcity’ and how science is used to legitimise divergent management solutions; (2) investigate the scientific, ideological and technological premises behind the ‘solutions’ to scarcity and (3) lay the foundations for a multi-sited international research project on water scarcity.  To do so, the research focused on global portrayals of and solutions to scarcity as put forward by the World Bank, UN and supranational bodies concerned with water and examined how these debates are picked up or resisted in South Africa and India. The research has largely be based on the analysis of documents and the insights generated from interviews with key players in the water domain, in Europe, the United States, India and South Africa.

The project hypothesized that ‘scarcity’ may be playing a similar role as a totalising discourse in developing societies that ‘risk’ has come to occupy in the industrialized world. In both cases, science and technology are often expected to provide solutions, but such expectations embody a multitude of unexamined assumptions about the nature of the "problem" and gives rise to technocratic expertise that may be disconnected from local needs and priorities.  The research has generated an enormous wealth of insights which speak to a range of debates concerning water management and water scarcity, the politics of scarcity and science-society relations.

The findings suggest that most conventional definitions tend to take physical (and finite) supplies as a starting point; others point to economic scarcity where a country may have sufficient water supplies back lacks investments to create storage facilities. However, these definitions can lead to crises narratives. They have many problems since they fail to distinguish adequately between the scarcity or limitedness of water in the hydrological cycle and the scarcity of access of the poor and marginalised due to the lack of water, its poor quality or their exclusion due to prevailing social and power relations.  Finally, most global portrayals of water scarcity see it as something natural, instead of something that is either exacerbated or caused as a result of socio-political processes.

Globally as well as in national contexts such as India and to a lesser extent in  South Africa official definitions of scarcity usually look at absolute population numbers and absolute quantities and talk little about the politics of distribution. Even though scarcity is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon, in most popular and official discourses  scarcity is universalized and naturalized and is it convenient to stick to this simplified notion of scarcity.   This is because scarcity is a concept that can provide meta-level explanations for a wide range of phenomena over which humans ostensibly have no control. Science, technology and ideological positions are often used to justify diverse solutions. For example, economic theory is used to justify demand-oriented solutions that enhance ‘efficiency’ such as privatisation and water markets. Mostly, though solutions are supply-oriented and call for need to build more dams and draw on innovative hydrological developments in order to provide water to 'all'. But these assumptions mask different issues regarding power and politics. In South Africa, unlike India and in global discourses, questions of equity and access have emerged as key and the socio-political nature of scarcity is recognised in official debates. However, there are serious implementation problems and risks that the poor and historically excluded may not benefit from redistribution for a variety of reasons.  In all the cases studied, the technological choices that are exercised are often considered to exist outside of politics and technology is supposed to provide ‘solutions’ that are neutral.

At the policy and practical level, the research is already beginning to challenge the naturalisation of scarcity in conventional portrayals of water scarcity amongst a range of users around the world to highlight the need for water management policies and practices to be more attuned to local need, interests and social and power relations. The project’s academic contribution has been in questioning the taken-for-granted notion of scarcity. By drawing on sociological, anthropological and science and technology studies, the research has highlights that scarcity is not a natural condition. It is not something that is inherently in the nature of things. It does not arise because there is too little of water or food to go around. Instead, the problem lies in how we see scarcity and the ways in which it is socially-generated.  The project thus argues that conventional visions of scarcity that focus on aggregate numbers and physical quantities are privileged over local knowledge and experiences of scarcity that identify problems in very different ways.  These feed into simplistic and often inappropriate solutions. Thus, the scarcity problem gets aggravated.

Extensive dissemination strategies were pursued during the life of the project. These included organising a major international conference on ‘Scarcity and the politics of allocation’ which had 50 international participants, many presentations at academic conferences, popular debates and policy workshops around the world, a range of proposed publications including an edited book, dissemination in the popular media and extensive interactions with a range of users at the UN, national agencies, think tanks, bilateral agencies and water specialists.