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What kind of governance for what kind

of equity? Towards a theorization of
justice in water governance
a
Tom Perreault
a
Department of Geography, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New
York, USA
Published online: 25 Feb 2014.

To cite this article: Tom Perreault (2014) What kind of governance for what kind of equity?
Towards a theorization of justice in water governance, Water International, 39:2, 233-245, DOI:
10.1080/02508060.2014.886843

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 Water International, 2014
Vol. 39, No. 2, 233–245, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2014.886843

REVIEW ARTICLE
What kind of governance for what kind of equity? Towards a
theorization of justice in water governance
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Tom Perreault*

Department of Geography, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA

(Received 8 September 2013; accepted 20 Jan 2014)

This article critically reviews literatures related to the core concepts of this special
issue: water and hydrosocial relations; water governance and spatial scale; and equity,
justice and rights. It argues that only by viewing water and society as simultaneously
social and natural can we address both ecological governance and environmental
justice. It argues that the institutional arrangements we employ for governing water
must address issues of democratization, human welfare and ecological conditions. The
article illustrates these arguments with reference to the social and environmental effects
of mining activity and associated water contamination on the Bolivian Altiplano.
Keywords: hydrosocial cycle; water governance; environmental justice; spatial scale;
water rights; water pollution; mining; Bolivia

Introduction
Residents of the Huanuni Valley, on the Bolivian Altiplano (high plain), live with acute
water scarcity. This is not a result of ‘natural’ or even socially produced water shortage
but because the plentiful water that flows in the Huanuni River and collects in the nearby
Uru Uru and Poopó Lakes are contaminated in the extreme by mining operations located
in the upper reaches of the watershed. Ironically, it is those communities located furthest
downriver, and most distant from the mines, that suffer the greatest contamination. It is
here, where the river’s floodplain forms the pampa (plain) of Alantañita, that sediments
containing cadmium, lead, mercury and other heavy metals have accumulated, at depths
of over a metre, and cover agricultural fields with a layer of toxic effluvium. The Huanuni
River, which once nourished people, animals and crops alike, now flows gun-metal grey
and is little more than a conduit for the toxic discharge of the mines upstream. The
floodplain at Alantañita, like the ones in the communities of Paco Pampa and Sora Sora, is
littered with thousands of plastic bottles, washed down from the mining centre of
Huanuni, which has no other form of solid waste disposal, let alone sewage treatment.
People in Alantañita gather water where they can, and most end up carrying it from the
town of Machacamarca, over an hour away by foot. Residents of Paco Pampa have
somewhat better access to fresh water, and most households have viable wells, or share
a well with neighbours. But their water access would be more secure if the community’s
most reliable well was not concessioned to the mill operated by the Huanuni mining
company. Water from this well flows in an open and leaky sluice, past abandoned fields,
to the minerals processing plant some 5 km downriver. Not surprisingly, water scarcity
has resulted in dangerously low levels of water consumption. On average, residents of this

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

© 2014 International Water Resources Association

 234 T. Perreault

area consume less than half of what the World Health Organization recommends for
minimum daily consumption, a factor that contributes to the valley’s low agricultural
production and high levels of poverty, human and animal illness, and out-migration.
Mining and agriculture are equally dependent on water as a factor of production –
without it, neither could exist. But the spatial scales of water governance in agriculture
and mining are distinctly different. In the Huanuni Valley, as in so many other places in
the Andes, the reconfiguration of the scales of governance towards the national and global
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have direct bearing on questions of equity, rights and social justice. The privileged
position afforded to mining in Bolivia means that competing water users – in this case
semi-subsistence indigenous peasant farmers – suffer from inadequate access to clean
water. Such relations highlight the fundamental relationship between water governance,
spatial scale and social justice. This article is an attempt to theorize these concepts, which
together form the core of this special issue. My starting-point is both epistemological and
political. I contend that how we define and deploy such concepts as water, governance,
scale, equity, justice and rights matters for how we enact and experience the social
relations of water governance. The article does not present original empirical material,
nor is it meant to build new theory. Rather, it critically reviews the literatures on water and
the hydrosocial; environmental governance and spatial scale; and equity, justice and rights
– placing these concepts in the same analytical frame and probing the relationships
between them. The arguments presented here will be familiar terrain for many readers. I
encourage them to move on to the other articles in this special issue. The article is
primarily intended for the majority of water resources professionals, scholars and students
who are not critical human geographers or political ecologists, and for whom the concepts
of (and relationships between) environmental governance, hydrosocial relations and social
justice represent new and exciting ideas. The next section of the article critically reviews
the political ecology literature on water and hydrosocial relations. This is followed by a
consideration of water governance and spatial scale. I then consider the concepts of equity,
justice and rights, and their relationship to water governance. The article’s conclusion
highlights the connections between these concepts, and the lessons we can learn from
them.

Water and the hydrosocial

It has become something of a truism to speak of water in terms of the ‘hydrosocial’ (see,
inter alia, Bakker, 2002, 2003; Budds & Hinojosa, 2012; Loftus, 2007, 2009;
Swyngedouw, 1999, 2004). Water is neither purely ‘natural’ nor purely ‘social’ but
simultaneously and inseparably both: a hybrid ‘socio-nature’. Bakker’s (2002) distinction
between H2O and ‘water’ is useful here. “Whereas H2O circulates through the hydro-
logical cycle, water as a resource circulates through the hydrosocial cycle – a complex
network of pipes, water law, meters, quality standards, garden hoses, consumers, [and]
leaking taps” – in addition to the processes of rainfall, evaporation and runoff associated
with the hydrological cycle (Bakker, 2002, p. 774). Water, in this sense, exists apart from
human influence (as rainfall, in aquifers and oceans, as soil moisture and evaporation,
etc.), and simultaneously is produced and enacted through human labour and social action
within a given mode of production (as irrigation systems, fountains, water law, sewer
systems, thirst, customary rights, etc.). Water is given meaning through cultural beliefs,
historical memory, and social practice, and exists as much in discourse and symbolism as
it does as a physical, material thing. It is, as Swyngedouw (2004) notes, a product of
historically sedimented social actions, institutions, struggles and discourses, which in turn
 Water International 235

help shape the social relations through which it is produced and enacted. Water and
society are, as Swyngedouw, Loftus (2009) and many others have pointed out, mutually
constitutive. Water lubricates social functions and life itself; it is both a factor of produc-
tion and a product of social labour, and – unlike virtually all other natural resources – is as
universally necessary for individual bodies as it is for civilizations (Bakker, 2003). But as
socially produced nature, water is not politically neutral. Rather, it both reflects and
reproduces relations of social power.
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Similar arguments have been in place for some time. In his 1974 critique of the neo-
Malthusianism of Paul Ehrlich, Garret Hardin and others, Harvey (1974, p. 265) presents
a historical materialist view of natural resources:

A ‘thing’ cannot be understood or even talked about independently of the relations it has with
other things. For example, ‘resources’ can be defined only in relationship to the mode of
production which seeks to make use of them and which simultaneously ‘produces’ them
through both the physical and mental activity of the users. There is, therefore, no such thing
as a resource in the abstract or a resource which exists as a ‘thing in itself’.

In this view, water as a natural resource can only be understood relative to the social
relations of production and consumption that give it meaning and that shape its character-
istics: flow, quality, quantity, etc. As Swyngedouw (2004: 28) puts it, “Water is a hybrid
thing that captures and embodies processes that are simultaneously material, discursive,
and symbolic.” In this view, water is not an inert object of nature, but rather an active
participant, or ‘actant’ (Latour, 1987), whose materiality and geo-ecological properties
shape social relations, even as those social relations act on and transform water’s
materiality. For example, the processes by which people abstract water from a river,
lake or aquifer and channel it through hydraulic infrastructure both transform the water
and its ecology (through processes of diversion, filtration, storage, delivery, etc.) and
transform society (through socially differentiated processes of water provision, sanitation,
class formation, luxury consumption, etc.). In this sense, water is at once naturally
occurring and socially produced, both embodiment of and precondition for social power
(Loftus, 2009; Perreault et al. 2012); or as Budds and Hinojosa (2012, p. 120) put it,
“Water’s materiality and social relations constitute and express each other.”
While the notion of the hydrosocial cycle has proven both productive and provocative,
I would caution that not everything associated with water circulates in the same way. Water
itself – H2O – circulates, while other elements of hydrosocial systems tend to accumulate,
including water rights, forms of water-related knowledge, biotoxins, and the toxic sedi-
ments that have covered the pampa of Alantañita (Perreault, 2013). Water’s materiality
plays a crucial but under-theorized role in what Harvey (2003) refers to as accumulation by
dispossession, including the accumulation of water and water rights through such pro-
cesses as water grabbing, service privatization, and pollution. It bears asking, then, what
difference water makes to processes of capital accumulation, and moreover, how the
materiality of water, sediment, minerals and biotoxins shape processes of dispossession.
As Sneddon (2007, p. 186) has argued, “Processes of accumulation always necessarily
involve transformations of nature. These proceed in diverse ways, and understanding the
specific biophysical relationships that are sustained or disrupted via such transformations is
prerequisite for understanding the conflicts that so often follow on the heels of environ-
mental change.” Examining processes of contamination, sedimentation and bioaccumula-
tion, as well as water and land grabbing, illuminates the myriad ways in which water’s
materiality intersects with, embodies and reproduces forms of social power.
 236 T. Perreault

What does this mean in terms of our analysis here? It is worth highlighting some of
the central insights of this literature and reflecting on what they might contribute to
interdisciplinary and trans-scalar debates regarding water and its governance. Perhaps
most importantly, this work insists that we cannot consider water apart from the social
relations that produce it and give it meaning, and that those social relations are always
historically constituted and exist within a context of uneven power. Such a perspective
both accounts for material, historically rooted processes and is attentive to the symbolic
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meanings with which social relations and nature are imbued. This view of water – as
social and natural and thoroughly political – matters for the forms of governance we
establish (or struggle against). If water is understood as only ‘natural’, if its social history
and political character are ignored (as is all too often the case in technical reports and
policy statements regarding water management), then water governance is more easily
“rendered technical” (Li, 2007); that is, the practices and institutions of decision making
may serve to veil the power relations inherent in water’s production. The institutional
arrangements and social relations involved in water governance are the subject of the next
section.

Water governance and scale

What are we talking about when we talk about governance? I am concerned that, like
‘sustainable development’ and ‘social capital,’ the term ‘environmental governance’ has
gained broad acceptance, and is often deployed, without the benefit of rigorous critique
(see Bridge & Perreault, 2009). Indeed, the vagueness and malleability of the term may
serve to obscure political interest and ideological positions, as in the World Bank’s
formulaic calls for ‘good governance’, a position that is surely hard to argue with. After
all, who wants bad governance? But such calls help conceal the political and economic
interests that lie behind the institutional arrangements, social relations, material practices
and scalar configurations involved in so-called ‘good governance’. If we are to employ
this concept, then it is imperative we do so critically, carefully elucidating the political
nature inherent in the institutional arrangements and socio-environmental relationships to
which it refers.
The concept of ‘governance’ has emerged in recent decades to address questions of
economic and political coordination, and refers to the ways that institutional stability –
rules, social order, rights, norms, etc. – is achieved in society (Bridge & Perreault, 2009).
Bakker (2010, p. 44) defines governance somewhat broadly as “a process of decision
making that is structured by institutions (laws, rules, norms, and customs) and shaped by
ideological preferences”. Environmental governance, then, has been deployed in a variety
of theoretical perspectives and academic disciplines to examine the institutional diversi-
fication of environmental and resource management as an aspect of political-economic
restructuring under neoliberal capitalism – a process commonly referred to as the shift
from ‘government to governance’, or toward ‘glocalization’ (Swyngedouw, 1997).
Whichever shorthand one chooses, the concept of governance serves as a broad concep-
tual framework for analyzing the interplay of institutional arrangements, spatial scales,
organizational structures and social actors involved in making decisions regarding nature
and natural resources, particularly under conditions of neoliberal capitalism (Himley,
2008). Clearly, governance refers to the functions of government, but also, and impor-
tantly, the relations among government, quasi-governmental and non-governmental actors
and agencies. Environmental governance is particularly concerned with the act of govern-
ing resources and environments, and the ensemble of organizations, institutional
 Water International 237

frameworks, norms and practices, operating across multiple spatial scales, through which
such governing occurs (McCarthy & Prudham, 2004).
A central feature of this approach is that, while it recognizes the importance of spatial
scale as a component of water governance, there is no prescribed, privileged scale at
which governance should take place. The concept of water governance may be applied to
a diversity of scalar arrangements: watershed-based forms of management; canal-based
irrigators’ associations; municipal service providers; international water forums; etc. But if
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analysts of water governance do not specify a preferred scale of action, they are insistent
that hydrosocial scale is central to policy implementation and political action. Scale is
central to water governance to the extent that governance schemes unfailingly target or
privilege given spatial scales of hydrology or water management: canal-based irrigation
systems, municipal drinking water systems, and transnational compacts are just a few
examples (Bridge & Perreault, 2009). Little wonder, then, that the watershed appears as a
seemingly natural scale for managing water. Watersheds appear natural and tangible, and
therefore as the ideal scale for managing complex hydrosocial relations. But as Molle
(2009) and others have pointed out, watershed management is shot through with pro-
blems, not the least of which is the spatial malleability of the concept itself. Which of the
multiple nested watersheds forms the proper scale for governance? And the concept seems
to lose analytical purchase altogether when we consider the effects of trans-basin diver-
sions, the drilling of deep wells, or desalination (Cohen & Davidson, 2011).
Scale cannot be understood apart from a theory of space; and like space, scale is
socially produced. That is, particular spatial scales emerge out of the historically sedi-
mented frictions of social relations, and as such are inherently political. In other words,
like space itself, scale is socially produced, as an outcome of social practices, perceptions
and relationships over time. Moreover, scale is a relational concept, which only has
meaning relative to other scales. As McCarthy (2005, p. 738, emphasis in original) points
out in parsing the politics of scale, it is

impossible to separate out the delineation of any single scale from relationships among scales.
More precisely, the establishment of scales as spatially organised and differentiated units of
socio-spatial organization . . . unavoidably occurs in relationship to other scales: the delinea-
tion or elimination of any particular scale as an arena, locale, place, or so on is always done
relative to other scales and the relationships among them, and necessarily introduces changes
into their ordering and hierarchies.

In other words, the politics involved in the production and differentiation of scale (e.g.
efforts to establish water users’ associations within a city, or for rights to irrigation within
a river basin) are inseparable from the relationships between scales established through
processes of scale ordering (e.g. the delineation of use rights on the part of particular
groups relative to the use rights of others).
As debates concerning watershed management have demonstrated, the choice of scale
for water governance is not politically neutral (Cohen & Davidson, 2011; Molle, 2009).
To the extent that particular scales for water governance are seen as ‘natural’ and
immutable (e.g. watershed management, canal-scale irrigation), they run the risk of
obscuring the politics that lie behind the production of such scales. This, then, is a scalar
and spatial expression of Tania Murray Li’s notion of “rendering technical”: scale choice
in this sense becomes a technique of government, a conceptual machine for manufacturing
consent while treating political struggles and power relations as mere technical problems
to be resolved through the right mix of administrative policy and hydraulic infrastructure.
 238 T. Perreault

It is here that the notion of ‘waterscape’ serves as an analytical corrective to the

simplistic scalar assumptions inherent in much water governance policy. Budds and
Hinojosa (2012) examine the waterscape not as an alternative scale to the ‘watershed’
but rather as a co-produced socio-natural entity, “in which social power is embedded in,
and shaped by, both water’s material flow and its symbolic meanings, and which becomes
embodied in, and manifested through, a wide array of physical objects and forms of
representation” (p. 124). Budds and Hinojosa define ‘waterscape’ as “the ways in which
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flows of water, power and capital [and here we might productively add ‘labour’] converge
to produce uneven socioecological arrangements over space and time, the particular
characteristics of which reflect the power relations that shaped their production” (p.
124). The concept of waterscape permits analysis of the metabolic relationship between
water and society within a given socio-spatial milieu. Importantly, a waterscape does not
exist at a fixed, pre-given spatial scale. Rather, as Budds and Hinojosa (2012) assert, a
waterscape is a “sociospatial configuration” constituted by the interrelationships between
social and geo-ecological processes that incorporate but in most cases extend beyond any
given watershed. As such, waterscapes may entail social or natural processes, social
relations, institutions or artefacts not physically proximate to the watershed in question.
Examples might include investment capital for the construction of dams and canals,
legislation granting or prohibiting rights to access, social arrangements such as regional
water management boards or irrigators’ associations, or built infrastructure such as wells,
canals, water meters, dams, or sewage treatment facilities. In contrast to the fixed,
administratively predetermined spatial scale of the watershed, the scale of a waterscape
is analytically flexible, and thus attentive to uneven relations of power. This networked
view of hydrosocial relations highlights the place-based material effects of processes,
relations and phenomena that may be spatially or temporally distant (Budds & Hinojosa,
2012; Loftus, 2006; Swyngedouw, 2004). Crucially, a waterscape perspective highlights
the power relations that flow through, are reflected in, and are reproduced by these
complex assemblages (Perreault et al. 2012). This discussion leads us to the next,
which addresses equity, justice, and rights, in relation to water governance.

Equity, justice and rights

This special issue revolves around the concept of equity in water governance. The
American Heritage Dictionary (1992) defines ‘equity’ in part as “the state, quality, or
ideal of being just, impartial, and fair; Justice applied in circumstances covered by law yet
influenced by principles of ethics and fairness”. Similarly, as Boelens (1998, p. 16) notes,
“Equity is about fairness, about ‘social justice’, about the ‘acceptability’ of something.. . .
Equity is directly related to rules and rule-making processes and to the exchange and
distribution of material or immaterial resources in specific social settings.” Though brief
and incomplete for our purposes here, these definitions go some way toward opening a
line of inquiry for understanding equity. Equity is fairness. Equity is impartiality. Equity is
something defined in law, and yet informed by deeper ethical principles. Equity is justice.
Indeed I would argue that the notion of equity in water governance cannot be understood
apart from a theory of justice. A call for equity alone does not get us very far in
understanding the complexities of water governance. As a stand-alone concept, equity
speaks most immediately to the present, and in the context of water governance can refer
primarily to distributional issues: fairness in access to drinking water and sewerage, to
water for irrigation, in exposure to pollution. But equity falls short when considering
historical processes of exclusion or social struggle, or in the context of political claims and
 Water International 239

culturally rooted understandings of water. How do we determine equity in the face of

incommensurable claims to water – for instance, between the abstraction of water for
large-scale mining operations versus small-scale agriculture (such as in the Huanuni
Valley)? How do we weigh subsistence in poor households against electricity generation
in regional hydroelectric schemes? When these uses are in direct contradiction, the
language of equity is only partially useful.
I would argue, then, that we must link our discussions of equity to a theory of justice
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and a critical understanding of rights. Social and environmental justice can be thought of
in many ways, and a full review of the concept of justice is far beyond the scope of the
present article. Perhaps the two most commonly mobilized conceptualizations of justice
are distributional justice and procedural justice. These are, I think, the forms of justice that
most resemble the concept of ‘equity’: fairness achieved through pre-established rules of
distribution and procedure. Justice, in this sense, can be achieved by ordering society from
behind Rawls’ (1971) ‘veil of ignorance’, or by assuring access to due process and the
rule of (mutually recognized and universally applied) law. Surely these are necessary
conditions, but far from sufficient for achieving social justice. Here, other forms of justice
emerge as necessary. Justice as ‘recognition’ – akin to the ‘right to have rights’ – takes
into account the need for the socially excluded to be acknowledged as legitimate clai-
mants, to be recognized as having valid political, social and cultural standing, as a
precondition for other forms of justice (cf. Boelens, 2009). These are the so-called
‘third-generation rights’ to collective recognition for indigenous peoples, ethnic and
sexual minorities, etc.1
Amartya Sen’s notion of capabilities is particularly helpful in this regard. For Sen
(2001), ‘capability’ refers to an individual’s capacity to achieve certain basic needs in
society, as mediated by institutional frameworks such as law, rights and societal norms. A
capabilities approach emphasizes ‘positive freedoms’ – the right, ability, or capacity to do
or achieve something – as opposed to ‘negative freedoms’, or freedom from an external
constraint. Sen argues that governments should be measured according to their citizens’
actual capabilities – their freedoms to achieve desired ends – as opposed to the idealized
formal rights they are legally accorded. In this view, justice is the maximization of
everyone’s human potential, achieved by both material provision of basic needs (water,
food, shelter) and the social institutions necessary for everyone to attain them. As such,
the provision of water (and food and shelter and other basic necessities) is a means to an
end – not the end itself (Bakker, 2010). This, for Sen, constitutes the very meaning of
development – the freedom to fulfil one’s capabilities infers other bundles of rights, and
cannot be viewed in isolation from the institutional arrangements through which rights are
allocated, nor the physical infrastructure through which resources such as water are
delivered. This, then, is a relational view of rights.
Similarly, social justice can be viewed as a kind of relationship between people – a
social relation. We call for justice in relation to someone and something, within the
context of societal norms, practices and institutional arrangements. As Young (1990, p.
25) puts it, “Rights refer to doing more than having, to social relations that enable or
constrain action.” As such, it makes little sense to speak of justice apart from the social
relations of production and reproduction that shape our individual and collective lives.
Further, our discussion of justice, equity and rights must be rooted in an understanding of
political economy. From this perspective, equity in water governance must be examined
from the standpoint of critical engagement with the institutional arrangements of the
market, the state and civil society (to take an overly simplistic model of society) through
which water is allocated and accessed. As is painfully evident in the Huanuni Valley, a
 240 T. Perreault

legal right to water (formally accorded to all Bolivian citizens under the 2009 constitution)
means little to those who lack adequate infrastructure, money, or political influence. As
the Bolivian case illustrates, the specificities of regional political economies need to be
taken into account in any analysis of the right to water.
This recognition brings us to the question of rights, and the relationship between
rights, justice and equity. As Mirosa and Harris (2012) have pointed out, there are many
ways of discussing rights to water. The ‘right to water’ refers to formal, legal recognition
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of an individual or group’s right to water; this differs somewhat from the ‘human right to
water’, which recognizes the right of all people to water sufficient to satisfy basic needs
and human dignity, regardless of their citizenship. And of course these must not be
confused with ‘water rights’, which are more limited and individualized rights to water,
linked directly to the property relation. As Mirosa and Harris point out, specific water
rights for some may in effect deny basic human rights to water for others – particularly
marginalized and vulnerable populations. There is little need here to review the arguments
for the human right to water, or the critiques levelled against it, as they are well rehearsed
in the literature (see, inter alia, Bakker, 2007, 2010; Mirosa & Harris, 2012). It is worth
noting, however, the problems of ‘rights talk’ more generally, and the tendency of rights,
as commonly conceptualized, to be individualized, atomizing, universalistic, state-centric,
and anthropocentric. In the liberal tradition, rights are generally subsumed by, and
subordinated to, liberal and neoliberal logics and the exigencies of capital (Harvey,
2008). As Bakker (2007, 2010) and others have pointed out, there is nothing in the
human right to water that precludes water’s commodification, commercialization or
privatization. The individualized nature of the human right to water also presents a
(potential) contradiction to visions of collective rights to water (and other resources)
held by some indigenous peoples. Indeed, the World Bank has used the human right to
water as a justification for market-based reforms in the water sector, arguing that the
market is the most efficient means by which the poor can gain sufficient access to water.
For both proponents and opponents of water service privatization, the point remains that
designating water as a human right does little to define the institutional arrangements
through which water is allocated and accessed, and thus leaves open the thorny issues of
governance. But, as Bakker (2010), Mirosa and Harris (2012) and others have argued, the
claim of water as a human right does have symbolic and tactical importance.
In her critique of the ‘human right to water’ debates, Bakker (2007) suggests that
viewing water as a collective good and a commons resource, rather than as an economic
good, shifts both the terms of debate and the possibilities for conceptualizing equity in
water governance. For advocates of water service privatization, equity means economic
efficiency, such that consumers should pay the total cost of the burden they impose on the
system, otherwise known as full cost recovery. In contrast, those who view water as a
collective good define pricing in social terms, according to the ability to pay. This implies
a need for cross-subsidy and a recognition of the right to social reproduction (Bakker,
2010). In Sen’s terms, cross-subsidizing water service for the poor would help secure their
capabilities, an end whose attainment would surely be aided by the tactical designation of
water access as a human right (Bakker, 2010; Mirosa & Harris, 2012). Privatization
implies the creation of some sort of property; and property – as a social relation – is
above all the ability to exclude. By contrast, a human right denotes universal need, access
and entitlement, a concept fundamentally opposed to the exclusion implied in the property
relation. Notwithstanding the critiques of ‘rights talk’ from postmodernists and others, we
would do well to acknowledge the political power of the notion of rights, and the
discursive and material potency of rights claims. As Mitchell (2003, p. 25, emphasis in
 Water International 241

original) has written, “Rights establish an important ideal against which the behavior of
the state, capital, and other powerful actors must be measured – and held accountable.”
The ideal of rights – however partial, whatever its limitations – is a political ideal: “at
once a means of organizing power, a means of contesting power, and a means of
adjudicating power, and these three roles are frequently in conflict” (p. 22). It is within
the spaces produced through this conflict that water is governed equitably or not, that
needs are met or not, that justice is attained or not.
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In considering water rights and the right to water, we may benefit from an engagement
with the literature on the ‘right to the city’ (see, inter alia, Attoh, 2011; Harvey, 2008;
Lefebvre 1996[1968]); Mitchell 2003). Claiming a right to the city demands that we
unpack the concept of rights, and the sorts of rights under consideration. As Attoh (2011,
p. 669, emphasis in original) asks, “What kind of right is the right to the city?” This is no
simple question. For Harvey (2008), whose primary concern is the radical democratization
of urban space, the right to the city is more than just a right to participate in decisions
regarding the allocation and administration of goods and services; it extends to control
over the city and the process of urbanization as the motor of capitalist development. For
Harvey, then, the right to the city is ultimately the right to control the means of production
and the distribution of surplus. For Mitchell (2003), whose primary concern is access to
and control of urban public space, the right to the city has as much to do with protection
from democracy – that is, to secure the rights of dissident minorities from what is often
revanchist majority rule (the contested right of homeless persons to benches, parks and
public urination is illustrative here). For Lefebvre, the right to the city is multiform,
encompassing the right to produce urban life free of the constraints and alienation
imposed by capitalist relations of production. The right to the city, of necessity, is a
complex bundle of inter-related rights: “a superior form of rights: rights to freedom, to
individualization in socialization, to habitat and to inhabit. The right to the ouvre, to
participation and appropriation (clearly distinct from the right to property), are implied in
the right to the city” (1996[1968], p. 174, emphasis in original). Thus, for Lefebvre, the
right to the city is the right to inhabit – to social and individual life in all its complexity.
Like Sen’s notion of capabilities, the right to the city is a means to a larger end, that of
meaningful social life and social reproduction. Harvey (2008, p. 23) echoes this senti-
ment: “The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from that of what
kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies and aesthetic values we
desire. The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban
resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.” For Harvey, then, the
right to the city is inherently a collective (rather than individual) right. And as with any
rights, the right to the city is a site of struggle.
The diverse and at times contradictory nature of the ways that rights to the city have
been conceptualized is something of a double-edged sword. For Attoh (2011, p. 670), the
“radical openness” of the concept has the potential to bind together multiple struggles for
justice, even as it exposes fundamental contradictions between majoritarian impulses and
the need to protect minorities from democratic tyranny. How the right to the city is
defined shapes the forms of justice to which it leads, as well as the kinds of cities it
produces. Similarly, how we think about the right to water, about water equity and water
justice, will shape the forms of governance we enact and the spatial and temporal scales at
which we do so.
I do not mean to push this analogy too far, or draw parallels where none exist.
Obviously, water and cities are not equivalent things: water is a resource, while cities
are places, spaces and complex social relations, of which the flow of water is but one
 242 T. Perreault

component. There are, nevertheless, vital points of convergence between the right to the
city and the right to water. Perhaps most obviously, the right to the city presupposes the
right to water, to human dignity, to healthy environments. Moreover, there are important
lessons to be learned in the way we think about the constellation of social relations that
inhere in cities and water: governance, water, justice and equity are all relational concepts,
and, as Iris Marion Young notes, are more about doing than about having. Like the right to
the city, the ‘right to water’ is a deceptively complex, multiform and in some respects
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contradictory set of rights. As social relations, rights are simultaneously institutional

arrangements for organizing power and sites of social struggle. How these rights are
defined shapes the forms and scales of governance enacted and the flows of water to
which they lead. The right to water, no less than the right to the city, matters inasmuch as
struggles over rights are key moments in broader processes of the production of space
(Mitchell, 2003).
Within this recognition, however, lies another: the inherent tension between, on the
one hand, rights to democratic participation in the appropriation of the means of produc-
tion and social reproduction, and, on the other hand, the right of minorities to protection
from democratic tyranny. This, in essence, is the problem of 'legal pluralism': the contra-
diction between collective rights to commons resources and a liberal, individualized
conceptualization of resource rights. In such contexts, how rights to water are defined
and how equity is conceptualized and enacted will in large part determine the forms of
justice and injustice in our waterscapes (Boelens, 1998, 2009). Water governance, as sets
of institutions, laws and rights that structure social action and social relations, produces
both space and scale; and, in dialectical fashion, these spaces and scales shape the
hydrosocial relations and forms of social life we experience.

Conclusion
In what ways does this discussion help us understand the hydrosocial relations in Bolivia’s
Huanuni Valley, where this article began? Water governance in Bolivia, as in so many
other places, is comprised of a patchwork of institutional arrangements, norms, traditional
uses, legal grey areas and sector-specific practices. As often as not, formal law and water
rights are clear and fairly progressive. Bolivia has remarkably strong environmental
legislation. But day-to-day reality is at best an imperfect reflection of legal ideals, and
in practice, water flows to the powerful and the privileged, while all too often the urban
and rural poor do their best to cope with water scarcity, water pollution, or frequently
both. The water problems experienced in the rural Huanuni Valley are of a different
character than those of the urban areas most commonly discussed in the water governance
literature. Much of this literature addresses governance problems related to urban drink-
ing-water systems: privatization and commercialization; inadequate service extension to
peri-urban neighbourhoods; prepaid water meters; etc. In these studies, water is treated as
an environmental good – an essential factor of production and social reproduction – the
core problem of which is access. Seldom do these studies explore the issues of water
quality and pollution – water as an environmental liability, where exposure, rather than
access, is the primary concern (but see Sultana, 2011). This is an unfortunate lacuna.
Water contamination is an enormous concern for the urban as well as the rural poor. Urban
water is subject to a witch’s brew of industrial chemicals, hydrocarbons, sewage, solid
waste and other pollutants, while rural water sources are often contaminated by agricul-
tural runoff, human and animal waste, and, as in cases such as the Huanuni Valley, acid
drainage and toxic effluent from mining operations.
 Water International 243

The residents of the Huanuni River valley are steadily being separated from their
means of production and social reproduction by the inexorable accumulation of toxic
sediments on their agricultural fields, in their animals, and in their own bodies – what I
have elsewhere referred to as a process of “dispossession by accumulation” (Perreault,
2013). The acute water pollution and resulting scarcity in the Huanuni Valley and else-
where highlight the need for greater attention to what Bakker (2010, ch. 7) has referred to
as “ecological governance”, which is simply a recognition that social and ecological
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processes are intimately interrelated and that environmental governance should incorpo-
rate an ethic of ecological care. The power imbalance between the state mining firm and
the indigenous campesino communities downstream, and the socio-ecological catastrophe
to which this has led, merit a rethinking of our key terms. A focus on ‘governance’ or
‘governance failure’ or even ‘equity’ will surely fall short. Here, I would suggest that what
is needed is greater attention to ecological processes and environmental justice. In contrast
to the literature on water governance, the problem of socially differentiated exposure to
pollution has been a cornerstone of environmental justice, as both an academic field and a
sphere of political activism. I do not see this approach as a substitute for careful attention
to water governance but rather as an important and too often neglected component of such
analysis. In other words, we must attend to what Bond (2012, p. 197) has referred to as
the “hydro-socio-ecological connections” that underpin claims to water rights as well as
social and spatial organization more generally. These connections are at once ecological
and political, and need to be understood in terms of social and environmental justice. Just
as the right to the city, as a complex bundle of rights, is the right to inhabit the city – to
the resources and services necessary for dignified life, and to appropriation of the means
of production and social reproduction – so too the institutional arrangements and spatial
scales we employ for governing water must address questions of individual and collective
fulfilment, democratization, material relations of production, and ecological sensitivity.
Our forms of water governance must address the human right to water not as an end in
itself but as a means to attaining the broader objective of a just society. Only by viewing
water and society as simultaneously social and natural, and thoroughly political – as a
densely woven hydro-socio-ecological fabric – can we address both ecological govern-
ance and environmental justice. These ideas are taken up in various forms by the other
articles in this special issue. Through empirically rich analyses, the authors examine the
relationships among water rights, governance, equity and justice. My hope is that this
article helps provide a conceptual frame for these analyses.

Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the support of colleagues with the Centro de Ecología y Pueblos Andinos and the
Coordinadora para la Defensa del Río Desaguadero y Lagos Uru Uru y Poopó in Oruro, Boliva.
This article was inspired in part by my interaction with the Justicia Hídrica (Water Justice) network,
based in Wageningen, the Netherlands. Special thanks to Ben Crow, Flora Lu, Constanza Ocampo-
Raeder and Sarah Romano for their encouragement, and for inviting me to participate in the
workshop on equitable water governance which formed the basis for this special issue.

Note
1. ‘First-generation rights’ refers to individual liberties to speech, assembly, religion, etc. estab-
lished in Enlightenment-era documents like the US Constitution and Bill of Rights and Thomas
Paine’s Rights of Man. ‘Second-generation rights’ refers to the socio-economic rights to a fair
wage, collective bargaining and the like, established in the context of industrial capitalism and
 244 T. Perreault

the labour struggles it engenders. These were widely established and codified in law during the
early twentieth century, particularly in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Great
Depression. ‘Third-generation rights’ to collective identity and recognition have been estab-
lished through the UN and its agencies such as the International Labour Organization (e.g. ILO
(1989) Convention No. 169 on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples), and more recently by state
governments. See Attoh (2011) for a fuller discussion.
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