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3 - Water Grabbing: Practices of Contestation and Appropriation of Water Resources in the Context of Expanding Global Capital

from Part I - Re-Politicizing Water Allocation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2018

By
Gert Jan Veldwisch ,
Jennifer Franco  and
Lyla Mehta
Edited by
Rutgerd Boelens ,
Tom Perreault  and
Jeroen Vos
Rutgerd Boelens
Affiliation:
Wageningen Universiteit, The Netherlands
Tom Perreault
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, New York
Jeroen Vos
Affiliation:
Wageningen Universiteit, The Netherlands
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Summary

Contestation and appropriation of water is nothing new, but has received renewed attention in light of global debates on land grabbing. These large-scale land acquisitions are only the tip of the iceberg of a much wider and deeper process of transformation driven by the further enrolment of natural resources in the global economy. This includes agricultural production, but extends to mining, hydropower development and other businesses. This book chapter demonstrates that the fluid nature of water and its hydrologic complexity often obscure how water grabbing takes place. The fluid properties of water interact with the “slippery” nature of the grabbing processes: unequal power relations; unclear administrative boundaries and jurisdictions, and fragmented negotiation processes. Moreover, grabbing takes place in a field that is locally and globally plural-legal. Formal laws have been instrumental to both land and water grabs but formal water and land management have been separated from each other—an institutional void that makes encroachment even easier. Big land deals not always concretize and the information on current status of many land deals is unsure.
Type
Chapter
Information
Water Justice , pp. 59 - 70
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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