Editorial: Innovating a new knowledge base for water justice studies: hydrosocial, sociohydrology, and beyond

Editorial on the Research Topic
Innovating a new knowledge base for water justice studies: hydrosocial, sociohydrology, and beyond

Introduction

Creating a new knowledge base that centers water justice (Zwarteveen and Boelens, 2014; Sultana, 2018; Wölfle-Hazard, 2022) in hydrosocial and sociohydrology studies involves a broader discussion about why justice matters, how to work toward this goal, and what the implications for research praxis are. The articles in this Research Topic approach different angles of water justice: as law (Fernández and Alba), a social movement (Dame et al.), practice (Pool et al.; Reeves and Bonney), cases of injustice (Caretta et al.), and theory (Krueger and Alba). From this Research Topic, we find that the interrelated concepts of naturecultures and care can be mobilized to create fruitful collaborations between critical social scientists and sociohydrologists.

Why water justice matters: recognizing many naturecultures

Interests in water justice are emerging from hydrologists attentive to better including the social in their work (Sivapalan et al., 2012) and social scientists who conceptualize water as both social and natural (Swyngedouw, 1999; Baviskar, 2007; Bakker, 2010; Linton and Budds, 2014; Boelens et al., 2016). Grappling with ways to recognize that nature and culture are always entangled, Haraway's term naturecultures (Haraway, 2008) is useful. Rather than stemming from distinct cultural beliefs or valuations attaching themselves to a same natural “out-there,” naturecultures recognize that differences between places stem from specific and local ways of doing, practicing, and knowing (Haraway, 2008; Linton, 2019, 2022). Without one same nature, there also is no longer one true water. More waters are possible, and the question of which one is best or truest is always social.

In this Research Topic, Fernández and Alba show with the example of lithium mining in the Andean salt flats of Chile how capitalistic corporations foreground an analysis that differs from that of Indigenous peoples. Corporations argue that residual brine from mining should be considered a mineral since brine is not potable for human consumption (i.e., brine does not benefit culture). Some Indigenous groups instead argue that the brine can seep into aquifers and affect their communities (i.e., brine cannot be separated from nature or culture). Brine as mineral—as it is currently defined—provides corporations with legal backing and de-legitimizes Indigenous claims on water and land. Which worldview(s) is/are adopted has real implications for people and the environment.

In the Upper Huasco Valley of Chile, Dame et al. explore how water justice activists mobilize another definition of water than corporations. Their accusations that corporations “killed” glaciers enact water as more-than-hydrological, and, indeed, as mortal. Responses to water contaminated by mining underscore how different ways of defining and knowing water are entangled with different ways in which people relate to water. Both corporations' and Indigenous peoples' definitions of water foreground their specific relations with it: as a source of profitmaking, or as a neighbor to be respected. A new knowledge base for water justice needs to embrace the existence of different knowledges while recognizing where they originate and which/whose interests and worldviews they endorse.

Working toward water justice by mobilizing care

Engaging with water justice not only entails exposing injustices, but also creating the conceptual and political space for solidarity, compassion, concern, and the desire to share and live well together with human and more-than-human others. Mobilizing languages of care provides positive inspiration for ways of using, managing, and governing nature/the environment in more relational, connected, intimate, and grounded/terrestrial (Latour, 2018) ways.

Pool et al. use care in a research collaboration with the Akiak Native Community (ANC) in Alaska, USA, to center Tribal sovereignty and self-determination in developing a rainwater harvesting system. Care was taken to ensure the cultural appropriateness of the solution—for example, reconnecting with intergenerational ways of gathering water and safeguarding individual access from physical or political barriers. ANC directed the project while non-ANC researchers adjusted to their culture and norms. After all, caring requires more than well-wishing; it requires getting involved in some concrete way (van Dooren, 2014; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017).

Reeves and Bonney embed water justice into the research process through their work with rural coastal communities in East Gippsland, Australia. Their project, Living Bung Yarnda, engaged scientists, environmentalists, government agencies, and Traditional Owners Groups around a shared justice vision of personhood to advocate on behalf of the waterway and those who live there. Participants offered deep knowledge that might not be recognized in traditional academic science—lake measurements, fire response, archives, plant species, and more. Water justice, in this instance, goes beyond materialities to a practice of care and stewardship.

Water justice implications for research praxis

Caretta et al. established a new research praxis between human geographers and hydrologists observing flood impacts in West Virginia, USA. Hydrologists analyzed weather, terrain, and land cover data, while human geographers collected interview data. Integrating the datasets, they found that infrastructure and disaster response resources were prioritized for economically rich communities while neglecting underinvested communities. The model they developed together integrates social and hydrological variables to explore both generalizable and expansionist approaches to floods that can reveal injustice in water systems.

The above shows how collaborations between natural and social scientists can contribute to developing hydrological models that are more attuned to questions of power and justice (Rusca et al., 2023). Moreover, addressing questions of justice in models is not only an ethical matter but also one that determines a model's reliability and explanatory power. For Krueger and Alba in this Research Topic, recognizing that modelers' decisions are not neutral, are situated in a specific moment in history, and are shaped by the modelers' positionality can allow hydrologists and social scientists to collaborate more meaningfully. Without a priori judgments about which knowledges or technologies are best, differences between them can be celebrated to enrich thinking, improving the ability to face new problems and adapt to new situations. The implication is that different worlds or realities can co-exist without the need to map them onto familiar and often hierarchical binaries—such as those between margin or center, or indeed nature and culture.

This importantly entails challenging the hegemony and universality of “modern” water—the “natural” water that forms the basis of hydrology that tends to serve dominant interests. Recognizing that modern water is just one possible version paves the way for acknowledging and legitimizing other waters, including those based on subaltern experiences or anchored in Indigenous wisdoms (Linton, 2010; Yates et al., 2017; Zwarteveen et al., 2017). Actively making space for the pluralization of waters, and of water knowledges, is, therefore, an essential pathway to water justice. It comes with the careful crafting of new relations of accountability between hydrologists, social scientists, and those whose realities they intervene in.

Author contributions

MH: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. RL: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. JL: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. JM: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. JN: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. RP-V: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. MR: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. MZ: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

Funding

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the authors of the Research Topic articles and the peer reviewers. We are deeply grateful to the 1st Sociohydrology Conference Delft 2021 for organizing this Research Topic.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

References

Bakker, K. (2010). The limits of “neoliberal natures”: Debating green neoliberalism. Progr. Hum. Geogr. 34, 715–735. doi: 10.1177/0309132510376849

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Baviskar, A. (2007). Waterscapes: The Cultural Politics of a Natural Resource. Delhi: Permanent Black.

Google Scholar

Boelens, R., Hoogesteger, J., Swyngedouw, E., Vos, J., and Wester, P. (2016). Hydrosocial territories: a political ecology perspective. Water Int. 41, 1–14. doi: 10.1080/02508060.2016.1134898

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Haraway, D. (2008). Companion Species, Mis-recognition, and Queer Worlding. Queering the Non/human, xxiii-xxxvi. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press.

Google Scholar

Latour, B. (2018). Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Google Scholar

Linton, J. (2010). What Is Water? The History of a Modern Abstraction. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.

Google Scholar

Linton, J. (2019). “The right to bring waters into being,” in Water Politics Governance, Justice and the Right to Water, eds. F. Sultana and A. Loftus (London: Routledge), 54–67.

Google Scholar

Linton, J. (2022). Waters in the plural: approaches and opportunities for more grounded research and management. Geocarrefour 96:19295. doi: 10.4000/geocarrefour.19295

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Linton, J., and Budds, J. (2014). The hydrosocial cycle: defining and mobilizing a relational-dialectical approach to water. Geoforum 57, 170–180. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.10.008

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Puig de la Bellacasa, M. P. (2017). Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds, Vol. 41. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota Press.

Google Scholar

Rusca, M., Mazzoleni, M., Barcena, A., Savelli, E., and Messori, G. (2023). Speculative political ecologies:(re) imagining urban futures of climate extremes. J. Polit. Ecol. 30.

Google Scholar

Sivapalan, M., Savenije, H. H., and Blöschl, G. (2012). Socio-hydrology: a new science of people and water. Hydrol. Process. 26, 1270–1276. doi: 10.1002/hyp.8426

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Sultana, F. (2018). Water justice: why it matters and how to achieve it. Water Int. 43, 1–11. doi: 10.1080/02508060.2018.1458272

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Swyngedouw, E. (1999). Modernity and hybridity: nature, regeneracionismo, and the production of the Spanish waterscape, 1890-1930. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 89, 443–465. doi: 10.1111/0004-5608.00157

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

van Dooren, T. (2014). Care. Environ. Human. 5, 291–294. doi: 10.1215/22011919-3615541

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Wölfle-Hazard, C. (2022). Underflows: Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

Google Scholar

Yates, J. S., Harris, L. M., and Wilson, N. J. (2017). Multiple ontologies of water: politics, conflict and implications for governance. Environ. Plan. D Soc. Space 35, 797–815. doi: 10.1177/0263775817700395

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Zwarteveen, M., Kemerink-Seyoum, J. S., Kooy, M., Evers, J., Guerrero, T. A., Batubara, B., et al. (2017). Engaging with the politics of water governance. Wiley Interdiscipl. Rev. 4:e1245. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1245

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar

Zwarteveen, M. Z., and Boelens, R. (2014). Defining, researching and struggling for water justice: some conceptual building blocks for research and action. Water Int. 39, 143–158. doi: 10.1080/02508060.2014.891168

Crossref Full Text | Google Scholar