Can water accountability help tackle the climate crisis?
Women and child walk through floodwaters in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo: Kompas/Hendra A Setyawan (creative commons)
Any way you look at it, there is no getting round the centrality of water in the climate crisis. Floods, droughts, shifting weather patterns – all herald the need for changing practices in how we use, manage, and distribute water. By 2050, the number of people at risk of floods will increase from its current level of 1.2 billion to 1.6 billion, and the number of people living in potential severely water-scarce areas will increase from 2.7 to 3.2 billion people. Growing competition for freshwater resources, rising uncertainties, and spiralling demand – at a time when basic rights to safe drinking water are already denied to 1.1 billion people - all indicate the need for responsive and accountable water governance. Without it, the consequences could be deadly.
This is not to imply an inevitable tragedy of the commons. The economist Elinor Ostrom has long pointed out that communities are capable of devising solutions through informal institutions and collective governance arrangements adapted to fit their needs over time. It does however show the need for mechanisms to hold the authorities that manage and distribute water accountable. Without strong provisions to ensure fair and equitable use, the risk of ‘water grabs’ by agribusiness or industrial consumers will grow ever more pronounced.
Though it may not have been explicit in Ostrom’s work, accountability remains a crucial, often overlooked part of the puzzle in managing shared resources. Ostrom’s eight principles for managing the commons included ‘rules should fit local circumstance’, ‘participatory decision making’, and ‘regular monitoring of the commons,’ ‘graduated sanctions for abuse’ and ‘accessible conflict resolution’ all of which – as our evidence review confirms - are key tenets of accountable water governance.
Unless communities are able to hold authorities to account and defend their rights, powerful agents are liable to pollute water resources, or appropriate and divert water to their own ends; as has been observed, ‘water no longer flows downhill. It flows towards money.’ From the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement) resisting mega-dams in India in the late 1990s, to the ‘water protectors’ of Standing Rock protesting against an oil pipeline through indigenous lands in North Dakota three years ago, there are many iconic examples of communities organising to resist the appropriation or despoliation of water for the ostensible purposes of ‘development’. However, the climate crisis brings a newfound urgency to these struggles. Not only do many high carbon industries have an outsized water impact, from the methane pollution of fracked gas, to the irrigation demands and fertiliser run-off of input intensive industrial farming, and the perennial oil spills that blight the Niger Delta. They also bear culpability for concealing or downplaying their negative impact on public policy.
In an era of climate disruption, accountability mechanisms can be mobilised to strengthen sustainable and equitable water outcomes. Public hearings, debate and dialogue processes, public interest litigation, freedom of information and media campaigns – already, each of these tools has proven their worth in the face of government intransigence or corporate negligence. Such mechanisms are vital to force companies to disclose the impacts of their activities on water use and quality, and strengthen formal governance systems by ensuring that regulatory institutions have the ‘teeth’ to drive systemic change. Accountability tools in the water sector can therefore help to secure the necessary resources for climate adaptation, prevent harmful practices, and protect the carbon sinks (peatlands, tropical forests) that help maintain a stable water cycle.
Stronger accountability for water is an important contribution to the struggle for climate justice. Accountability mechanisms for water can empower citizens to push governments on their climate commitments, ensure corporations take seriously their obligations for water stewardship, and strengthen water governance for a fair water future.
- Benjamin Brown, Research and Communications Officer, Water Witness