Comparative Water Governance in urban sites of Africa Research Project (CWGAR) – Project Complete (2019)

EDGES team:

Leila Harris, Lucy RodinaScott McKenzie, Emma Luker, Crystal Tremblay, Julian S. Yates

Past team members: Cynthia MorinvilleMegan PelosoElizabeth Koryoo Dapaah.

Partners:

Jacqueline Goldin, Associate Professor, SADC-WaterNet Chair in Water and Society, Institute for Water Studies, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of the Western Cape.

Akosua Darkwah, Department of Sociology and Centre for Gender Study and Advocacy, University of Ghana-Legon.

Jacob Songsore, Department of Geography, University of Ghana-Legon

Environmental Monitoring Group , Cape Town, South Africa

Iliso Care Society, Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa

ISODEC, Accra, Ghana

Project description:

The CWGAR project is a multi-year, multi-sited, research project of the EDGES (Environment   and Development: Gender Equity and Sustainability) research collaborative, led by Dr. Leila Harris. The project involves several current EDGES members: Lucy Rodina, Emma Luker, Scott McKenzie, Dr. Crystal Tremblay, and Dr. Julian S Yates, as well as a number of EDGES alumni (Cynthia Morinville, Megan Peloso and Elizabeth Dapaah). The team is based out of the University of British Columbia, with partners at the University of Ghana-Legon and at the University of Western Cape, South Africa. We also have several collaborations with faculty members at University of Cape Town and with several NGOs (Environmental Monitoring Group and Iliso Care Society in Cape Town, and ISODEC in Accra). EDGES work is broadly concerned with research on marginalized and vulnerable populations (e.g., women, the impoverished, work in underserved sites) and seeks to deepen knowledge and advance action on equity dimensions of socio-institutional questions related to resource use, access, and politics. This project is not exception, focused on underserved sites in Accra, and Cape Town, with particular interest in water access, use, governance and narratives. EDGES work draws from diverse research traditions and methods, including those associated with political ecology, feminist and postcolonial research, critical development studies, and coupled social-ecological systems approaches. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been used for the project, including interviews, focus groups, document and policy analysis, participatory video, and statistical analysis of several surveys.

The CWGAR project has a specific focus on water access and governance in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa. Our on-going studies focus on the intersections of water access/governance and citizenship in impoverished urban, peri-urban and underserved sites (e.g., Khayelitsha and Phillippi in South Africa, and Ashaiman, and Teshie in Accra). The project also analyzes broad water governance trends in South Africa and Ghana, including the effects of neoliberal policies and market instruments in the water realm (including privatization, devolution and participatory governance, full-cost recovery measures, and so forth.) A key goal of the project is to draw out and analyze meanings and narratives related to water access and governance, key considerations related to the practice and implementation of the human right to water, and links to debates and practices linked to citizenship and democracy. Taken together, an overarching goal of the project is to provide textured understandings of the lived effects of neoliberalization processes and the everyday experiences of water access and governance in urban informal or underserved settlements.

Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC, and the Center for International Governance Innovation, the primary objectives of this project are:

1) To analyze the effects and experiences of shifts in contemporary water governance among relatively impoverished and underserved communities in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa

2) To analyze relationships between water use, access, governance, and citizenship

3) To develop new approaches for narrative analysis, particularly for political ecology

4) To contribute to policy debates regarding possibilities for extending water access and promoting participatory governance, particularly in underserved areas.

We also aim to work with partners in each context to promote research capacity and to disseminate knowledge.

Project timeline:

2011 

Work led by C. Morinville on participatory water governance and services in several sites in Accra, including in Teshie, Nima, Sukura. This resulted in several publications, including: Policy brief for the Centre for International Governance Innovation , chapter in Contemporary Water Governance in the Global South (2013) and publication in Ecology and Society (2014).

2012

Implementation of a 487 household survey implemented with UWC-AOW (J. Goldin and team) and colleagues at University of Ghana-Legon (A. Darkwah). The survey was conducted in two sites in and around Accra (Teshie and Ashaiman) and two sites in Cape Town (Khayelitsha and Phillipi), using the following survey instruments: South Africa survey instrument 2012  &  Ghana survey instrument 2012.

Ongoing research by two MA students in Accra, C. Morinville and M. Peloso, focused on participatory water governance institutions in Accra (Local Water Boards), and everyday access to water and participatory governance possibilities in Ashaiman. A field debrief and community response forum was organized to solicit feedback on the analysis of the Local Water Boards. The work in Ashaiman resulted in the following publication: Peloso and Morinville, Water Alternatives, 2014, documenting everyday practices involved in procuring water for daily needs that routinely lead residents outside of the official water supply system.

In South Africa, initial qualitative field-work was conducted in Khayelitsha, South Africa (L. Rodina), in collaboration with the Iliso care society.  Interviews with NGOs and government officials were conducted in both Accra and Cape Town, undertaken by all members of the project team (L. Harris and L. Rodina). Thus far, this research has resulted in two publications, one focused on lived experiences of the human right to water, Rodina (2016), and one on notions of citizenship and the state in relation to water services and infrastructure in Khayelitsha (Rodina and Harris, 2016).

2013

Field debrief with community members in Khayelitsha based on MA research by L. Rodina, facilitated by Iliso Care Society and the Environmental Monitoring Group. Field work in Accra Ghana in Madina and Ga Mashie, focused on water access and governance, led by MA student Elizabeth Koryoo Dapaah. This work involved a 200 household survey, in addition to a range of interviews with local government officials and community members.

2014 and 2015

Follow-up and ongoing collaboration related to all of the above, in addition to initiation of a participatory video project, led by SSHRC post-doctoral fellow Dr. Crystal Tremblay. Participatory video workshops were conducted in Site C, Khayelitsha in collaboration with the Iliso Care Society and with support from the Environmental Monitoring Group; and in Teshie, Accra, in partnership with ISODEC.  The video ‘Water is Life’ is a collaboration with ISODEC documents community challenges related to water and sanitation in Teshie, Accra. The film ‘It’s Your Chance’ is a co-production with the Iliso Care Society in Khayelitsha based on community interviews youth conducted on water and sanitation concerns in the community (Site C, Khayelitsha).  These videos have been screened in both communities and used in focus groups with local government officials as a communication and action research tool to raise awareness on issues related to water and sanitation.  A number of publications are currently underway including a book chapter and journal article exploring themes related to arts-based engagement, citizenship and participatory public policy.

2016

As detailed below, several current research projects are currently underway (L. Rodina, E. Luker, S. Mckenzie, and J.S. Yates). For six months in 2016, Leila Harris is also enjoying residence as a Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS).  In August 2016, several of the EDGES crew worked to organize and host a Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies funded workshop on Water Equity and Resilience in Southern Africa, with co-funding from SSHRC, NEPAD Water Centers of Excellence, the South African Water Resources Commission and several other sponsors. The workshop brought together approximately 35 scholars and activists from throughout southern Africa, as was a great success. More details to be provided on the workshop website as soon as they are available. Additionally, L. Rodina and L. Harris participated in a workshop on Water Equity and Resilience led by Gina Ziervogel and Lorena Pasquini of the University of Cape Town and Mark Pelling of King’s College London. We are also working together with our partner, the Environmental Monitoring Group, in support of a workshop they are organizing in October: Multi-stakeholder Symposium: Citizen Engagement in Local Water Governance.

2017

Dr. Lucy Rodina published an op-ed in The Conversation on the situation of water management in Cape Town, as the city was in the midst of facing one of its worst droughts in over a century. Scott McKenzie conducted his field work in Cape Town and Accra, focusing on community groups and those in the legal profession who were working collaboratively to address water related issues. Emma Luker successfully defended her MSc thesis and graduated. Her thesis was titled “Transitioning towards water supply diversification : possibilities for groundwater in Cape Town, South Africa

2018

Dr. Leila Harris was a Scholar in residence with the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC. Among other engagements, she presented a seminar titled “Implementing, Narrating, and Resisting the Human Right to Water” at Texas A&M University and also at Ohio University as part of the Global Solidarities speaker series. Also, together with Prof. Jiaying Zhao and Martine Visser, Professor Harris wrote an op-ed in The Conversation to discuss key tactics to enable water savings in the city of Cape Town.  Dr. Lucy Rodina successfully completed her PhD and graduated. Her dissertation was titled “Tracing and situating water resilience across scales.”  Emma Luker published her work on groundwater governance focused on Cape Town (see bibliography below). Dr. Crystal Tremblay led the publication of a piece in Geoforum on our participatory video work in Cape Town and Accra. Professor Harris was also invited to join the steering committee of the HWISE-RCN, a research network on household water insecurity that significantly broadens and extends the work we have done in the two sites that were the focus of this project, also putting our work into conversation with a range of interdisciplinary scholars working in diverse contexts. 

2019

Prof. Jacqueline Goldin completed a related special issue of Human Geography (Hydro-social Intersections, Volume 12, Number 1, 2019). This special issue captures key themes and case study material thus adding to the body of knowledge and understanding of resilience and vulnerability in the southern Africa region and beyond. Several CWGAR members published as part of a special forum of IJURR on Water Scarcity beyond Crisis, focusing on the work in Accra. Dr. Lucy Rodina published several articles on themes of water resilience, including focus on the case of Cape Town, while Leila Harris published a piece on state-society dimensions of water services in the journal Environment and Planning C, and a chapter based on what she presented at an earlier meeting in Paris was published (see full list below).  

The majority of the work for the CWGAR project has been completed. Scott McKenzie continues to analyze data and draft articles related to his research in Cape Town and Accra, while Professor Harris continues to work on themes of the human right to water, links to democracy, narrative methods, and follow on work related to non-material dimensions of water insecurity.  Parallel efforts related to the International WaTERS Network also wrapped up with the launch of the online training modules, link here

Related research efforts include the following:

Lucy Rodina’s doctoral work looks at the intersection of water governance, climate change and resilience in Cape Town using a political ecology lens. This doctoral study aims to investigate key themes in resilience thinking as they apply to urban water governance, with specific attention to droughts, floods and associated water-related risks, such as water pollution. One of the key objectives of this research is to investigate the uptake and use of key constituents of resilience thinking in the context of urban water broadly, both conceptually and in practice. With a specific focus on a case study from South Africa, the goal is to theorize and develop a situated understanding of water resilience – attentive to specific biophysical environments, lived experiences, socio-political and governance contexts, power and marginalization – for water experts and decision makers on one hand, and residents of impoverished, peri-uban and informal settlements on the other. Lucy is conducting fieldwork in Cape Town from April to September, 2016.

Scott McKenzie’s project will investigate the triangulated relationship between citizenship, state provision of water, and space in under-served areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa. Scott is interested in two primary research questions. First, how does water provision, access, and affordability affect notions of constructed and everyday citizenship for relatively impoverished residents living in Accra and Cape Town? Second, how do citizens in these locales engage their civic rights, or discourses of rights, to influence state practices and water provision? Scott is planning to undertake field work on this project in late 2016 and early 2017.

Emma Luker’s project will look at water governance in the face of the recent 2015 drought in Cape Town, South Africa. More specifically, Emma will be focusing on barriers and opportunities for groundwater governance as an emerging dimension of regional water management as compared to the historical focus on surface water management and planning. This work is aimed at producing an analysis of Cape Town’s institutional framework surrounding the integration of groundwater and surface water management with respect to other urban, semi-arid water policy trajectories that are facing similar water constraints as Cape Town. She will be conducting fieldwork in Cape Town from June to September 2016.

Julian S. Yates, a post-doctoral fellow, is currently working with Leila Harris and Crystal Tremblay to analyze the qualitative data collected during the PV project. The projected output is a publication in an international development journal that focuses on the intersection of the neoliberalization of water services and the human right to water as an emerging rule regime.

As a fellow at STIAS, Leila M Harris will be in South Africa from July 2016 to February 2017.  Apart from overseeing different aspects of the project, and writing up results together with other partners, she is also working to conceptualize and write on several of the broad themes related to the research effort, including questions of democracy theory in relation to equity and justice, narrative approaches to political ecological work, and connecting to debates around subjectivity and citizenship, drawing on the multiple layers of work conducted to date.

Our latest project updates can be found here: 20142016 and 2019. This project is now complete.

Related publications:

Rodina, L. (2019). Planning for water resilience: Competing agendas among Cape Town’s planners and water managersEnvironmental Science & Policy 99: 10-16.

Peloso, M., Morinville, C. and L.M. Harris. (2018). Water Scarcity Beyond Crisis: Spotlight on AccraInternational Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Luker, E. and L.M. Harris. (2018). Developing new urban water supplies: investigating motivations and barriers to groundwater use in Cape TownInternational Journal of Water Resources Development. DOI: 10.1080/07900627.2018.1509787

Yates, J. and L. Harris. (2018). Hybrid regulatory landscapes: The human right to water, variegated neoliberal water governance, and policy transfer in Cape Town, South Africa, and Accra, GhanaWorld Development 110: 75-87. 

Dapaah, E.K., Harris, L.M. (2017). Framing a Community’s Entitlement to Water access in Accra, Ghana: A complex realityGeoforum 82: 2-39. Preprint PDF of the article here.

Morinville, C. (2017). Sachet water: regulation and implications for access and equity in Accra, Ghana. WIREs Water. 4:e1244. DOI: 10.1002/wat2.1244

Harris, L.M,  Kleiber, D., Rodina, L, Yaylaci, S., Goldin, J., & G. Owen (2017). Water Materialities and Participatory Governance: Implications of water quality and access for participatory engagement in Accra Ghana and Cape Town, South AfricaSociety & Natural Resources 31(1):89-105.

Luker, E. & L. Rodina (2017). Policy brief: The Future of Drought Management for Cape Town – Summary for Policy Makers. The University of British Columbia, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability.

Beck, T., L. Rodina, E. Luker & L. Harris. (2016). Institutional and Policy Mapping of the Water Sector in South Africa. The University of British Columbia, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability.

Beck, T., L. Harris & E. Luker. (2016). Institutional and Policy Mapping of the Water Sector in Ghana. The University of British Columbia, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability.

Rodina, L. & L. Harris. (2016). Resilience in South Africa’s Urban Waterscape. Opinion piece in The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/resilience-in-south-africas-urban-water-landscape-60461

Rodina, L. (forthcoming). Reflections on water ethics and the human right to water in Khayelitsha, South Africa. In: R. Ziegler and D. Groenfeldt (Eds). Global Water Ethics: Towards a global ethics charter. London and New York, Routledge.

Rodina, L & L. M. Harris (2016). Water Services, Lived Citizenship, and Notions of the State in Marginalised Urban Spaces: The case of Khayelitsha, South AfricaWater Alternatives 9(2): 336-355.

Rodina, L. (2016). Human right to water in Khayelitsha, South Africa – Lessons from a ‘lived experiences’ perspective. Geoforum 72: 58-66. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.04.003

Harris, L. M., Kleiber, D., Goldin, J., Darkwah, A., and C. Morinville (2016). Intersections of Gender and Water: Comparative approaches to everyday gendered negotiations of water access in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa. Journal of Gender StudiesDOI:10.1080/09589236.2016.1150819

Tremblay, Crystal. (2015, December 9). It’s Your Chance – Ithuba Lakhu [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbG_ljQ-hVo

Tremblay, Crystal. (2015, December 4). Water is Life: Participatory Video in Teshie, Ghana [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVZblhLGNqU

Morinville, C. & L.M. Harris (2014) Participation, politics, and panaceas: exploring the possibilities and limits of participatory urban water governance in Accra, Ghana. Ecology and Society 19(3): 36.

Peloso, M & C. Morinville. (2014). ‘Chasing for water’: Everyday practices of water access in peri-urban Ashaiman, GhanaWater Alternatives 7(1): 140-159

Harris, L.M., J.A. Goldin, and C. Sneddon (Eds.) (2013). Contemporary Water Governance in the Global South: Scarcity, Marketization and Participation. London, UK: Routledge.

Harris, L. and Morinville, C. (2013). Improving Participatory Water Governance in Accra, GhanaCenter for International Governance Innovation.

Mirosa, O. and L.M. Harris. (2011). Human Right to Water: Contemporary Challenges and Contours of a Global Debate. Antipode, 44(3): 932–949.

Harris, L.M. (2009). Gender and Emergent Water Governance: Comparative Overview of Neoliberalized Natures and Gender Dimensions of Privatization, Devolution and Marketization. Gender Place and Culture, 16(4): 387-408.

 

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