This year’s Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers took place in Tampa, Florida. The EDGES Research Collaborative was represented by two current EDGES students – Elizabeth Dapaah and Lucy Rodina – and and two EDGES alumni – Margaret Morales and Andrea Marston.

Here are quick summaries of the presentations:

Elizabeth Dapaah, Despair and neglect in the middle of abundance: Water Governance and Access in Old Accra, Ghana.
Abstract: Old Accra, also known as “Gamashie” lies in the centre of the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), the richest and most developed administrative region in Ghana. Yet “Gamashie” remains one of the poorest and least served in terms of services. Though, one of the earliest communities to get access to potable (piped) water in the country, population increase, poverty and blighted housing coupled with governmental neglect has led to the collapse of its water infrastructure. This study uses data from a survey of 120 households in “Gamashie”, focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with community stakeholders. Drawing on the vulnerability theory, the study analyzes how households, key community stakeholders and civil society groups negotiate with water providers to manage the water system in “Gamashie”. Results of the study show that, most people in Gamashie” prefer to buy water from vendors; (who enjoy connections to the city’s supply or boreholes) to avoid conflicts within multi-habited house compounds. In this context, water vendors have considerable power to determine the community’s access to water, including pricing, opening and closing times for fetching water. Even with this complex situation, it is also important to note that many do not prioritize direct water access for households, given the preponderance of other livelihood problems. The study concludes that, improving general housing redevelopment and provision of community-managed standpipes is key to addressing the ongoing concerns related to the overstretched and deteriorating water infrastructure systems.

Lucy Rodina, Conceptualizing resilience from lived experiences perspective: the case of informal settlements in Cape Town, South Africa
Abstract: Although the concept of resilience has been conceptualized differently in varied domains, one often shared understanding is that resilience thinking requires defining the boundaries of systems – social, ecological or coupled human-natural systems. Within the water governance context, boundaries tend to be defined at larger scales, for example municipalities or watersheds, often neglecting multiple levels of difference within social systems – a tendency that risks brushing over smaller-scale systems and spaces that are affected differently by large-scale processes. With attention to context specificity, this paper proposes a grounded conceptualization of resilience within the domain of urban water supply systems through the lens of lived experiences. Building on a Master’s research conducted in 2012 and 2013 in Khayelitsha, a semi-informal settlement in Cape Town (South Africa), this work focuses on informal settlements in cities in the Global South, often excluded from formal processes of governance, and therefore also often neglected in policy approaches to enabling or enhancing resilience. Through the lens of lived experiences this paper will investigate the impact of formalization of water access on the resilience of informal communities to climate-induced stresses on urban water supply. The focus on lived experiences will help highlight the past and current challenges with water access for informal settlements and how their residents have and continue to manage these challenges. In addition, the lived experiences approach can help elicit the conditions of current and desired states of water access, which can help envision potential for transformation and enhancing the resilience of informal communities.

Margaret Morales, Citizenshit: The Right to Flush and the Urban Sanitation Imaginary
Abstract: For many in the global North, urban life means that your shit  is not your problem. We forward that a possible reason for the global sanitation failure is a disconnect between urban sanitation expectations – what we term the urban sanitation imaginary – and the practices required by proposed sanitation solutions. The case study presented here is based on interviews with residents of Villa Lamadrid, a marginalized neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which faces significant public health impacts from an inadequate sewage management system. We solicited feedback regarding specific sanitation technologies frequently prescribed for poor urban communities — among them a urine diversion dry toilet (UDDT) with dehydration vaults. Based on these conversations we have defined four aspects of residents’ urban sanitation imaginaries that we consider highly relevant for any consideration of sanitation solutions in this context: 1) an urban citizen does not engage physically or mentally with their shit or its management; 2) an appropriate urban sanitation system requires flushing; 3) systems that require user’s engagement with their shit and its management signify rural, underdeveloped, and backward lifestyles; and 4) urban sanitation is a state responsibility, not a local one. Highlighting the urban sanitation imaginary methodologically and analytically goes beyond a discussion of culturally and contextually appropriate technologies. It examines linkages between user expectations and notions of urban citizenship and modernity. Ultimately it draws attention to the socio-political dynamics and environmental justice issues embedded in any discussion of sanitation and hygiene

Andrea Marston, Strange Bedfellows? Cooperative Mining and the Bolivian State
Abstract:Across Latin America, mineral extraction is booming. While private industry and resuscitated state mining companies are the main protagonists of this extractivist wave, in Bolivia the current boom has also been characterized by a proliferation of mining cooperatives, or groups of independent miners who extract small amounts of mineral from otherwise abandoned mineshafts. Although mining cooperatives have been present in Bolivia since the 1930s, their numbers have spiked dramatically in the last ten years in response to both rising commodity prices and a series of national-level policies that have favored cooperative production. In this paper, I chart the relationship that the current government has maintained with the mining cooperatives since Evo Morales rose to power in 2005. I contend that the mining cooperatives serve two primary functions for the Morales administration: they absorb workers who have been rendered superfluous by market crashes and technological changes, and they minimize protest against mining by campesinos and indigenous groups because of the strong links that exist between mining cooperatives and agricultural communities. I also argue that, in terms of both labor and environmental violations, cooperative mines exemplify the shortcomings of the “Andean-Amazonian capitalism” model promoted by the Morales administration in recent years.