Split Waters: The Idea of Water Conflicts 9780367371753, 9780367466428, 9781003030171

Citation preview

Through case studies and theoretical analyses, this volume brings new value to the study of water conflict. Rather than an obstacle to cooperation, conflict becomes an invitation to explore more deeply the who, why and how of water policy decisions. David Groenfeldt, Director,Water-­Culture Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico The book demonstrates that as society makes and remakes the hydrosocial cycle, frictions occur, slowing down or hastening the flows of power through waters. It offers an invitation to reimagine water conflicts as those innumerable and minute abrasions that occur every day, but are often not recognised as ‘water conflicts’, a term which unfortunately remains globally associated with violent, large-­scale acute disputes. This book will remain a milestone for academic researchers, scholars, practitioners, and activists involved in the ongoing reconceptualisation and reinterpretations of water and water conflicts. Kuntala Lahiri-­Dutt, Professor, Resource, Environment & Development Program, Crawford School of Public Policy,The Australian National University This rich collection highlights conceptual and empirical issues for reconceptualisation of water conflicts, from an insightful introduction, to case studies from India to Bolivia. Moving away from notions of violence, incorporating notions of structural or slow violence, while also engaging contemporary issues such as the water–energy nexus, and conflicts related to the end of the big dam era, the authors have gifted us with a worthwhile and highly recommended contribution. Leila M. Harris, Professor, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability and Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British Columbia It is widely believed that people are willing to fight and die for water, and the notion of widespread water conflicts is a compelling one. By charting the social life of the idea of water conflicts, Spilt Waters powerfully urges us to re-­examine simplistic notions of scarcity and environmental conflicts that can serve to legitimise certain interventions and interests, and also potentially engender more water conflicts. A must-­read for scholars, activists and practitioners striving for water justice. Lyla Mehta, Professor, Institute of Development Studies, UK and Norwegian University of Life Sciences

Split Waters is a fascinating collection of essays that shed new light on the enduring dramas of overt and covert water-­based injustices and socio-­territorial transformations. The authors’ critical, pluralist perspectives also illuminate how those affected by multi-­dimensional water violence engage in socially and politically empowering action to construct dignified livelihoods. A must-­read for students and scholars interested in the grounded understanding and cross-­ disciplinary theorisation of water conflicts, this book constitutes an essential reference. Rutgerd Boelens, Professor,Water Governance & Social Justice, Wageningen University & Professor, Political Ecology of Water, CEDLA/University of Amsterdam

SPLIT WATERS

Limited, finite, contaminated, unavailable or expensive, water divides people all around the globe.We all cannot do without water for long, but can for long enough to fight for it. This commonsensical narration of water conflicts, however, follows a pattern of scarcity and necessity that is remarkably unvaried despite different social and geographical contexts. Through in-­depth case studies from around the globe, this volume investigates this similarity of narration—confronting the power of a single story by taking it seriously instead of dismissing it. In so doing, it invites the reader to rethink water conflicts and how they are commonly understood and managed. This book: •

•

•

Posits the existence of the idea of water conflict, and asks what it is and what it produces, thus how it is used to pursue particular interests and to legitimise specific historical, technological and environmental relations; Examines the meaning and power of ideas as compared to other categories of knowledge, advancing theoretical frameworks related to environmental knowledge, discursive power and social constructivism; Presents an alternative agenda to deepen the conversation around water conflicts among scholars and activists.

Of interest to scholars and activists alike, this volume is addressed to those involved with environmental conflicts, environmental knowledge and justice, disasters and climate change from the disciplinary angles of environmental anthropology and sociology, political ecology and economy, science and technology studies, human geography and environmental sciences, development and cooperation, public policy and peace studies.

Essays by Gina Bloodworth, Ben Bowles, Patrick Bresnihan, Luisa Cortesi, Mattia Grandi, K. J. Joy, Midori Kawabe, Adrianne Kroepsch, Vera Lazzaretti, Leslie Mabon, Renata Moreno Quintero, Madhu Ramnath, Jayaprakash Rao Polsani, Dik Roth, Theresa Selfa, Veronica Strang, Mieke van Hemert, Jeroen Warner, Madelinde Winnubst.

Luisa Cortesi is Assistant Professor, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Hague, The Netherlands; Marie S. Curie Fellow, Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, Freiburg University, Germany; Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, Cornell University, USA. She leads the Water Justice and Adaptation Lab. K. J. Joy is Founding Member and Senior Fellow, Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, India; Convener, Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India.

SPLIT WATERS The Idea of Water Conflicts

Edited by Luisa Cortesi and K. J. Joy

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Luisa Cortesi and K. J. Joy; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Luisa Cortesi and K. J. Joy to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-­in-­Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-­0-­367-­37175-­3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-­0-­367-­46642-­8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-­1-­003-­03017-­1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo SPi Global, India

CONTENTS

Lists of figures ix List of tables xi List of contributors xii Foreword: Under the surface of water conflicts xvi Veronica Strang Acknowledgements xx Luisa Cortesi and K. J. Joy Introduction: Water conflicts: the social life of an idea Luisa Cortesi

1

PART 1

Agential purchase of the idea

27

1 Can’t trust: The boaters of the waterways of south east England versus ‘the charity that makes you homeless’ Ben Bowles

29

2 Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries? Evaluating framings and narrations of risk governance in marine radiation after the Fukushima nuclear accident Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe 3 Room for the river, no room for conflict: Narratives of participation, win-­win, consensus, and co-­creation in Dutch spatial flood risk management Dik Roth, Jeroen Warner and Madelinde Winnubst

51

69

viii  Contents

PART 2

Instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict

93

4 Tocks Island and the end of the big dam era in the USA Gina Bloodworth

95

5 When oil meets water: Debating the hydraulic fracturing energy–water nexus in Colorado Adrianne Kroepsch

117

6 Water and conflicts around religious heritage: Oscillations between centre and periphery? Vera Lazzaretti

135

PART 3

Naturalisation of ecological, technological, historical relations 7 Taming the Cauca river: Community and sugar landowners’ contrasting narratives in addressing flood risk in Valle del Cauca, Colombia Renata Moreno-­Quintero and Theresa Selfa 8 Images of the Nile: How competing narratives frame water disputes Mattia Grandi 9 Infrastructural care and water politics in Cochabamba, Bolivia Patrick Bresnihan

153

155

176 194

10 The negation of change as a narrative strategy of control: The case of the Polavaram mega-dam in India Mieke Van Hemert, Jayaprakesh Rao Polsani and Madhu Ramnath

216

Conclusion: Deepening the conversation around water conflicts K. J. Joy

234

Index247

FIGURES

1.1 Part of an e-­mail sent to the author by a CaRT enforcement office, clearly marking their definition of the ‘places’ in which his boat had been spotted 35 1.2 A map image showing as a line the distance between the water points at Mile End, Angel Islington, and the other Old Ford Lock (River Lea); the population living within this area is made up of those who must rely on the Old Ford Lock (Regent’s Canal). The facilities mooring itself is marked with a pin 42 2.1 Location of Iwaki within Fukushima Prefecture (left) and ports and key fisheries locations within Iwaki (right) 52 3.1 Illustration of the inlet of the proposed retention area of the village Millingen in the Ooijpolder. At a later stage, the water will flow into the village dike ring, the so-­called ‘bathtub effect’ 78 3.2 Kampen as a bathtub (c/o Werkgroep Zwartendijk) 81 5.1 Frequency of coverage of hydraulic fracturing and water resources issues in The Denver Post, Greeley Tribune and (Boulder) Daily Camera from 2007 to 2014, with water resources issues divided between water quantity and quality 123 7.1 Valle del Cauca 159 7.2 Agricultural occupation of the floodplain 160 7.3 Area flooded (000 ha) by year in Valle del Cauca (1950–2011) 162 7.4 Flooding 2011 in Valle del Cauca 163 7.5 A traditional farm in Robles, Jamundí 166 9.1 National Park with ‘improvements’, Cochabamba, Bolivia 200

x  Figures

9.2 New developments and existing agricultural uses in the peri-­urban area of Cochabamba, Bolivia 9.3 Public Address system on the roof of the Tunari water cooperative building. It was directed in all four directions and is used to call the members of the cooperative together—whether for a protest, assembly, work, or celebration 9.4 Aurora water treatment plant, Bolivia 9.5 Mural on treatment plant by Mona Caron

201

202 205 206

TABLES

5.1 Media Sample by Newspaper, News Market, and News and Opinion Coverage 122 5.2 Prevalence of Volumetric Water Framing within Articles Concerned with Water Quantity Issues (N = 83) 125 5.3 Prevalence of Competition Framing within Articles Concerned with Water Quantity Issues (N = 83) 127 5.4 List of Legal Water Sources for Hydraulic Fracturing Use in the South Platte River Basin, as Derived from CDWR et al. (2012) and Interviews with Water Stakeholders and Energy Companies 129

CONTRIBUTORS

Gina Bloodworth has a Ph.D. in Geography and is an associate professor in

Environmental Studies and in Geography at Salisbury University in Maryland. She researches human–environment interactions and specialises in rivers. Previous work includes both large-­scale management on the Delaware River in the Eastern U.S., the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest and local scale water management of agricultural drainage ditch systems in the rural Chesapeake Bay region. Other interests include water issues in Africa, including rivers in the Lake Victoria region of Kenya and the Volta River system in Ghana. Ben Bowles is a social anthropologist with an interest in the materiality and gov-

ernance of water. His Ph.D., from Brunel University in 2015, was the result of fieldwork conducted with itinerant boat-­dwellers, known as Boaters, on the canals and rivers of London and the South East of England. He has recently begun a postdoctoral position at the London School of Economics and Political Science interrogating the resilience of water infrastructures. Ben is also a Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS, University of London. Patrick Bresnihan is assistant professor in the Department of Geography at

Maynooth University. He works across the interdisciplinary fields of political ecology, science and technology studies, and environmental humanities. He has published extensively, including articles on water infrastructure, urban commons in post-crash Dublin, and the poetics of John Clare. His book, Transforming the Fisheries: Neoliberalism, Nature and the Commons (University of Nebraska Press, 2016) won the Geography Society of Ireland Book of the Year in 2018. Luisa Cortesi is an environmental anthropologist who studies water disasters

and climate change, environmental knowledge and technologies, social justice

Contributors  xiii

and sustainable development. She has founded and leads the Water Justice and Adaptation LAB, a platform for collaborative work between scientists and communities on water-­related environmental justice. Holding a dual Ph.D. in anthropology and environmental studies from Yale University, she is assistant professor of Water, Disasters, and Environmental Justice at the International Institute of Social Sciences, Erasmus University; visiting assistant professor of Environment and Sustainability, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, Cornell University; Marie S. Curie fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, Freiburg University. Mattia Grandi currently holds the position of research fellow within the Emerging

Research on International Security Group at the Institute of Law, Politics and Development (Dirpolis) of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (Pisa, Italy). He has extensive experience across Africa, both as researcher and as practitioner in development co-­operation agencies. His research interests include international relations, security studies, environmental studies, hydropolitics, transboundary water management. K. J. Joy is a founding member of and senior fellow with the Society for Promoting

Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, India. He has been an activist-­researcher for more than 30 years, working on people’s rights to natural resources at grassroots and policy levels. His research interests include drought proofing, participatory irrigation and river basin management, water conflicts, water ethics and people’s movements. He coordinates the ‘Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India’, a national level network in India that engages with various types of water conflicts. He has published extensively on water–environment– development issues including the co-­edited book, Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts in the Making (Routledge 2008). Midori Kawabe is a professor in Marine Policy at Tokyo University of Marine

Science and Technology. Her research focuses on coastal and ocean management, with a particular interest in social learning of stakeholders in collaborative management. Since the 2011 nuclear accident, Midori has been working closely with the fisheries sectors of Fukushima by having participatory workshops and café scientifique with natural scientists, fishers and citizens to discuss ways for rehabilitation of the Fukushima coastal area. Adrianne Kroepsch is an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities, Arts, and

Social Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines, the USA. She studies environmental governance in the American West with an emphasis on how discourse, data, and deliberation shape governance processes and outcomes. Vera Lazzaretti is a researcher at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University.

Her research deals with everyday negotiations of religious heritage and the politics of the past in urban contexts of Northern India. Vera also worked on patterns

xiv  Contributors

of sanctification of space in Hinduism as part of her doctoral and post-­doctoral research at the universities of Turin, Milan and Heidelberg. Leslie Mabon is a lecturer in Environmental Systems at the Open University in the

UK. He holds a Ph.D. in human geography, and is especially interested in the governance of complex and ethically contentious environmental issues. Leslie’s research has a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and on working at the science-­policy interface. He has been carrying out empirical research in Fukushima Prefecture since 2014. Renata Moreno-­Quintero is an associate professor in the Social Sciences and

Economics Department at Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, in Cali, Colombia. Her research is focused on water governance, environmental conflicts and the politics of urban sustainability, especially in the Latin-­American context. She pursued her Ph.D. at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science & Forestry, in Syracuse, New York under a Fulbright scholarship. Madhu Ramnath is a botanist and has been living and working with the adi-

vasi people of Bastar, Chhattisgarh (India) for over 30 years. He is the author of Woodsmoke and Leafcups: Autobiographical Footnotes to the Anthropology of the Durwa People (2015). Jayaprakash Rao Polsani is emeritus associate professor in Sociology at Osmania

University, Hyderabad, India. He has been doing research as a social anthropologist among the Konda Reddy people in the Khammam district in Andhra Pradesh (India) since the late 1970s. He has been supporting adivasi (indigenous) people in their legal struggle against the Polavaram dam project since 2005. Dik Roth is an associate professor at the Sociology of Development and Change

Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. With a background in social anthropology, he has done extensive research in Indonesia and has been involved in several research programmes in South Asia. One of his research areas is water governance and water conflicts. In the framework of this topic, he is involved in ongoing research on river interventions in the Netherlands, together with Madelinde Winnubst. Theresa Selfa is a professor in the Environmental Studies Department at the State

University of New York, College of Environmental Science & Forestry in Syracuse, New York. Her research is focused on environmental governance and the politics of agri-­food, energy and water systems, with field-­based research in Latin America and the US. She also studies the use of non-­state governance tools for sustainability and for biotechnology in agriculture.

Contributors  xv

Veronica Strang, professor of social anthropology, is an environmental anthropolo-

gist and the Executive Director of Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study. Her research focuses on human–environmental relations, in particular, people’s engagements with water. She is the author of The Meaning of Water (Berg 2004); Gardening the World: Agency, Identity, and the Ownership of Water (Berghahn 2009); and Water: Culture and Nature (2015). Mieke van Hemert is an independent researcher. She studies socio-­ecological issues

from a science and technology studies (STS) perspective. In her doctoral work, she analysed transdisciplinarity in river science with an eye on the governance of science and the transformation of landscape through theory and technology. Her current action-­oriented research focuses on agro-­ecology and food sovereignty. Jeroen Warner is an associate professor of disaster studies with the Sociology of

Development and Change Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He teaches, trains and publishes on domestic and transboundary water conflict, participatory resource management, and water governance as well as the politics and cultures of disaster. From 2015 to 2017, he coordinated the Horizon 2020 ‘EDUCEN’ project and was special visiting professor at the University of Sao Paulo. Madelinde Winnubst is a senior researcher at the Utrecht University School of

Governance, Utrecht, the Netherlands. One of her research areas is Dutch river projects, particularly infrastructural and spatial interventions, such as bypasses, dike relocations and retention areas. Jointly with Dik Roth, she is doing longitudinal research in this field. Her areas of expertise include government–citizen relationships, participation, citizen involvement, and the role of knowledge and communication.

FOREWORD

Under the surface of water conflicts Anthropologists naturally have interests in conflicts over water, given that these are concerned with people’s fundamental capacities to maintain health and well-­being, to have agency and to flourish. The control and ownership of water offers a precise reflection of social and political relationships within and between societies, and between societies and the non-­human world. Who decides how and where water flows; who benefits from these decisions; and who enjoys secure rights to water: these are the things that reveal the dynamics of power in these relationships, and the extent to which the participants—human and non-­human—are democratically enfranchised or, at the very least, have their needs and interests represented in decision-­making fora. It is therefore a pleasure to be asked to write a foreword for a book that so ably elucidates what it means to have a conflict over water, and the weighty issues that, as Joy observes, lie under the surface of such conflicts like the hidden bulk of an iceberg. The case studies and discussions reveal the underlying factors: the diverse forms of knowledge through which people understand, categorise and evaluate the world, and the deeply embedded cultural beliefs, values, histories, and practices that form their current positions on water issues. The major contribution of the book lies in its focused deconstruction of how these underlying complexities are represented in conflicts over water, in what Cortesi describes as a ‘social life of ideas’: a process through which ideas gain discursive form, are expressed narratively, visually and performatively, and lead to actions and reactions. This draws attention to the fluidity of ideas: their temporality—how they draw on the past and present to create visions of a desired future—and their spatiality, in flowing through social networks and communications media on multiple scales.

Foreword  xvii

Placing representational processes front and centre also illuminates the social and political arrangements through which particular narratives have achieved dominance. It demonstrates the hegemonic nature of ontologies and ideologies that conceptually separate Culture and Nature, and take for granted the right to commandeer water flows to meet political and economic aims. Promoted by governments and powerful commercial interests, such meta-­narratives have become so normalised internationally that they can appear incontestable. Presenting a seductive vision of human capacities to impose order on an unreliable element, and to deliver prosperity, they enable the authoritative imposition of major infrastructures that both materialise particular ideas and values, and carry these forward into the future. In many conflicts, the narratives of the most powerful actors override place-­ based engagements with water that are more sympathetic to the shared interests of local human and non-­human communities. However, few conflicts raise more passion than those affecting people’s relationships with water. Despite the disparities in power that they must confront, smaller or less powerful groups critique, resist and subvert imposed narratives and practices. They protest strenuously to promote their own values and protect their homelands and lifeways. The case studies in this volume offer several ‘David and Goliath’ stories: of boating communities questioning attempts to control their movements; of grassroots protesters resisting major dams, fracking and the privatisation of water; of indigenous communities seeking protection for sentient ancestral landscapes.The examples also draw attention to the multiple scales on which water conflicts can emerge. We see religious leaders drawing upon deep cultural heritage to negotiate shifting balances of power in relation to sacred water places and, at the other end of the scale, transboundary negotiations about water flows between countries trying to navigate national differentials in power and influence. Contested narratives therefore vie for influence on every scale, and the devolution of authority to local ‘stakeholders’ does not assure equality. As is amply demonstrated in the contributing authors’ descriptions of Dutch notions of ‘room for the river’, both in the Netherlands and transported to Colombia, a putative ‘depoliticisation’ of discourses can merely render the underlying conflicts invisible. This is a familiar phenomenon in Australia: the establishment of local or regional river catchment management groups has regularly been represented as ‘democratic’, but it has also tended to obscure an abdication of state responsibilities for social and environmental justice, and has created a process that is open to capture by transnational irrigation companies and farming interests.Yet, the devolution of responsibilities to a local level can work with more progressive governance: in Bolivia, for example, collective forms of water ownership and provision have enabled more socially and ecologically sustainable forms of infrastructural care. The central theme in each case study is the representational processes through which participants in conflicts over water seek to achieve their aims. The focus is primarily on discursive forms, but there is clearly potential to connect this work with the methods of representational analysis located in visual anthropology. These have been particularly useful in exploring the communicative efforts of communities

xviii  Foreword

for whom art and performance are more important than written modes of expression. Some well-­known examples include the famous ‘bark petition’ used by the Yirrkala community in northern Australia in 1963, to protest against the excising of areas of their homelands for bauxite mining. Such representational endeavours continue today, with many aboriginal communities producing art and performances intended to communicate and thus give agency to indigenous beliefs and values. Another familiar example is that of the Kogi people in Colombia, who collaborated with a British film-­maker, Alan Ereira, in the 1990s, to make a film warning ‘Younger Brother’ (Western societies) that exploitative engagements with land and water would lead to disastrous consequences. The emergence of and access to digital media has been transformational for many subaltern communities, supporting their direct participation in debates about the ownership and management of water. It has enabled the forging of vital links between indigenous communities and campaigners for social and ecological justice, creating international networks that, as they have coalesced into counter movements, have begun to challenge the entrenched narratives that have hitherto dominated debates. The contributions to the volume also suggest strong potential to engage more with research, considering how conflicting visions of relationships with water are materialised. Water infrastructure appears in several of the case studies implicitly or explicitly as a major actant. But, as the examples of alternate forms of infrastructural care make clear, water infrastructure is not just dams, hydroelectric generation and irrigation schemes: it is also domestic and industrial architecture, household technologies, and the bureaucratic and administrative processes that manage the delivery of water supplies and the removal of waste. Some would argue that we should consider non-­human ‘natural infrastructures’ too: the land and waterscapes that contain and direct freshwater flows, the wetlands and forests that store and clean water, the rivers and aquifers themselves, and the climate and weather that influences hydrological cycles. There is an increasingly lively debate about the ‘rights of nature’ that has particular relevance for conflicts over water, in that it opens the door to ideas about what we might call ‘pan-­species democracy’. Indigenous and environmental counter movements have sought to persuade the UN to declare that the non-­human world has fundamental rights, which would logically include rights to water. Legal activists are calling for Earth Laws, and trying to persuade the international court of criminal justice to define ecocide—the destruction of ecosystems—as an international crime. There is much that could be said about how non-­human rights are represented in water conflicts, with efforts to present particular species and even whole rivers as persons, with images of oxygen-­deprived ‘fish kills’ in places like the Murray-­Darling Basin, and stark photographs of the parched, dry riverbeds resulting from over-­abstraction. A key question in these debates is how to extend notions of democracy beyond humankind, to the extent that, in every society, there is a responsibility to ‘speak for’ the river and the non-­human ‘other’.

Foreword  xix

Non-­human needs and interests in relation to water are often subsumed by the inter-­human conflicts described in this volume, but they are part of the same iceberg, and subject to many similar factors. All species share a need for secure access to water in order to flourish, yet there are major imbalances in relations of power. Dominant managerial narratives override more reciprocal understandings of human–non-­human relations, and impose visions of water flows as commercial assets, or ‘ecosystem services’. There are efforts by powerful groups to maintain or gain control over ‘resources’. There is similar but much greater dependence upon human interlocutors to challenge dominant norms and represent non-­human needs and interests. The focus of Split Waters on water conflicts therefore achieves several important things. It takes us under the surface to consider how ideas and values about water form particular representational narratives, and how some dominate international debates, while others seek to challenge this hegemony. But, like all good research, it also has the potential to contribute to related areas: for example, by connecting with analyses of how visual representational forms are used in water conflicts; or with work concerned with how meanings are encoded in and communicated by material objects and infrastructures. It opens up the possibility of diving deeper, to explore how representational processes shape not only relations of power between human groups, but also human relationships with the non-­human world. Thus, this insightful volume, with its thoughtful analyses of water conflicts, has the potential to carry research into activism on behalf of all living kinds. Veronica Strang

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to extend our gratitude to the many persons and institutions who have supported, encouraged and contributed to the making of this book. First and foremost, the authors of the chapters, not only for their deep intellectual engagement, but also for their patience with the many drafts, suggestions, corrections, and the conferences, meetings, virtual workshops, internal peer reviews, external peer reviews. It was a long journey for them and us—from the first draft of their chapters to the final versions and the production of the book—outliving many moments of uncertainties, but also taking up challenges and occasions of fun on the way. As the proverbial cherry on the cake, Professor Veronica Strang read the full manuscript and wrote the Foreword at a very short notice. We also would like to acknowledge and express our gratitude for the meticulous work of the chapters’ peer reviewers, two for each chapter, one providing topical, one geographical expertise. Two anonymous and attentive reviewers read and provided helpful comments on the full manuscript. Sugeeta Roy Choudhury completed a thorough copyediting job. The Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India (Water Conflicts Forum) supported this book project as part of their third Phase (2014–2018), with the Steering Committee members providing valuable inputs at various stages of the project. The Arghyam Trust, Bengaluru, financially supported the Third Phase of Water Conflicts Forum’s work and took care of most of the costs involved in the book project. The Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM), Pune, that houses the secretariat of the Water Conflicts Forum, similarly supported the project throughout the various phases. In particular, Craig D’Souza and Neha Bhadbhade of SOPPECOM tied up the project at various phases. Sarita Bhagat, Pratima Medhekar and Tanaji Nikam of SOPPECOM provided the necessary logistics and administrative support. We could not have done it without them.

Acknowledgements  xxi

Luisa Cortesi would like to express deep gratitude to Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, Michael R. Dove, Jim Scott, Paul Kockelman, Karen Hébert, Jim Saiers, and Rachel Prentice for their unrelenting support. Ella Sahertian, Samantha Ostrowski, Wyatt Westerkamp, and Ellen Abrams, as well as the many incredible students of her courses in Water Societies, Environment, Technology and History in Fall 2018; How Do We Know Nature? Language, Ecology and Meaning in Fall 2019; Water Disasters: Floods, Toxic Drinking Waters and Other Muddy Disasters in Spring 2019 at Cornell University, who have read and provided critical comments on the various drafts. Luisa’s work has been possible thanks to the support of the Stanford H. Taylor Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Josephine de Karman Fellowship, the Wenner-­Gren Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Fulbright-­IIE Fellowship, the MacMillan Centre. The institutions with which she has been affiliated over the course of this work, Yale University, Cornell University, the International Institute of Social Studies have offered the perfect ecology, fertile for this and many more intellectual engagements. Many thanks also to our publisher Routledge and Shoma Choudhury, the Commissioning Manager, and her colleagues Aakash Chakrabarty, Commissioning Editor, and Brinda Sen, Editorial Assistant. None of the above are, of course, responsible for any errors and weaknesses that may still be there in the book and for which we take complete responsibility. Luisa wishes to dedicate this book to her mother Dora Martucci, her Naniji Urmila Devi, and her sisters Livia Cortesi and Sanchita Sinha, four amazing women whose love and care have been her source of strength. The family of the late Pawan Kumar Bind, a hero of social justice, has been designated as the automatic recipient of her part of the royalties from this publication. Joy dedicates this book to two persons who have had a lasting influence on his life and thinking and both of whom passed away in the space of a year (2019–2020): his father, K.A. Joseph, a toiling farmer who took him to the paddy fields as a school-­ going kid and taught him how to hold a plough and also irrigate the fields; Prof. A. Vaidyanathan, a renowned academic and policy person in the water–­environment– development arena, for his affection and for being an ‘informal teacher’ and mentor. Luisa Cortesi and K. J. Joy

INTRODUCTION Water conflicts: the social life of an idea Luisa Cortesi

During the many times I have discussed water conflicts with my students in India, in Europe and in the United States, I have often been surprised by the uniformity of the images conjured in the conversations: two groups violently fighting for the last drop of water. Searching our global collective reservoir of information, which we once called the “world wide web”, for the same keywords produce similar results—men with assault weapons threatening, ambushing one another around a muddy puddle. Even a more satirical take on water conflicts reveals a drawing of an individual with a wooden bat, a catcher’s helmet and a water bottle, who, when asked whether they are going to play baseball, answers that they are going to collect water instead. Puzzled by this consistent imaginary, I turned to the literature and found that environmental conflicts are defined as the violent escalation of an unresolved dispute (Burke, Hsiang and Miguel 2015; Homer-Dixon 1999; Khagram and Ali 2006; Peluso and Watts 2001) due to situations of environmental degradation (Libiszewski 1991). When an issue involves water, it is either one of quantity, i.e. scarcity (see Arsel and Spoor 2013; Donahue and Johnston 1998; Ganguli, Kumar and Ganguly 2017; Homer-Dixon and Blitt 1998; Verhoeven 2011) or, occasionally, quality (see Joy et al. 2008). This long-debated definition takes a lot for granted. What is violence, for example? The World Health Organization defines violence as ‘the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation’ (World Health Organization 1996). Authoritative review studies of climate change and collective violence, such as Levy et al. 2017, use a similar definition, even though such authors might be expected to have a more nuanced understanding of issues related to environmental injustice and environmental racism. Many scholars have exposed the

2  Luisa Cortesi

limitations of these oversimplified definitions. Those who study conflict, for example, have expanded the notion of violence to include structural violence, or the erosion of people’s well-being by socio-economic structures (Galtung 1969), as well as slow violence, a form of destruction that is dispersed in time and space (Nixon 2011) of which climate change is an excellent example. Political ecologists, first and foremost Peluso and Watts, have contextualised the complexities and dynamism of violence (2001) rooted in ‘site-specific’ local histories and social relations. Others refute that conflicts occur because of the depauperation or loss of a resource. Joy et al. compiled a compendium of case studies about water conflicts to broaden the range of conflicts under consideration (2008). Khagram and Ali note that maldevelopment and environmental discrimination both contribute to conflicts, although they define both factors in terms of resource access (2006). Political ecologists, whose approach has developed precisely around the study of environmental conflicts, invoke the analysis of site-specific conflictual processes instead, reading local values in conjunction with associated global forces (Peluso and Watts 2001). In so doing, they also retain an association between conflicts and natural resources (Martinez Alier 2002). Environmental anthropologists, on the other hand, despise an understanding of nature as purely material. This rebuke is also informed by their defiance of the nature/culture dyad, an opposition that, as I have argued, has been the organising principle of the subfield (Cortesi et al. 2018). Björkman, for example, builds on Mehta’s argument about the construction of scarcity (Mehta 2013), a line of thought that rests on Sen’s early reflections on famines as a political product (Sen 1981). According to Björkman, Mumbai’s water scarcity is produced through the control over water distribution—what Björkman calls ‘pipe politics’—which is contingent on aspects of knowledge infrastructures, sociopolitical power processes, and material networks, and is thus simultaneously social and material (Björkman 2015). Another approach has been to dismantle the ‘resource curse’ bias, or the direct, simplistic, unidimensional correlation between the scarcity of environmental goods and conflict. In her case study in Caledonia, for example, Horowitz traces the roots of the environmental conflict she examines in the local lack of political legitimacy and trust in the democratic process, both of which are, in turn, grounded in the political-economic history of the area (Horowitz 2009). Pursuing a similar goal, Hiner unearths her share of resource conflicts in different understandings of rurality (Hiner 2016) and related political ecologies and environmental imaginaries (also in Nesbitt and Weiner 2001). Zhouri and Oliveira question the meaning of the environment as a universal asset detached from particular practices, projects and meanings (2012), as Strang (1997) and Ingold (2000) have also mapped out. Tuned into the ontological questions posed by Latour (2009) and Povinelli (2001, 2011), Blaser further explicates environmental conflicts as politico-conceptual difficulties, expanding on the notion of reasonable (read: agreeable) onto-politics, an idea that undermines the concept of culture by limiting it to reasonableness and alignment (Blaser 2013; Cortesi 2018, 2021).

Introduction  3

Excellent studies such as those cited above label the mainstream definition of environmental conflict as not only obtuse but also pernicious. For example, Peluso and Watts’ Violent Environments (2001) is devoted to discrediting Homer-Dixon’s approach not only because of its Malthusian origins, but also because of the influence Homer-Dixon’s framework has exerted on American politics since 1995, including in its reverberating effects found in the environmental security discourse. As a corpus, perhaps, the effort of deviating from a standard univocal interpretation also implicitly addresses the problem of the definition, which I will discuss below. It remains that there is something eerily recurrent in the common representation of water conflicts across the most diverse groups of people. Earlier, I mentioned how I was struck by the fact that, when asked about environmental conflicts around water, my students, across continents and sociocultural contexts, conjured an image comprised of similar components: (a) two groups, b) contraposed to each other and in competition for a (c) scarce resource that both groups need and want. To be sure, when prompted, my students were also able to conceptualise environmental conflicts in more sophisticated and reflexive ways, as well as to consider conflictual and violent situations that would not immediately fit this narrow definition. As scholars, we learn such complexities and nuances from our interlocutors, and we aspire to teach the same in our pedagogical pursuits. Yet, such empirical experience of the way in which people deal with the idea of water conflict pushed me to realise the existence of a standardised understanding of the concept.1 Instead of focusing on dismissing it as inaccurate or dismantling the definition of water conflict, I am more interested in learning about the consequences of the concept so many deploy. Not only does the concept exist, but it also acts, insofar as it produces consequences. My intent here is to recognise that some forms of this standardised understanding, despite scholarly efforts to criticise it, have consolidated, remain alive, and have a life of their own. Attentive to broader sociocultural processes and frameworks of perception, knowledge, and understanding, while acknowledging problems of translation and word-choice, in my other work I ask: how do we word the world, and how do our ways of wording the world contribute to our knowledge of it? In this introduction, I elaborate on what I call the social life of an idea, and what such an approach means in the particular case of water conflict. More than a lexicon, it is a concept, a thing, which owns its own social life. As other theories that aim to elucidate and explain inductively, the idea of an idea does not undervalue, instead underscores, the real lived experiences of water conflicts, while recognizing their interconnections, as discussed below. It is the social life of this normalized, homogenised idea of water conflict that will unfold in what follows. Instead of attempting to track down the idea of water conflict historically or geographically, I am interested in a synchronic view of the life of an idea as standardised across different contexts and in a specific set of global circumstances, inhabiting the contemporary globalised neoliberal society (Cortesi 2014). More than feeding on its situatedness, it thrives on circumstances (beyond the scope of this reflection) such as English being the lingua franca for several

4  Luisa Cortesi

economic sectors across more than one generation, the globalisation of elites’ education regardless of their national origins, and the oligarchic conquest of the information market by a handful of mediatic empires. I am not assuming the content of such knowledge to be universal, nor do I assume an amalgamated society in which cultural differences lose traction. I am instead suggesting a reflection on the empirically appreciable results of an idea that, if acquiring different shades in different contexts, maintains a set of common assumptions that coagulate in the category of water conflicts.2

What an idea is (and isn’t) I use the term ‘idea’ the way the Greeks did. Neither blindly submissive to Western epistemologies nor to their ostensible dismissal by those native in its contemporary imperialistic version, I reflexively trace the lexicon I use. In Greek—­ differently than in English—an idea is not just a mental representation. For Plato, differently from Descartes and his followers, an idea is a substance, it is form and it has matter, with neither pitted against the other. While for Descartes, an idea was only a mode of thinking, the carrier of a representation, for Plato, the idea was a thing that fulfils ontological expectations.3 In the allegory of the cave (Republic), Plato tells the story of a dark cavern where chained prisoners see shadows of objects that pass in front of a light source behind them. Whatever the physics of the shadows, for the prisoners (at least), the shadows, or the phantoms, are reality, objects, things—they are not representations. Plato posits that one prisoner—the philosopher, or the academic—manages to escape the cave. When his eyes4 stop hurting and adjust to the light, he eventually sees ‘true reality’ and realises that he, and his fellow prisoners, have been deceived all along. But when, proud of his discovery and full of compassion, he goes back to the cave to free the others from their epistemic prison, his eyes are again blinded by darkness. The other prisoners, seeing him incapacitated and therefore unable to see as clearly as they do, refuse to be ‘freed’. Were they not chained, warns Plato, the prisoners would kill their saviour. This fable underpins my use of the word idea. Such a Magrittian richness in the metaphor of the shadow, the reflection over the fallibility and fragility of knowledge, the ambiguity and flaws of enlightenment, the casting of values over the damp, dark walls of our lives, the alienation of those who pursue knowledge vis-à-vis their previous lives and companions! Yet, if I make an effort to ignore the most obvious reading of the story, or the reference to the killing of Plato’s teacher, Socrates, I realise that this allegory does not necessarily have to be read as a commentary on the human condition, or the situation of distorted knowledge that prevents humans from seeing what they do not see until their eyes are opened by those supposedly enlightened. The allegory of the cave can be turned and folded in other ways. For example, the cave could stand for today’s academic community, the phantoms being the language that scholars use to talk about the knowledge they produce. I am interested in twisting the fable of the epistemic assumption of a single truth that

Introduction  5

originates a series of illusionary representations. I wish to dislodge the fantasy of the well-intentioned elitist scholar who works hard to eventually discover ‘reality’ and then returns to the cave to epistemically save his fellows humans, only to find himself (sic) blind again, unable to see what his fellow humans can see. As an anthropologist, I wish for my eyes to be firmly aligned with those of my fellow prisoners, taking seriously what (we) commoners all see and name. As introduced above, an idea is not a definition, despite both being of Platonic/ Socratic inheritance. In Plato’s earlier dialogues, Socrates asked his disciples and acquaintances ‘what is x’, where x is alternatively piety (Euthypro), justice (Republic), temperance (Meno), friendship (Lysis), virtue (Laches), love (Phaedrus, Symphosium), knowledge (Theaetetus), or wisdom (Philebus). The task of defining is the cultural project of grasping the essence of the thing, of reaching its universal and univocal nature, of attaching it to precise, necessary and sufficient conditions. Defining, or pretending to get closer to, a constantly moving goal seems to be an inherently failing project, caught between the action of limiting to maintain specificity and broadening to account for variations. Yet this project continues to exert influence on contemporary reasoning, despite the criticism to essence (Mill 1991), the notorious difficulty of finding the meaning of meaning (Putnam 1975), the polysemy of language (Bakhtin 1986), the ambiguities of representation (Foucault 1971), and the push to de-centre (Derrida 1966). As mentioned above, however, the x that Socrates asks his friends to define continues to exist, even when we find the definition fallacious or the project of defining too tight: the x has an ontological presence; it is a thing, a signified, not a word or a signifier. Confronting what is often taken for granted by a flat definition, a genealogy is the Nietzschean and later Foucauldian technique of accounting for the history and the conditions of possibility for a certain discourse. Nietzsche, in his second essay on the Genealogy of Morality, explains how punishment acquires different meanings and proposes the method of genealogy over that of a definition, observing that ‘only something which has no history can be defined’ (Nietzsche 1887: 94). Foucault acquires and develops this method, which he intends to ameliorate in his archaeology (Foucault 1977). A product of such illustrious lineage is Molle’s seminal essay (2009) on the idea of a river basin. Molle’s “social life”, worth mentioning here also because it is subtitled with a locution similar to the one I am proposing (‘RiverBasin Planning and Management: The Social Life of a Concept’), is certainly more than what I suggest in this Introduction. Perhaps a humble synonym for a genealogy, in Molle’s work, “social life” carefully traces the history of the concept of river-basin planning and management in its evolution from early colonial conceptualisation to recent developments in ecosystem approaches. By tracing the multiple meanings that a certain concept has carried over several decades and signifiers, a genealogy differs from the social life of an idea in that the former is a method, and a container, while the latter is substance and form. Further, the latter is grounded in its contemporary materialisation.This does not mean that the present is not relative to the past or that a concept’s coming into being cannot be explored, but that, in a pendular meta-history of diachronic and synchronic frameworks, the fact that these ideas are

6  Luisa Cortesi

neither timeless nor static should not distract from the contemporaneity of the category: having seeped into the cognitive imaginary of a large number of people and influencing how they think and make decisions, its sway rests in its future present. For the same reasons, the idea introduced here is not a genealogy, it is neither an ideology: they differ in both structure and content. Far from being a ‘science of ideas’, the word ideology has been considered by Marx and Engels, but also by members of the Frankfurt School, as a distortion of reality that naturalises, and thus protects, exploitative economic relations (Marx and Engels 2001; Marx and Engels 2000, Marcuse and Horkheimer 1937). Even without the metonymic association with the specific ideologies of capitalism and communism that informed the perception of a distortion, an ideology, differently from an idea, operates at a more complex, systemic level. Different from an idea, an ideology lends itself towards the teleological and prescriptive, thus it is projected in time towards the future, while the idea here proposed is alive in its contextual present, it is engaged not with time, but rather with its continued potential. Like an idea, however, an ideology is a form of social cognition held, often unconsciously, by large groups of people and across cultural contexts. Nonetheless, while positing a global lexicon filled with a set of dogmatic, homogenised meaning, by being less systemic and complex, an idea is available for travelling across ideologies. An idea is more ductile: I stress its circularities, freezing the path which continues to be followed and the channelling of the many possibilities that could have materialised instead, as well as recalling its bottomless possibilities. Like in Derrida’s reading of Mallarmé, an idea dwells in the imitation of an imitation of another imitation (1972). An ideology is reproduced by a discourse, a close heuristic. Discourse—with its methodological deployment, discourse analysis—is involved in recognising both its effect in engendering subjectivity and in its depoliticising tendencies. Similar to discourse, unpacking an idea illuminates the construction of texts, practices and other forms of meaning production that affect the positioning of the subjective self. Pace Fraser, who criticised Foucault for lacking the political commitment that permits normative adjudication (1985), an idea is not imbricated in the underlying political interests and responsibilities that a discourse helps individuate, nor even in the structure it derives from them. The politics of investigating the social life of an idea are situated in a normative commitment to the value of difference, and thus in the political recognition of the dangers of homogenising both ontology and subjectivity. The concepts of narrative and framing, which refer to the act of selecting and arranging narrative elements to attain a certain message (Entman 1993), are also not appropriate synonyms for ‘idea’ for several reasons. First, as discussed above, both the concept of narrative and that of framing are forms of representation, thus refer to an object. Epistemologically different, the idea is an appellative—it is possible to make reference to the narrative of an idea, an important example in Kroepsch (Chapter 5 in this volume). Second, narrative and framing are subsumed to a certain agential capability, if not intentionality. As mentioned earlier, the idea of water conflict is the product of a set of circumstances, but, most importantly, retains an agential purchase, a consequentiality of actions. Third, both concepts refer to a

Introduction  7

speech-related act, not a cognitive or epistemological one. Those terms could have perhaps been more appropriate for Molle’s essay (cited above), which illustrates how the concept of the river basin has been technocratically appropriated by and invested with social power configurations. Vice versa, the terms concept and imaginary stress the epistemic and the cognitive, which are only part of the story I am narrating here. The latter, in particular, is a ‘constellation of ideas that groups of humans develop about a given landscape’ (Davis and Burke 2011) that reflects the local congeries of sociocultural values, norms and power relations (Grandi, this volume; Watts and Peet 2004). As such, however, it retains a much more contextual understanding of socio-ecological processes. The idea, instead, shifts the focus to its consequences, albeit originated in articulation with a given context. The idea here explained could be considered the phenomenon, intended primarily as the object as it appears and is intended (Husserl 1913). In common, an idea and a phenomenon have the ontological presence of objects and mental representations. Given that the social sciences are more influenced by Merleau-Ponty than other phenomenologists, however, a phenomenon is commonly understood as related to perception, to our immediate experience of the thing, and is thus distinct from inference, even though Kant, Popper and many others have made clear that our perceptions are influenced by a priori categories (intended as pre-experience, see Kant 1878) and from previous experiences (Popper 1963;Thornton 2007).The idea here proposed, however, remains directed towards the dissolution of the dichotomy of visible versus invisible/logos thus invested in the refusal to engage in chicken-egg dilemmas such as senses versus intellect and things versus language. The word idea has had its own ordeals, and my use of the term derives from such lineage. Hacking uses it to explain that social constructionism is not necessarily resting on a dichotomy between reality versus representation (1999). While Pickering has been outspoken about reality, not the idea of it, being socially constructed, Hacking believes ideas to be constructed as much as objects and words, intending social constructionism as the process of formation of categories that are rooted in a context (Hacking 1999; Pickering 1995). Inspired by anti-essentialists such as Stuart Mill (Systems VII, 1991), Hacking’s idea, which he qualifies as ‘a shorthand, a very unsatisfactory shorthand’, is therefore the unspecific for kind, for category, that works through a mechanism of reinforcement that he calls looping effect (1995). To reply to Hacking’s question—what’s the point?—my point is to discuss the consequences of the idea of water conflict, an idea that has become part of the cultural armour in a wide variety of contemporary situations and has cementified in observation and practice.The rationale for this argument is rooted in the insufficient inattention to the actual processes of circulation and dispersal (and then influence) by Foucauldians on one side, and the focus on the interaction and competition between ideas (and perhaps the uncritical formulation of their intrinsic attractiveness as the cause for their success) by intellectual histories and history of science on the other side. This is not about how and why repeatedly falsified or discredited ideas remain powerful, discussed to great length by the Orientalism tradition and

8  Luisa Cortesi

Postcolonial Studies, for example, but more about the pathways, transformations and contentions through which ideas have consequences.5 It is by re-discovering a simple, overused word like idea, explaining it by virtue of difference within its semantic field, and justifying its ability to influence a set of processes that this book is making, through a series of essays, a collective theoretical contribution to the literature on water and environmental conflicts.

The social life of an idea This introduction rotates around the observation that the locution ‘water conflicts’ conjures up a similar image for people with different backgrounds, professions, levels of education, and environmental beliefs, across cultural contexts. This does not mean that all of these individuals share the meaning of water conflict, or of water, or of conflict, but that such individuals are socialised—informally trained—into a specific way of interpreting the idea of water conflict. I am here interested in the agential purchase of the idea of water conflict, shifting the focus from critically exploring a concept and liberating people from false representation towards taking seriously the epistemic categories that people use for what they engender, in line with the anthropological contribution to the social sciences. Other scholars have engaged in similar projects, including James Ferguson, who, in his pathbreaking The Anti-politics Machine (1990), sets out to discover not the reasons for which a certain development project failed but the consequences of its failure. The social life of the idea of environmental conflict resides in its private and public existence and epistemological traction. Calling a concept ‘social’ is reminiscent of Arendt, who defines social as neither private nor public, but both (Arendt 1959). Reference to the social life of an idea has the purpose of evoking its material, almost archaeological character, and yet the fact that its existence rests on its shared validity and communicability. De Wit, in her work with Masai agro-pastoralists, calls adaptation to climate change, as well as vulnerability, a ‘traveling idea’. In her story, however, such an idea inevitably clashes with local categories (De Wit 2015). My interest is complementary to hers: how does this idea live both private and public existences, and enact consequences by surviving cultural incompatibilities? This leads me to the broader question at the heart of this book: what does an idea engender? As an anthropologist, I look at common understandings that live in the practices and communications that people engage with, which are the result of a variety of contextual social, historical and political factors.When Joy and I started thinking about this book, we found immediately a great set of diverse collaborators whose work, expressed in multiple drafts, conference presentations, peer-reviewing workshops, has enriched tremendously our original understanding and led to the theorisation proposed above. In the following pages, the authors investigate ten cases of water conflicts for how the idea of conflict itself has defined, moulded, sharpened those conflicts. The process of writing an introduction to this volume has further stirred the essays below into forming the following overarching theoretical argument. The idea of water conflict emerges primarily in three ways: (i) how the idea has conditioned

Introduction  9

the conflict itself, including leading to its avoidance; (ii) how the idea has been utilised or mobilised in order to pursue a set of interests, to justify the actions and decisions behind such pursuit, or in order to provoke or prevent change; (iii) how the idea has been instrumental in naturalising or challenging a certain understanding of socioenvironmental relations, including ecological and technological ones, as well as a specific historicising of such relations, i.e. ways of remembering the past and imagining the future.These situations, whether intended goals or unintended outcomes, are not mutually exclusive: as will be made clear, most chapters are examples of all the three phenomena. In the subsequent part of this introduction, I will interpret the essays with respect to their contributions to the broader discussion, noted as (i) agential purchase of the idea of water conflict; (ii) instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict; (iii) naturalisation of environmental, ecological, technological, and historical relations. Where appropriate, the contribution to other sub-arguments will also be noted.

Part 1 Agential purchase of the idea of water conflict Chapter 1: Bowles in the UK Boaters live on London’s canals for a variety of reasons, from a preference for a floating lifestyle to a necessity related to historical and contemporary housing crises. Living on a boat without a permanent mooring is soaked with daily inconveniences: a floating habitation precludes a zip code, and thus access to health care, mail, social services, and documents such as passport and work permits. While Boaters can easily obtain gas and electricity, for their drinking water and disposal of sanitary waste, they rely on a network of facilities-providing moorings that are run by the newly instituted charitable Canal and River Trust (CaRT). CaRT is a charity that not only facilitates the Boaters’ permanence on the water, but, paradoxically for people whose identity rests on their non-sedentary lifestyle, also enforces a rule that requires them to change their mooring every 14 days. The 1995 British Waterways Act, which allows Boaters to live on the canals, has de facto defined this group of people in terms of their way of living, with ‘continuous navigation’ a condition for their presence on the canals. Although the Boaters’ ethos tends to encourage mobility, the 14-day rule remains gruelling: navigation may be temporarily hindered by the weather, personal issues, or mechanical complications. It is unclear what motivates this ruling if not the need to impose a definition on people’s identity: hinging on a sedentary logic, the ruling implies that Boaters are different citizens from those who live on land or own private moorings. We do not know the motivation behind the imposition of shorter moorings, either: it does not seem to be an attempt to solve a conflict, but we know from Bowles’ chapter that it did, instead, trigger one. By forcing movement, the ruling penalises the very identity it supposedly undergirds, thus engendering hostility and even oppositional identities (i). The Boaters, even when self-identifying as such, seemed to be a loosely defined group before finding themselves sharing the negative experiences of CaRT’s policing:

10  Luisa Cortesi

it was the enforcement of the 14-day rule and the exasperation it caused that unified the Boaters as a group.This group formation mechanism reached the point of exploring legal instruments that would equate the Boaters to an ethnic group, perhaps one of ‘Bargee Travellers’, in order to protect their lifestyle by further codifying it. As Bowles explains at the end of the chapter, water had an important role to play in exacerbating the conflict. Boaters enjoy water as a medium that provides their life with both the desired affordances of mobility and a substratum to habitation that does not imply possession.Thus, the water of the canal does not qualify as a resource subjected to depauperation—Boaters do not consume it nor evidently limit others’ ability to enjoy it. But their life on water is dependent on accessing drinking water and sanitation services, a vulnerability that CaRT uses to arm-twist the Boaters. As water was ‘resourcified’ (transformed into a resource) and weaponised, the Boaters appropriated the idea of the conflict in the form of a media appeal to the human right to water, an operation that results not only in public sympathy and (if only temporary) conflict resolution, but also in the consolidation of the Boaters’ identity. In this case, the idea of water conflict has been used to justify a certain decision (ii) that furthered the interests of the state in sedentarising people. It conditioned the conflict itself, creating opponents where there had not been any (i). The idea of water conflict has also been mobilised in order to challenge a status quo perceived as discriminatory (ii) and, as a result, it has helped to naturalise a certain understanding of water as a resource (iii).

Chapter 2: Mabon and Kawabe in Japan Chapter 2 is of particular interest in this collection because it contributes to our discussion with the case of a conflict whose official narrative includes the construction of the adversarial other, then followed by an alternative narrative that pursues the same outcome through a different path.6 The official narrative about radiation in fish produced after the Fukushima disaster claimed the existence of sufficient facts and scientific information to guarantee the ‘absolute safety’ of Fukushima produce. Opposing concerns were thus framed as fuhyo higai, ‘harmful rumours’. Realising that such a narrative would be ineffective in rebuilding the consumers’ trust and thus in returning to full-scale business, the fisherfolks of Ikawi, one of Fukushima’s fishing districts, provided an alternative narrative based on a more localised, nuanced account of the uncertainties surrounding radiation. By constructing the imaginary of an antagonistic set of people who either believe in or spread rumours, the official narrative created a broad ‘we’ that included the state, the farmers and the fisherfolk of Fukushima, as well as all the citizens who were supportive of science, technology, reason, society, and the nation. The fisherfolks of Ikawi, logically the primary beneficiaries of such a narrative, did not, however, support the assumptions of risk and trust that underpinned it, and instead prioritised winning consumers’ trust. Choosing a more transparent, if slower, process of trust-building, they set up additional monitoring by citizens groups, created independent data, made visible the process of data production, and accepted the

Introduction  11

losses that came with such additional information. Pursuing the goal of returning to business, they distanced themselves from the political apparatus that promoted economic growth at all costs, thus avoiding an alignment of their interests with those of the industrial and nuclear sector. In deconstructing the patriotic, rational ‘we’ from which they were meant to benefit, the fisherfolk of Ikawi established an alliance with the imagined adversarial group that supposedly damaged them. By actively reframing the conflict and their positionality within it, not only did they recognise that consumers hold the ultimate economic power by choosing whether or not to purchase the fish, but they also challenged the idea of water conflict as operating between two opposite and homogenous groups. They acknowledged that the way in which an issue is framed both influences its development and orients its consequences. In this case, the idea of conflict is mobilised by the state in order to pursue a specific set of interests (ii), engendering a nebulous set of opponents as a by-product (i). A sub-group, however, reinterprets the alliance, choosing to avoid conflict in favour of trust-building (i). This move leads to a reinterpretation of certainty, and thus of socio-environmental and technological relationships (iii).

Chapter 3: Roth, Warner and Winnbust in the Netherlands Like Lazzaretti in Chapter 6, the authors of Chapter 3, Roth,Warner and Winnubst, describe a pendulum, an oscillation between two alternate paradigms, in this case between centralised top-down and decentralised participatory management. Like Quintero and Selfa in Chapter 7, the authors of this chapter narrate the paradigm shift between the infrastructural approach to the ‘Room for the River’ framework, but do so precisely where it originates, in the Netherlands. Unlike all the other chapters in this collection, however, they narrate a case of conflict denial despite complex dissent and divergent interests and priorities. Shifting from the centralised engineering model (the Delta programme) to the decentralised paradigm (the Room for the River model) was not based on the agreement of scientists, engineers and policy makers, but instead on the assumption that environmental management should be depoliticised and that consensus should be enforced by decoupling the decision-making process from parliamentary negotiation. The consequences of these bold and often unilateral decisions were not met with the same kinds of opposition found in the Tocks Island case that Bloodworth narrates in Chapter 4, but nor were they left unattended: citizens organised to source counter-expertise, file lawsuits and build coalitions across interest groups as well as alliances across national borders.The opposition was effective in contesting standard narratives as well as constructing alternative representations and even solutions. Inspired by Mouffle’s work, the authors suggest that conflict should be recognised and dealt with. The Room for the River model advocates ‘giv[ing] room to the political’, making the case that conflict is foundational for democratic decisionmaking processes in so far as antagonism forces the negotiation of different priorities among different political forces. The conflict avoidance that the authors narrate

12  Luisa Cortesi

is perhaps peculiar to its context: the Netherlands is not only a democratic setting with low institutional violence, but it is also a country based historically and discursively on land reclamation. With well-established expertise pertaining to the management of floods, ‘water conflicts’ in the Netherlands are perhaps less influenced than elsewhere by the global idea thereof. What happens when the idea of water conflict is actively negated? While perhaps not paradigmatic (see different outcomes of a similar negational approach in an industrial contamination case in Ottinger 2018 for example), this case study showcases prototypical effects of conflict denial (i). It traces, for example, the vocabulary used to deny transformative participation (Hickey and Mohan 2004): citizens are ‘stakeholders’ (yet powerless ones), ‘sounding boards’ and legitimising ‘supporters’, language that resonates with similarly gregarious terms used in the development sector such as beneficiaries, recipients, users, members, and communities. While all these terms sound inclusive, the opinion of the stakeholders who were most involved in the decision’s outcomes managed to elude decision makers. It was the apolitical consultation process put in place that short-circuited dialogic possibilities. Nonetheless, the political imaginary did not succumb to the depoliticising mechanism (i): the denial of the water conflict did not result in consensus, but in the broadening of the conflict to include more stakes than ‘just water’, such as flood safety versus agrarian interests, aesthetic environmental benefits and infrastructural growth. It did not result in passive acceptance of the flattening of possibilities, but in an enhanced engagement and participation in grading them according to a shared value system.

Part 2 Instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict Chapter 4: Bloodworth in the USA At the end of the Bowles’ chapter, we see how the Boaters, eventually aggregated as a group, were able to leverage the media to assert their right to water. The case study of Tocks Island in the 1960s and 1970s instead zooms into a moment of collision between two ideas, one of the technocratic appropriation of nature and one of environmental conflict (both ideas also referred to in most of the other chapters). The controversy around Tocks Island and Sunfish Pond was a decades-long event in the United States that undermined the Army Corps of Engineers’ hegemonic power, but also, as Bloodworth argues, made a dent in the global dam paradigm. This history is often overlooked in favour of its international version, which features the story of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (the protest against the dam on the river Narmada) in India that, in the 1980s and 1990s—decades after the movement on Tocks Island—delayed a mammoth dam project by the World Bank and the Government of India, an action whose global resonance culminated in the 2000 Report of the World Commission on Dams and effectively halted financial support to big dams for more than two decades.

Introduction  13

In this vividly written chapter, Bloodworth tells us how the Army Corps and associated interest groups fostered the idea of a dam as unstoppable progress and regional economic growth by saturating the media with a persuasive and glossy campaign. Despite the campaign, because of the gross, arrogant and oppressive actions of the Corps, and thanks to a concomitant set of legislation, grassroot protesters were able to contest the paradigm with a story of environmental destruction, wasteful federal spending, and violent conflict. Such oppositional narratives were represented by a few committed individuals, common people who were able not only to grab the attention of the media, but also to provide a face and a set of relatable interests representing the other, oppressed, side of the story. The idea of conflict, which conditions the dispute as it develops (i), was therefore mobilised to challenge the naturalisation of a technocratic understanding of socio-environmental relations (iii), in order to pursue a set of interests and to justify actions that provoked change (ii). The narrative of the conflict revealed the social and environmental tensions that would have otherwise gone unseen. It also engendered, like in Bowles’ chapter on the Boaters, both the consolidation of a group identity (i) and the sympathy of public opinion, which in turn made the situation recognisable and put pressure on those who would resolve it (ii).

Chapter 5: Kroepsch in the USA While Bloodworth’s work in Chapter 4 digs into the potentials of mediatic representation, Kroepsch examines its pitfalls in Chapter 5. Without attempting to determine the risk of fracking, Kroepsch conducts a discursive analysis of water narratives in Colorado’s hydraulic fracturing debate vis-à-vis other resources’ competitive allocations and their respective narratives. Through media analysis, participant observation and interviews, Kroepsch examines the proliferation in the public realm of numerical representations and related policy narratives fuelled by the idea of water conflict that underpins fracking in the United States (ii). In doing so, she illustrates the agential purchase, both symbolic and political, of the idea of water conflict (i), which saturates the discursive space of data production and reliability and naturalises associated ideas such as nature as a resource (iii). Such power is revealed by exposing the strategic use of specific framings to represent water consumption, such as through volumetric comparisons, which flatten other variables, such as time, space and allocation trade-offs. Ultimately, Kroepsch reveals that ‘a full accounting of how much water is being used for hydraulic fracturing (…) and whose water it is’ was never achieved, most likely due to a lack of cooperation between the water and energy sectors, in particular between regulators. Information about water quantity issues is simply not available, a dearth that is shaped by, and shapes, the narratives about the topic. As I understand Kroepsch’s argument, the idea of the conflict acts as a convenient matrix to shape accounts about water, its regulations and its consumption. It also performs a narrative gatekeeping function (ii) by effectively clouding the possibility of data production. In addition, Kroepsch’s analysis suggests that water is not the

14  Luisa Cortesi

only reason or casus belli for this conflict, with several other contingencies heavily informing the debate. First, water is merely the vehicle through which policy debates are played out in the public space. Second, media attention, volatile and erratic, instrumentalised the idea of water conflict for their own interest of representation (ii). Third, concerns around the weather influenced the volatility of media attention as much as political interests do: after two years of drought, a rainy season was sufficient to archive the debate and render ‘an already non-transparent energy– water nexus even more invisible’. From this chapter, we learn that, in conditions of climate change, the effective volatility of the debate is all the more consequential because it impedes environmental learning, which instead requires sustained and steady attention.

Chapter 6: Lazzaretti in India Similar to Kroepsch’s and Bowles’ chapters (Chapters 1 and 5, respectively), this case study from Benares, India, shows that water is not the reason for this particular conflict but rather the weapon in historical political clashes between Hindu and Muslim peoples (ii). The Well of Knowledge is situated in the same compound as the Vishvanath temple, one of the main pilgrim destinations for Hindu followers, and the Gyan Vapi mosque, the main mosque of the city. Because the two religious groups have been in a political clash (at the national level) since Independence, the co-presence of two centres of worship traps the well in a site of conflict. The Well itself, as Lazzaretti writes, has not been uniformly associated with the conflict, but rather its role vis-à-vis the dispute has oscillated from central to peripherical and from peripherical to central. At times, water has been a pillar in the narrative of Muslim usurpation of Hindu gods. At times, the well, and the unity of the compound itself, have become invisible, a mere space of passage that overlaps in alternative ways to live religious belonging as conflated in the urban fabric.The idea of water conflicts, infused with symbolic power, is fertile ground for other conflictual narratives to take root. I also take this chapter as a reflection on the idea of water conflict as naturalising water as a resource (iii). The Well of Knowledge is a water place, but one of minor importance, whose water is only a symbolic presence, often forgotten until other less watery tensions arise.This thought merits pause: we have come to the awareness of the false dualism between the symbolic and the material, which is particularly salient in studies of semiotics (see Kockelman’s work, for example, 2005, 2010b, 2010a, 2013, 2016). Lazzaretti goes to great lengths to explain that the water of the well may not even be there (see Cortesi 2018 on the semiotic presence of mud) and that the well’s structure itself is repeatedly forgotten, out of sight, until it again becomes involved in practices of heritage that are instrumental for articulating the conflict. The point is that water here remains a resource, at least narratively: water’s symbolic power is particularly susceptible to being inflamed with meanings that sustain narratives of disputes. It is therefore readily appropriated for its entanglement with other narratives, fuel for heating up the conflict (see Mabon and Kawabe, Chapter 2,

Introduction  15

for a discussion on heating up and cooling down conflicts), lubricant in the mechanism of the technology of conflict. Water also returns here as the carrier par excellence, infused with ad hoc meanings. The reasoning of it, however, is associated with the idea of water conflict, whose social life has melted together the two parts (water, conflict) of this compound into one singular idea. As two substances that form a third and whose chemical bond is preferred by both elements, one constantly recalls the other: water conflict is a narratively stable compound, where one element, in the right conditions, conceptually conjures up the other.

Part 3 Naturalisation of environmental, ecological, technological and historical relations Chapter 7: Moreno Quintero and Selfa in Colombia Moreno Quintero and Selfa show how the idea of conflict, this time, river versus people, naturalises a set of relationships that is far from ‘natural’ (iii). As in Chapter 1 by Bowles, Chapter 7 reflects on the construction of opponents, a construction that reveals the power dynamics behind the category of ‘the people’. As in Chapter 2 by Mabon and Kawabe, behind a group discursively constructed as aligned on the basis of shared interests, there is a multiplicity of different, at times competing, political relationships. Further, Moreno Quintero and Selfa continue the discussion by demonstrating how such groups are also aligned (if roughly) with different ontologies. As a result, we see how the idea of the conflict is able to mask not only subgroups and relations, but also radically different ways of seeing the world as well as the possibility of their incommensurability (iii). Following major floods in the Cauca River Valley (Colombia) in 2010 and 2011, the previous top-down, engineering-intensive river management paradigm modelled after the Tennessee Valley Authority was renegotiated for the Room for the River paradigm, a more recent model of Dutch derivation based on spatially accommodating the river as well as on principles of participatory, egalitarian and horizontal governance (see Chapter 3).The earlier paradigm, however, had enforced a differential set of environmental rights, whose resulting race-based power inequalities ended up hindering the realisation of the new scheme. Sugar landowners managed to appropriate the decision-making process and to eventually override the components of the project that did not foster their interests. As a result, the project was stripped of its own purposes. The Afro-Colombians’ voices, ironically the only ones compatible with the Room for the River model, were instead silenced. This experience—and I am here interpreting Moreno Quintero and Selfa’s work— questions the ability of a water management scheme to design social equality into a technical solution, in particular when deprived of the instruments, the capabilities and the power to understand or affect the social fabric on which the project is positioned.Yet, this is not only a story of the inattentive import of an ineffective environmental management model, but also of its epistemic consequences: the earlier programme had engendered an understanding of water and land that

16  Luisa Cortesi

treated them as resources, limited, desirable, meant to be optimised for productivity (iii). If the perspective of the Afro-Colombians, whose livelihood was based on small-scale agriculture and fishing, considered flooding the manifestation of a living ecosystem, the earlier project had caused the minority view to lose its grip in the larger social context. The narrative of the river versus the people was perhaps too unrealistic to consolidate a group, such as in the case of the Boaters (Chapter 1), but it is still held together by the corollary narrative of disaster and risk as well as of the historical memory of the harshness of flooding. This cluster of narratives that pretends to unite people against the river does not convince everybody, however; it does not cohere for the African-Colombians, for whom the river is neither an enemy to be tamed nor a beast to be subjugated to human needs. But it continues to have purchasing power with the experts who have the final say on the project—to their eyes, the cluster of narratives effectively masks the views of those affected by the events along with the power gradients that silence their perspective. We could also interpret this case as a non-conflict, or at least as a case in which another invisible conflict (not that of humans versus the river, but that of the sugarcane landowners versus the Afro-Colombians agriculturalists) is too latent, has not (yet, perhaps) escalated, and is (not yet) considered a conflict by its own stakeholders (the Afro-Colombians do not necessarily represent themselves as a group with cultural consciousness). As Mabon and Kawabe (Chapter 2) remind us, there is a conflict-potential that could eventually heat up, open to the different narratives by the diverse groups that make up ‘the people’. Precisely the idea of the water conflict could be instrumental for this process (ii), set up against different ontologies and power differentials. This heating up would be necessary, Mabon and Kawabe’s (Chapter 2) discussion seems to imply, and Roth et al. (Chapter 3) seem to insist, in order to then ‘cool down’ the conflict by reaching a resolution.

Chapter 8: Grandi in Egypt and Ethiopia Grandi’s political analysis reframes the transboundary water conflict on the exploitation of the Nile between Egypt—downstream, yet politically and economically hegemonic in the region—and Ethiopia—upstream and historically weaker yet armed with recent hydro-developmental ambitions. As a water conflict that has long been predicted but has not (as of yet) fully materialised, this story teaches us the many unpredictable possibilities of an idea by serving as a warning against its own realisation (i). Grounded in international relations and allied disciplines while effectively engaging multiple levels of analysis, this contribution rests in finding that the idea of water conflict intersects, and its agential purchase manifests, in resource governance. In my liberal interpretation of Grandi’s political analysis, I understand resource governance as the art of allocation through the negotiation of environmental imaginaries with political priorities, both aspects that this chapter goes to great lengths to investigate.

Introduction  17

Chapter 8 accomplishes the innovative move of grounding international relations between two countries in the contextual environmental imaginaries built through long-term engagements with the river. The life of the idea of the Nile is semiotically and rhetorically built through language, history and literature: the Nile is ‘the river to be harvested’ for Egyptians vis-à-vis the fatherly yet destructive figure who punishes Ethiopians by stealing from them their fertile land. In part, this analysis explains the counterintuitive relations of the two countries towards the river, with Egyptians benefitting from the river despite being downstream, and Ethiopians only recently interested in exploiting the resource despite being upstream. Such complex three-way relation is at the root of the resource conflict, yet unexplainable through a purely materialistic framework. The chapter continues by substantiating how the idea of the conflict between the two countries is leveraged to modify enviro-social relationships with the other country, and, in the case of Ethiopia, with the river itself. Political priorities are built, as this case shows, through the idea of a water conflict, or through the narrative that water is ‘essentially threatened’, hence naturalised as a resource (iii); and that its securitisation requires ‘extraordinary measures’ (such as violence), i.e. the instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict (ii). In order to induce political support and compliance, the process of securitisation leverages the idea of water conflict because the latter serves to dramatise and prioritise the issue in the public sphere (ii); to legitimise extraordinary measures to manage (ii) and therefore to influence (i) the conflict; and to naturalise a single one-dimensional interpretation to the exclusion of alternative perspectives (iii).

Chapter 9: Bresnihan in Bolivia Chapter 9 brings us to the epitome of a water conflict, one of the most consequential cases for the development of its idea: the so-called Water Wars that occurred in Cochabamba in the early 2000s. For our discussion, the contribution of this chapter lies in empirically challenging two discourses at the basis of the idea of water conflict: that of water as a resource and that of water as a right.The suggested change in perspective is consequential because the case of the Water Wars is perhaps the most paradigmatic case of water conflicts, and hence the case is influential in the formation of the idea. While the typical story of the Cochabamba Water Wars narrates that citizens, motivated by the unaffordability of water after privatisation, protested against the state and the corporations that formed the Aguas del Tunari consortium, as Bresnihan and other authors make clear, the goal of the protesters was to save not SEMAPA, Cochabamba’s water supply agency, but the many water collectives that the state had appropriated during the privatisation process. In this chapter, Bresnihan focuses precisely on these cooperatives that, two decades after the Water Wars, continue to provide basic water services where the government pipes do not reach. The Tunari water cooperative, with its almost mythological genesis, is an institution built on the shared responsibility of the water system and an understanding

18  Luisa Cortesi

of water that goes beyond its value as a resource. Although part of the Tunari’s members’ activism consists of opposing new development and urbanisation, the cooperative is willing to accept newcomers as long as they actively perform their duties towards the collective. The cooperative is not willing to sell water, however, nor will it include those who are likely to disperse the responsibility into a monetary transaction. Instead, the Tunari are investing their attention, labour and time in a relationship with the infrastructure of water that Bresnihan qualifies as one of care. The idea of water conflict has imposed a pattern of exploitative relationships (iii) that members of the cooperative comprehend well. The cooperative’s President, for example, expresses his scepticism towards the newcomers, who ‘only care for water in their tap’, while they, instead, have much more at stake: ‘the political dispute amongst the members of the cooperative’, says Bresnihan, was about who ‘had the right to discuss and make decisions’. In so doing, the idea of water conflict and its effects (iii) are powerful, but not impossible to upend. Despite having appreciated the value of water in ‘highly stressed conditions, rapid urbanisation, and a sclerotic public administration’, they nonetheless refuse to treat water as a finite and indispensable resource. Such a stance is also an ontological consideration that, importantly, does not ­presume an attribution of personhood, nor a flattening of ontological hierarchies (King 2007). The relation of responsibility resides between humans, and the ­relationship of care extends towards the infrastructure. Such relationships grant ecological benefits, but do not necessarily involve an ontological fluidity among humans, water, pipes, and the non-human beings that follow a restored ecology. This is intellectually ­relevant because it helps to ­de-romanticise the scholarship on the relationship with the non-human, and thus directs some of our attention to societies whose motivation for ecological care are not ­necessarily ontological. Further, challenging the categorisation of water as a resource also means questioning the standardised positive outcome prescribed by the idea of a water conflict (i), which states that its resolution involves attributing rights to water. Establishing water as a right, Tunari and Aurora cooperative members seem to note, not only remains subjected to power relations, but may potentially remain productive of conflict in situations where the relationship between people, water and infrastructure is not a transactional one, but one of responsibility. This is an example where questioning the standardised idea of water conflict means challenging not only its political-economic assumptions—state/public versus market/private—but also its expected positive outcome—the establishment of water-rights.The Water Wars were not only about resisting privatisation or claiming the right to water access, but they were also about reclaiming water as a collective responsibility. The analysis of the Water Wars and their consequences proposed in Chapter 9 sets the narrative straight in terms of their history as it belongs to those actors. It also points to the idea of water conflict and the consequences that it does (not need to) have (i–iii).

Introduction  19

Chapter 10: Van Hemert, Polsani and Ramnath in India Similar to Chapter 7 by Moreno Quintero and Selfa as well as Chapter 3 by Roth, Warner and Winnubst, the final case study of the collection discusses a water conflict that is the negation of a conflict. Almost a counter story to the protest told by Bloodworth in Chapter 4, this chapter is a standalone piece in so far as it does not explain how the idea of water conflict has agential purchase (i), has been mobilised or instrumentalised (ii), or has engendered appreciable consequences not tied to the conflict per se but to socio-environmental relations (iii). Instead, it focuses on a complementary aspect of our argument:Van Hemert, Polsani and Ramnath’s analysis of the pro-dam argument explains the narrative work it takes to keep the idea of water conflict at bay, out of the discursive arena. The multipurpose mega dam on the Godavari river, pushed by the state of Andhra Pradesh since before Independence, today adds to an ever-growing budget shared with the central government that does not justify its expected benefits, which are distributed primarily in Andhra Pradesh at the expense of land in Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. Although the project has been shelved several times over the preceding decades, its justification continues to hold on to the original reasoning, based on unfounded, and long-dismissed, claims about the ability of dams to solve poverty based on water availability for irrigation. The state of Andhra Pradesh also prides itself on pro-tribal resettlement and rehabilitation packages, despite the project on paper being very different from its actualisation: the compensation coverage is partial and arbitrary and it removes people from the forest, which is the source of their livelihoods, their environmental knowledges, customs and food supply as well as the main locus of their identity, sense of community, and spiritual world. We do not know, in this case, how much the idea of water conflict played a direct role in the narratives presented, but we know that it was carefully excluded from the hegemonic, pro-dam narrative. The chapter’s most important contribution for our argument rests precisely in showing how this result is achieved: the authoritative tone of the pro-dam narrative holds performative value as it ‘brings about’ the representation it projects. It does so through the articulation of two complementary narratives: the pro-dam reasoning ties together the narrative of irrigation benefits and that of the compensation policy.Their articulation is based on contextually valuable ideas of timelessness and innovation—dams as a timeless solution to poverty, the compensation package as an ‘innovative’ ‘pro-tribal’ land-for-land. Such articulation, successful in appearing as solid and non-negotiable, is a mechanism that contains contestation and thus curbs the possibility of water conflicts emerging. Counternarratives, if they invalidate the official ones, do not overturn the latter’s hegemonic positioning.

Conclusion The idea of water conflict is a powerful one.We can all succumb to it; I did succumb to it, if for a moment. Reading about instances of water conflicts, I found myself thinking about water as the substance one cannot do without for long but can generally do

20  Luisa Cortesi

without for long enough to fight for it.With all the tropes water has been defined with— the matter we need to sustain our life, to drink, clean, irrigate, feed, absorb, bathe, cook, soak, enjoy, purify, save—such a thought was the result of my internalising the truism of water as the thing that we all need, of which there is not enough, for which we are willing to fight. Until I paused to gather the realisation that such an understanding was limiting, instead of illuminating, my quest to understand water and its role in conflict. My own definition was extending the idea of the conflict in framing water as a resource. Further, I was buying into a story that positioned itself as the only one. In a certain sense, I then realised, it is the only one. One standardised, homogenised story, and a consequential one.7 What does such a uniformity imply? I started this introduction noting how the idea of water conflict exists across contexts, societal and cultural differences, and is standardised in projecting two factions without visible internal tensions, interests or power differentials that compete for water, intended as a natural resource, material, scarce and essential. I posit that the idea of water conflict stands on the twin passage points of homo homini lupus and water scarcity and indispensability. The standard definition, then, is correct in identifying the main tenets, if not of water conflicts in their multitude, of the idea of water conflict. It was by stirring these essays together, again and again, leveraging them to pay attention to the real cases in which this idea was formed, operated, acted, and responded, that emerged the collective argument this book proposes: water conflict is an idea—an idea being not a representation, but an ontologically dignified thing. Without pretending to represent the theoretical traduction of the lived experiences of water conflicts, the idea of water conflict lives a life of its own: it engenders consequences for the conflict itself (i), is instrumentalised to foster or justify specific interests (ii), and it intersects with and legitimises specific environmental, ecological and technological relations8 as well as a specific historicising of such relations (iii). I wish to quickly recall these three points. First, to say that the idea of water conflict engenders consequences for the conflict itself means to say that it has agential purchase, or the power to modify the course of events.This has nothing to do with performativity, the reality-creation ability of an utterance that becomes a fact once it is pronounced. An idea is not an utterance, nor does it simply materialise. The idea of water conflict puts things into motion and enacts change, although the operation it performs is not only and necessarily activating a conflict—a conflict can be prevented, and other processes can be intersected or transformed by the idea.An idea creates, for example, values, senses of places, feelings of belonging, commonality and difference, timelines.All of these influence the conflict, including the possibility of its pursuit or its avoidance. Second, an idea is interpreted: it becomes an interface that is used, instrumentalised, leveraged by people, things, narratives. The idea of water conflict is mobilised to support, or defy, a certain set of interests; to justify actions or representations that pursue specific positions or ideologies; to enforce, or to avoid, a modification, a transformation. An idea, to be clear, is neither right nor wrong, neither a good thing nor a bad one. This instrumentalisation is open to negotiation and

Introduction  21

counter-instrumentalisation: it can be used to protect the status quo but also to challenge it. Problematic when it curbs ecological and social experiences, the idea of water conflict can also give voice to the voiceless or be used to enact progressive change. Within the doxa, the delimitation of the field of processes in which consequences can develop, an idea may become a recognisable category to mobilise in order to prevent or engender change (Bourdieu 1977). Even Derrida, who believed in nothing outside of the text, explained that the text is a game whose result is unexpected; the idea of conflict can take the form of repression of other futures, or that of an empowering resource. It provides a transcendental signifier, whose significance, and roles, are all to be played (Derrida 1969). The possibility of closing the gate does not exclude the feasibility of opening it. Third, the idea of water conflict has the peculiar ability to intersect with other ideologies and solidify them, naturalise their ideological identity. This idea is tied to ideologies that regard the environment as a set of resources, thus naturalising (socio-) environmental and ecological relations, including from a political, historical, technological perspective, about the possession and utilisation of such essential and scarce substances, and it is used to legitimise these ideological stances. Several chapters of this collection, for example, de-centre the over-representation of the powerful as the only consequential influence on environmental management decisions. They instead demonstrate how the idea of water/environmental conflict itself plays a role in pushing for a certain understanding of nature that is erected on specific conceptual and sensorial configurations of the river, the water, the land, as well as people, power relations, and decision-making mechanisms. This book does not delve into all the mechanisms that make this possible. From my own empirical exploration of environment knowledge of disastrous waters (forthcoming), I suspect the leverage of an emotive component, for example the fear that the likelihood of a conflict incites. This aspect, not present in the empirical material of the chapters, is worth to be signalled in its possibilities of conceptual exploration. If Derrida describes a communication marked by the absence of an idea, the idea he questions is the message, the content between a sender and a receiver. What is proposed here instead is to re-centre the idea in the event, including a communicative one, not as the content of the communication between players, but as a fullyfledged player. The idea is therefore an agential interlocutor—for example, imagine a magnetic field that conditions the event or can be played to a specific advantage. This does not, therefore, undermine the concept of subjecthood that feminists have worked hard to rescue from both Foucault and social constructionism (Allen 1989; Fraser 1989; Hartsock 1990). An idea travels, lives both private and public existences, and survives cultural incompatibilities. It ripples and multiplies, feeding on itself as well as on mediatic and political amplifications, but also on silences and avoidances. It provides a format that may fit uncomfortably, or productively. It is the channelling of the many possibilities and ways in which things could have gone, or a wild card to get to a new level of action. This is, at its simplest, what this book proposes: to learn about water conflicts by looking at the idea of it.

22  Luisa Cortesi

Notes 1 This remark, of course, is also fed by a larger set of observations pertaining to my own anthropological work on how people learn about and from disastrous waters. 2 Concurrently with other local ontologies, this category counts a large and diverse number of people in its community of practice. 3 While Kantian metaphysics has been called into question, and without assuming a split between noumenal and phenomenal words, to explain the ontology of the thing, it is useful to use the concept of das Ding, a physical entity that exists. 4 Plato’s philosopher is clearly a man—how could it ever be a woman? This being said, most citations in this second part of the introduction refer to European philosophers, more in reference to standard concepts used in the social sciences than to the politics of citation that it implies. 5 Thanks to K. Sivaramakrishnan for this acute observation. 6 Chapter 2 offers a contribution to several bodies of literature, for example, exposing and weaving together common difficulties in the knowledge of disastrous nature (see also Cortesi 2021), such as the trouble of understanding nature beyond our sensorium, of trusting science beyond its official representation, of communicating risk and managing uncertainty at different spatial and temporal scales. 7 For a wonderful educational tool on the power of a single story, see Adichie (2009). 8 For pure heuristic purposes, I here differentiate environmental from ecological. Environmental include social relation, while ecological focuses more on understanding humans as living organisms.

References Adichie, C. 2009. ‘The Danger of a Single Story’. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/ talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en (accessed 1 January 2019). Allen, J. 1989. ‘Women Who Beget Women Must Thwart Major Sophisms’ in A. Garry and M. Pearsall (eds), Women, Knowledge, and Reality. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Arendt, H. 1959. The Human Condition. New York: Garden City. Arsel, M. and M. Spoor. 2013. Water, Environmental Security and Sustainable Rural Development Conflict and Cooperation in Central Eurasia. London & NY: Routledge. Bakhtin, M. 1986. ‘Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences’ in Translated by Vern W. McGee (ed.), Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, pp. 159–177. Austin: University of Texas Press. Björkman, L. 2015. Pipe Politics, Contested Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial Mumbai. Durham: Duke University Press. Blaser, M. 2013. ‘Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe’. Current Anthropology, 54(5), 547–568. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burke, M., S. Hsiang and Miguel, E. 2015. ‘Climate and Conflict’, Annual Review of Economics, 7, 577–617. Cortesi, L. 2014. ‘Global News’, in D. Naito, R. Sayre, H. Swanson, and S. Takahashi (eds), To See Once More the Stars: Living in a Post-Fukushima World. Santa Cruz:The New Pacific Press. Cortesi, L. 2018. ‘The Muddy Semiotics of Mud’, Journal of Political Ecology, 25, 617–627. Cortesi, L. 2021. ‘An Ontology of Water and Land’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 27(4), forthcoming.

Introduction  23

Cortesi, L., M.R. Dove, C. Hebdon, J. Stoike, and M. Lennon. 2018. ‘Environmental Anthropology’ in H. Callan (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Davis, D.K. and E. Burke. 2011. Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press. De Wit, S. 2015.‘Changing Patterns of Rain or Power? How an Idea to Adaptation of Climate Change Travels Up and Down to a Village in Simanjiro, Maasailand Northern Tanzania’, Working Papers of the Priority Programme of the German Research Foundation, 1448(11), 1–19. Derrida, J. 1966. ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’. Lecture presented at Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University. Derrida, J. 1969. De la Grammatologie (Collection). Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Derrida, J. 1972. ‘Hors Livre’ in La Dissémination. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Donahue, J.M. and B.R. Johnston. 1998. Water, Culture, and Power: Local Struggles in a Global Context. Island Press. Entman, R. 1993. ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. Ferguson, J. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine:Development and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foucault, M. 1971. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. 1977. Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books. Fraser, N. 1985. ‘Michel Foucault: A “Young Conservative”?’, Ethics, 96(1), 165–184. Fraser, N. 1989. Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Galtung, J. 1969.‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’, Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191. Ganguli, P., D. Kumar and A.R. Ganguly. 2017. ‘US Power Production at Risk from Water Stress in a Changing Climate’, Scientific Reports, 7(1), 11983. Hacking, I. 1995. ‘Looping Effects of a Human Kind’ in D. Sperber, D. Premack and Ann James Premack (eds), Casual Cognition, pp. 351–394. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hacking, I. 1999. The Social Construction of What? Boston: Harvard University Press. Hartsock, N. 1990. ‘Foucault on Power: a Theory for Women?’ in L. Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism. London & NY: Routledge. Hickey, S. and G. Mohan. 2004. Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development. London: Zed Books. Hiner, C.C. 2016. ‘“Chicken Wars”, Water Fights, and Other Contested Ecologies Along The Rural-Urban Interface in California’s Sierra Nevada Foothills’, Journal of Political Ecology, 23(1), 167–181. Homer-Dixon,T. 1999. Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Homer-Dixon, T. and J. Blitt. 1998. Ecoviolence: Links Among Environment, Population and Security. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Horkheimer, M., & Marcuse, H. (1937). Philosophie und Kritische Theorie. Zeitschrift Für Sozialforschung, 6(3), 625–647. Horowitz, L.S. 2009. ‘Environmental Violence and Crises of Legitimacy in New Caledonia’, Political Geography, 28(4), 248–258. Husserl, E. 1913. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. London and New York: Routledge Classics. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling. London and New York: Routledge.

24  Luisa Cortesi

Joy, K. J., B. Gujja, S. Paranjape, V. Goud, and S. Vispute (eds). 2008. Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts in the Making. Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflict in India. New Delhi: Routledge. Kant, I. 1878. Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Khagram, S. and S. Ali. 2006. ‘Environment and Security’, Annual Review of Environmental Resources, 31, 395–411. King, J.T. 2007. ‘The Value of Water and the Meaning of Water Law for the Native Americans Known as the Haudenosaunee’, Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, 16(3 Summer), 450–470. Kockelman, P. 2005. ‘The Semiotic Stance’. Semiotica, 157(1/4), 233–304. Kockelman, P. 2010a. Language, Culture, and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kockelman, P. 2010b. ‘Semiotics Interpretants, Inference, and Intersubjectivity’ in R. Wodak and P. Kerswill (eds), The Sage Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kockelman, P. 2013. ‘The Anthropology of an Equation’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3(3), 33. Kockelman, P. 2016. ‘Grading, Gradients, Degradation Grace’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2, 95–466. Latour, B. 2009. ‘Spheres and Networks: Two Ways to Reinterpret Globalization’, Harvard Design Magazine, Spring/Sum, 138–144. Levy, B.S., V.W. Sidel and J.A. Patz. 2017. ‘Climate Change and Collective Violence’, Annual Review of Public Health, 38, 241–257. Libiszewski, S. 1991. ‘What is an Environmental Conflict’, Journal of Peace Research, 28(4), 407–422. Martinez Alier, J. 2002. The Environmentalism of the Poor. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Marx, K. and F. Engels. 2001. The German Ideology (Part One, with Selections from Parts Two and Three, together with Marx’s ‘Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy’). New York: International Publishers. Mehta, L. 2013. The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation. The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation. Washington, DC: Routledge, Earthscan. Mill, J.S. 1991. The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (1963 rd ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Molle, F. 2009. ‘River-Basin Planning and Management: The Social Life of a Concept’, Geoforum, 40(3), 484–494. Nesbitt, T. and D. Weiner. 2001. ‘Conflicting Environmental Imaginaries and The Politics of Nature in Central Appalachia’, Geoforum, 32(3), 333–349. Nietzsche, F. 1887. On the Genealogy of Morals. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nixon, R. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Boston: Harvard University Press. Ottinger, G. 2018. Refining Expertise: How Responsible Engineers Subvert Environmental Justice Challenges. New York City: NY University Press. Peluso, N.L. and M.J. Watts. 2001. Violent Environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pickering, A. 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Popper, K. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations:The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge. Povinelli, E.A. 2001. ‘Radical Worlds: The Anthropology of Incommensurability and Inconceivability’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 319–334. Povinelli, E.A. 2011. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Introduction  25

Putnam, H. 1975. ‘The Meaning of Meaning’, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 7(7), 131–193. Sen, A. 1981. Poverty and Famine. An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Strang,V. 1997. Uncommon Ground: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Values. Oxford, New York: Berg. Thornton, S. 2007. ‘Popper, Basic Statements and the Quine-Duhem Thesis’, Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society, 9, 1–10. Verhoeven, H. 2011. ‘Climate Change, Conflict and Development in Sudan: Global NeoMalthusian Narratives and Local Power Struggles’, Development and Change, 42(3), 679–707. Watts, M. and R. Peet. 2004. Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. London: Routledge. World Health Organization. 1996. Violence: A Public Health Priority. Geneva: World Health Organization. Zhouri, A. and R. Oliveira. 2012. ‘Development and Environmental Conflicts in Brazil: Challenges for Anthropology and Anthropologists’, Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 9(1), 181–208.

PART 1

Agential purchase of the idea

1 CAN’T TRUST The boaters of the waterways of South East England versus ‘the charity that makes you homeless’ Ben Bowles1

Introduction The UK has over 2,000 miles of navigable waterways, a vast interweaving network of canals and rivers, all of which are populated (albeit some rather sparsely) by boatdwellers who live in narrow steel boats, fibreglass cabin cruisers and barges. In the absence of a home mooring, some of these ‘Boaters’ travel the system, moving from place to place and thereby forming a number of interlinking itinerant communities and loosely affiliated groups. Over six years of living aboard a boat, including 13 months during which I was engaged in participant observation fieldwork with Boaters as part of my PhD studies at Brunel University, London, my travels have taken me around the comparatively highly populated canals and rivers of London and the South East. Much of the Boaters’ interaction, and a large part of what binds them together as a community, is centred around a longstanding series of conflicts with the authority tasked with managing and maintaining the waterways:2 the charitable trust Canal and River Trust (CaRT), which took over the running of the waterways from a quango—British Waterways (BW)—in early 2012.3 The water conflict described here is intensely political: a conflict over access to water as a living space and the Boaters’ ability to remain on the waterways. After briefly introducing the Boaters, this chapter explores the fundamental aspects of this particular political situation. Following this, the chapter outlines two specific disputes that demonstrate how access to drinking and sanitation moorings via water points and facilities moorings can become central paradigmatic scenes (the concept used and understood by Davies [2010]) through which the relationship between the Boaters and CaRT can be seen to emerge. These are places where these independent travellers, who are not linked to national gas or electricity networks, must rely upon others, including agencies of the state. The most important of these places are

30  Ben Bowles

the facilities moorings, where Boaters must access their drinking water and dispose of sanitary waste at locations provided and managed by CaRT. It is ironic that, for people living on rivers, water provision can drag the Boaters into antagonistic contact with the sedentary world and with state forces. At these flashpoints, the Boaters and CaRT must engage with each other, and CaRT can therefore try to control the boating population through limiting the number and quality of the facilities. In this way, the Boaters’ fluid, liminal or water-like way of being in the world (Strang 2005) is pinned down or solidified by the material infrastructure of water management. This chapter details the tension that arises when Boaters (who in many ways deliberately attempt to develop a flexible, transient and mobile lifestyle and identity against sedentary outsiders and the state) find that the instability of their relationship with the state (where they exist in a legal grey area and are subject to opaque and inconsistent surveillance and enforcement procedures) is one of their lifestyle’s greatest challenges.4 Some Boaters see this as a necessary evil, some relish the battle, while for others (particularly those poorest Boaters who are mainly afloat for reasons of economic necessity), ‘choice’ is actually too strong an expression. This chapter describes the ‘arms’ length’ relationship wherein the Boaters, from the authority’s perspective, are a problematic and hard-to-govern acephalous mobile group, and the authority, from the Boaters’ perspective, is the inconsistent, unpredictable and frequently discriminatory tool of a state that is biased towards a sedentary and sedentarising logic. In addition, as I have written elsewhere (Bowles 2016, 2017), having an antagonist in the form of CaRT has an aggregative function: binding disparate Boaters together as a community against a powerful common aggressor.

Introducing the boaters The Boaters are those who have taken to living aboard boats on the canals and rivers since the last of the population known as the ‘working Boaters’—professional goods-carrying boat-dwellers with their own long history going back to the boom of canal building (see Burton 1989; Smith 1974[1878]; Rolt 1999 [1944])—moved from the ‘cut’, as the canal is known, in the winter of 1962–63. This population has slowly increased as the canals and rivers have become cleaner, better maintained and more attractive as holiday and leisure destinations over the intervening years. In recent years, particularly since travelling on the highways of the UK has become more difficult, and again in the aftermath of the 2007 financial crash, boat-dwelling has become vastly more popular. The boating population has grown with particular speed around cities such as London, where a housing crisis (see Croucher 2015; Hill 2013) has left many unable to afford sky-high rent prices. The histories and socioeconomic statuses of these live aboard (a term which simply means ‘those that live permanently on a boat’) are mixed, but most tend to be on the less affluent end of the socioeconomic spectrum, with some explicitly stating that they are living on boats as a way to avoid imminent homelessness. The Boaters are in a different position than sedentary people with regard to their

Can’t trust  31

position within state legibility (as they do not hold a postcode) and state taxation, as they pay only their boat license cost and thereby avoid local authority council tax. Their utilities are also generally cheaper, due to the Boaters’ ability to generate their own electricity from generators and solar panels and their right to gather water from CaRT-provided taps. It is important to note, however, that Boaters are often quick to state that they live aboard for more personal reasons than economic reasons, and that it is important to ‘love the lifestyle’, particularly the freedom and mobility afforded by boatdwelling. Some Boaters with families find it difficult to maintain itinerant lives due to the need to register for schools and, as such, Boaters tend to be younger, or single, or retired and with older children. London, in particular, maintains a varied population of Boaters, especially as many more affluent individuals have chosen boating as a way of living in desirable areas and avoiding rent costs. However, there does exist a tension between more experienced Boaters and these ‘new’ or ‘newbie’ Boaters who are yet to become embedded in the community of practice on the waterways (see Wenger 1998; Lave and Wenger 1991). Being a ‘proper’ and respected Boater within this community of practice involves entering into practices and ethics of hard work, mastering practical skills, becoming as self-sufficient and ‘off-grid’ as possible, and attending to the needs of others in the community who may be in need of support or protection. This may be linked to class background but is not determined by it. Beyond these general commonalities, there is little pattern to the livelihoods adopted by Boaters, other than the fact that due to their need to travel, many Boaters find a way to work part-time, in ‘informal’ sectors of the economy (see Hann and Hart 2011: 114), from home, or providing goods or services for other Boaters. For the Boaters, the ability to move, to have the freedom to choose their neighbours and to navigate around the waterways system is an important part of their identity. Like the traveller-gypsies in Judith Okely’s (1983) account, the potential to move (more than the act of travelling itself) is important to this community’s sense of self and difference. The Boaters tend to move according to their own interpretation of CaRT’s two-week system, moving to what they would describe as a ‘new place’ approximately every two weeks, although some do tend to stay in particular convenient spots for longer periods of time, particularly when mechanical issues with the boat, personal health issues, or the weather make boat navigation inconvenient. Boaters tend to police long-term over stayers to an extent by encouraging the rhetoric that ‘the point of living on a boat is to move’ and speaking of movement around the landscape as being one of the great benefits of a life aboard. For the Boaters, important facets of their identity and their distinction from the sedentary world are their mobility, their appreciation of personal freedoms and self-sufficiency, and the importance of community and mutual support. It is hard to summarise exactly what kind of an object this identity is. Boaters have a wide spectrum of attitudes towards their identity and how they describe themselves to others. Some Boaters are enthusiastic and speak of being a Boater as an important facet of their identity, or even as their ethnic category (such as those who

32  Ben Bowles

argue for the uptake of the ‘Bargee Traveller’ ethnic category). Others speak about boat-dwelling as an important part of their lives and the boating community as being important to them, and they may even describe themselves as travellers or ‘a type of Traveller’ but stop short of describing themselves as ethnically separate from the sedentary world. For others, boating is a simple housing choice, often temporary in nature. It is believed by most Boaters that those in this latter category are unlikely to be successful on boats in the long-term, as they are less likely to engage with the supportive community of live aboard (see Bowles 2014), and there is general agreement that those that identify as Boaters must support each other in the face of hostility from outside the community (see Bowles 2017). One of the most valuable ways to observe the Boaters’ identity is in their relationships with outsiders and non-Boaters, particularly when Boaters are aggregated as a community through the commonalities produced by conflicts.

‘Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting’ The water conflict The majority of ongoing conflicts between the itinerant Boaters and the authorities are caused by divergent readings of the 1995 British Waterways Act, an act of the UK parliament which allows Boaters to live aboard without a home mooring (to live as what is known as a ‘Continuous Cruiser’) providing that they travel to a new ‘place’ every 14 days as part of a process where the boat is used ‘bona fide for navigation’5 (British Waterways Act 1995). CaRT, and before them BW, have spent a great deal of time and financial resources policing or enforcing the 14-day rule, including attempting to set minimum distances, implementing no-return policies, and privatising a number of moorings, so that Continuous Cruisers are limited to particular, and now decreasing areas. The overall effect is that Boaters are encouraged to move farther and more frequently and to adopt behaviours understood by the authorities to constitute genuine continuous cruising. Boaters can feel that they are being forced from the waterways by an authority which considers them to be a nuisance, and frequently make the point that CaRT may be acting ultra vires, i.e. beyond the legal remit of their powers as detailed in the 1995 act—a flawed piece of legislation, which both sides admit fails to provide concrete definitions or a strong framework, thereby leaving room for competing interpretations. The essential conflict between the Boaters and CaRT, and the one which shapes and frames the other conflicts described in this chapter, is around the interpretation and policing of the 14-day rule. The Boaters experience forces of explicit governance through CaRT, which manifest as twin (and often somewhat contradictory) pressures. On the one hand, Boaters are encouraged, both explicitly by CaRT and by the general sedentarising logic of states and bureaucracies—what Scott (1998, 2011) describes as the state’s desire to make the citizenry legible and settled6—to give up their itinerant lifestyles and move onto land, or to settle their boats at a

Can’t trust  33

permanent mooring. On the other hand, Boaters are explicitly surveilled by data checkers and enforcement officers: their boat license numbers are recorded in a particular location that falls within one of CaRT’s arbitrary divisions of ‘place’ or ‘neighbourhood’, and they are then placed into an enforcement process when they are deemed to have overstayed in a place for longer than two weeks. At this point, they can potentially lose their boats and become homeless. In this way, Boaters are encouraged to both become sedentary and move farther and more frequently; they are, to borrow a phrase from Bob Dylan’s song Chimes of Freedom, ‘condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting’. The first of these pressures, the general push by CaRT and others to sedentarise the Boaters, can be literally mapped on the waterways through the reduction of mooring space on the towpath—also called the ‘on-side’ or ‘online moorings’—as CaRT moves to create permanent, privately owned mooring spaces. During my fieldwork, a major uproar was caused in the Cowley and Uxbridge area by CaRT’s proposals to reduce online moorings by 10 for every one permanent ‘affordable’ mooring they provided. This planned 10:1 reduction did not come to fruition, but the announcement of the proposal was the direct cause of the creation of a Boaters’ advocacy organisation, Cowley and Uxbridge Boaters (CUB). A persistent concern for Boaters is that the UK waterways will become heavily privatised, with boats being confined to particular moorings, given postcodes and made subject to local government political authority. Boaters often specifically link this situation to that which is experienced by boatdwellers in mainland Europe. One participant, Dan, told me that ‘they want to make it like Amsterdam’, where the centre of the city consists almost entirely of expensive residential mooring. This point was almost admitted by a CaRT employee when he told me that Amsterdam was ‘a vision of what we are becoming. The waterways are much more integrated. There’s a lot more local digression in the UK’. By digression, he was referring to local mooring rules, mixed mooring patterns and irregular enforcement of the authority’s take on the law.7 A fully privatised system would halt this ‘digression’ and make the waterways easy to manage from a bureaucratic centre, fulfilling what Scott (1998) describes as the major purpose of the state. As Tim, a Boater in Reading, once said with deliberate sarcasm after a friend had given him grim news of increased ‘enforcement’ at the western end of the Kennet and Avon canal at Bath, ‘it’s almost like they don’t want people living on the canals’. It is important to note that sedentarising pressure is a pressure that is felt implicitly by Boaters and is, in fact, embedded deeply in UK society. Besides more explicit sedentarising measures, it is consistently difficult to live in the UK without a postcode (i.e. ZIP code) and it is not possible to have a residential postcode as a Boater unless you claim to live in a house in which you are not actually resident (a relative’s house, for example). Bank accounts, passports, permissions to work, access to General Practitioners, doctors’ surgeries, access to mail, access to benefit payments, and other pre-requisites of life in the UK are significantly harder or impossible to access without a postcode. One participant told me ‘you aren’t a person without a postcode’ and claimed that the daily inconvenience of not holding one of these important bureaucratic symbols was a subtle ‘push’ factor discouraging a life afloat. This background pressure, when combined

34  Ben Bowles

with CaRT’s more explicit measures of sedentarisation—including the increased privatisation and legislation of towpath mooring, and forcing Boaters who they deem as ‘non-compliant’ to take a home mooring or be refused a license renewal—creates an environment in which it is far easier to be sedentary within the state. The second of these pressures—the pressure to move onwards to a new place every 14 days, and further to make these extensive and frequent movements as part of a process of bonafide navigation of the waterways—is of equal or greater concern than the first for the Boaters of the South East. Both Boaters and the authority have at times sought to map ‘places’ or ‘neighbourhoods’ which they feel represent a reasonable and appropriate moving distance, and both groups have also advocated a more open approach based on what they understand to be common sense. For the Boaters, this common-sense approach takes the form of the practice of encouraging Boaters, via online forums or face-to-face at gatherings or when travelling, not to show a lack of inclination to move (often colloquially referred to as ‘taking the piss’, meaning that these Boaters are making the situation worse for those who do try to move within what they deem to be a reasonable interpretation of the law) and creating a pervasive rhetoric that ‘the point of living on a boat is to travel’. Indeed, many travelling Boaters are as critical of neighbours who are deemed to be moving too infrequently and within too small an area as those from outside of the community.These overstayers may be creating an increased risk of enforcement for those Boaters who deem their cruising pattern to be acceptable and within their own understanding of the law. If there seems to be a contradiction in Boaters’ speaking about the importance of movement and yet running into conflict over the authority’s measures to move them on, then it is important to clarify that, although movement is important to the Boaters, the rigid subdivision of this movement and the addition of arbitrary minimums of distance and frequency is antithetical to most Boaters’ understanding of how the waterways should ideally function. Their understanding is based on a situational flexibility and attention to the ‘natural’ rhythms of life on waterways (see Bowles 2016), and not on arbitrary measurements and distances and timescales that are unrealistic. Such conditions are especially untenable for Boaters with children, with work commitments in specific locations, and Boaters with other ties to general localities, such as the need to attend particular hospitals. For CaRT, an open and flexible approach has been adopted in their official guidance, perhaps reflecting that senior members of the authority have recognised that they cannot legally define ‘place’ or ‘navigation’ without their interpretations being supported by judgements in national courts of law. As such, a section of their guidance, under the subheading ‘Place’, reads: What constitutes a ‘neighbourhood’ will vary from area to area—on a rural waterway a village or hamlet may be a neighbourhood and on an urban waterway a suburb or district within a town or city may be a neighbourhood. A sensible and pragmatic judgement needs to be made. It is not possible (nor appropriate) to specify distances that need to be travelled. (CaRT 2012)

Can’t trust  35

Taken at face value, this approach may seem encouraging to Boaters and may be seen to represent a new flexibility and leeway in the authority’s interpretation and implementation of the law. In reality, it has become clear that CaRT data checkers have continued to register Boaters as being present in particular places and to record this as accurately as their infrequent boat sighting records can allow. As a Boater, I received the following e-mail (Figure 1.1) in April of 2015, an e-mail that clearly marks a succession of places at which my boat has been sighted and recorded. The definition of these locations as places has neither been officially provided in guidance to the Boaters nor tested for its validity in courts against the written law. In this way, Boaters have continued to become part of CaRT’s enforcement process; a process which, like the definitions of ‘place’ and ‘navigation’, has differed over time and from place to place. The system with which many Boaters have become familiar over the years involves a sequence of letters, beginning with what is referred to as a Pre-CC1 (the CC standing for ‘Continuous Cruiser’), warning the Boater to alter their cruising pattern, and progressing to a CC1, CC2, CC3, and then legal action through local courts, at which point the authority can refuse to renew the Boaters’ license and then ‘Section 8’ [remove] the vessel.8 However, this approach has changed dramatically on two occasions since the commencement of my fieldwork in 2012. Firstly, there was general confusion on the waterways in 2012 over CaRT’s decision to add overstaying ‘fines’ of £25 per day onto the license without notice and to present Boaters with these fines on the occasion of their license renewal. It was never clear to the Boaters whether or not the levying of these fines was lawful and whether or not they were legally obliged to pay, nor was it clear whether or not particular Boaters were accruing overstaying

Part of an e-mail sent to the author by a CaRT enforcement office, clearly marking their definition of the ‘places’ in which his boat had been spotted. Source: Author FIGURE 1.1 

36  Ben Bowles

fees or had managed to avoid the attentions of the data collectors, who do not necessarily announce their presence. This unpredictability took another turn in early 2015 when CaRT announced that those termed ‘non-compliant continuous cruisers’ would be offered licenses of only three- or six-month duration, as a prelude to their changing their cruising behaviour or being refused a license entirely at the next renewal opportunity. Boaters, again, were not told whether or not they were being placed on the list of non-compliant continuous cruisers and, therefore, were not aware whether there was an imminent danger of their being made homeless. As can be seen from Figure 1.1 and the discussion above, there is no obvious logic or any particular regularity of pattern to the enforcement approach taken by CaRT. They recognise a legal need, encouraged by complaints from local residents, holiday boat-hirers and hobbyist non-liveaboard Boaters, to move overstaying boats onwards every two weeks and not to allow these Boaters to cruise in a limited area. However, their resources are clearly too meagre to produce efficient data on the current mooring position of all cruising boats (the infrequency of sightings in Figure 1.1 is a testament to this, with whole months between sightings), and there is no obvious consistency over time or geographic region as to who is targeted by enforcement and how this enforcement is felt. In an interview with a high-ranking CaRT officer, I asked why CaRT were so interested in moving Boaters on long distances every two weeks or sooner to limit overstaying. He explained that pressure from sedentary residents, particularly in affluent areas, and from non-residential boaters holidaying through London meant that they had to be seen to be enforcing a law that was, with the available resources, incredibly hard to enforce. He did not recognise that the authority’s interpretation of the law may not be currently legal or that while judgements in some courts have upheld the action of CaRT, some have ruled against their enforcement of the law (for a legal overview, see Bowles 2015: 77–80). Lacking further legislation subsequent to the 1995 Act or judgements in higher courts, such as the Supreme Court of the UK or the European Court of Human Rights, it is yet to be confirmed whether or not CaRT’s actions are within their powers and based on a legitimate interpretation of the 1995 legislation, and multiple interpretations could be argued. When asked why the residents and holiday boaters were concerned with overstaying, the CaRT officer answered, ‘There’s a concern, when there’s a long-term relationship [between Boaters and residents]. [Certain residents] are engaged with monitoring the use of the canal. They equate overstaying with those who do not observe the rules, who are anti-social generally; they don’t care about causing unpleasantness for others’. Asked about whether this reflected the distaste, based on class prejudice, by rich residents against poor Boaters, he replied emphatically, ‘You can’t necessarily draw that class distinction. I may agree that people would rather have neat shiny boats at the end of their garden. It’s perception, the idea that these people may be criminal, may have criminal friends’. From this conversation and from public meetings which I have attended, CaRT’s processes tend to react to pressure from outside and to differ from area to area based on the particular concerns presented to them by locals. For Boaters who travel long

Can’t trust  37

distances around the system, this can lead to an uneasy lack of security and clarity, as Boaters are never clear on whether their current movement will prove acceptable to the authorities or if and when they may be subject to enforcement notices or a reduced period license.9 It can therefore be seen that the primary conflict between the Boaters and CaRT, a conflict over the use of the waterways as a place for human dwelling, comes from the Boaters being subjected to twin and apparently contradictory pressures. The Boaters exist under one series of pervasive pressures to make them sedentary and settled, and another of unpredictable pressures to move onwards, farther and more frequently: ‘condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting’. Either of these pressures has the potential be incredibly harmful, to the point of forcing poorer or vulnerable Boaters from the waterways and into homelessness. However, these twin pressures are neither unique to the waterways, nor actually paradoxical in reality. Firstly, it is important to note that the Boaters’ double bind of being simultaneously sedentarised and moved on in order to show that they are proper legal travellers is not a unique feature of this particular community. Okely (1983) described a similar situation with the Traveller-Gypsies with whom she worked in England, whereby legal changes (particularly the 1968 Caravan Act) attempted to force them to stay in official residential parks where they could be monitored and their movements controlled. Simultaneously, however,Traveller-Gypsies would be moved from council to council as it became clear that no authority wished to house them longterm. In reality, even though (essentially sedentary) provision was to be made for Gypsies by each local council, a status quo prevailed whereby Gypsies would become the recipients of complaints from sedentary local residents and would be forced from the council’s jurisdiction and on to the responsibility of another, constantly being hounded between local authorities (ibid.:105–124). Parallel to the Boaters’ experience, the Traveller-Gypsies find their dealings with the state to be a series of ‘unpredictable events’ which ‘[confirm] their views of Gorgios as untrustworthy and capricious’ (ibid.: 109), and like the Boaters, they too found that, in face-to-face interaction with agents of the state, ‘a modus vivendi is found beneath the letter of Gorgio law’. In this way, the Traveller-Gypsies were also caught in an ambiguous position between a sedentarising pressure and a pressure to move. Okely, in her concluding remarks, summarises that ‘the state has attempted to control, disperse, deport, convert or destroy them’ (ibid.: 231), although she does not reflect explicitly on how some of these pressures may be contradictory and may serve to simultaneously push and pull travelling people in several directions. Further, it is important to note that it is not paradoxical that CaRT, as representatives of the state, does not rigorously or logically surveil or approach the Boaters, and that they seem to be encouraging mutually exclusive behaviours simultaneously—in fact, it should not be surprising. Given CaRT’s relative lack of financial and human resources, their conflicting mandate to be simultaneously an authority that ensures navigation of a water network and the authority responsible for an itinerant group, and the in-built ambiguity of the laws that they attempt to wield, they were always unlikely to have a clear, consistent and logical approach. CaRT are a

38  Ben Bowles

group who practise statecraft and management over the waterways, but they do not, as Scott (1998) would predict, simply attempt to make the Boaters settled and legible, nor do they act to move the Boaters onwards in response to their legal responsibility and to outside pressures. Rather, and in a more complex fashion, CaRT veers from practice to practice as individuals join the organisation and suggest particular approaches, or react to outside influence, and then inevitably find each new practice limited by their lack of resources and funding. However, this places the Boaters in the centre of a conflict fraught with immediate and unpredictable danger. For many considering joining the boating community, tales of the ongoing battles with CaRT can make them less likely to make the choice to become a Boater. Many newer Boaters have naively moved aboard thinking that they can live in Central London throughout the year without incurring the attentions of the authority, and then find themselves to be the subject of fines or court summonses, or at the very least, invasive scrutiny. This has caused several of my informants to move from the waterways altogether, or to move to isolated rural parts of the system where enforcement may be laxer and it may be easier to avoid the gaze of CaRT’s surveillance.

Boaters and the state A full analysis of the relationship between Boaters and the state is beyond the remit of this particular case study. In summary, however, it is noticeable that many of the Boaters do wish to avoid the more undesirable aspects of being tied down within a state system—the quotidian surveillance, taxation, and various controls over their movements. One Boater in Caversham outside Reading began explaining to me how the government had been increasing the explicit surveillance of the population (through CCTV, official documentation, etc.) since the 1980s, adding, ‘they want to know more and more and control your movements until you’ve just got to say “bugger off ”. On the canals and rivers … you’ll always have people there for you, unless you want to be alone … you’re off the grid, you’re invisible’. This invisibility was, for that rural dweller outside Reading, entirely desirable. For others, however (especially when they wish to make claims on the state through the National Health Service, to claim benefits, or access the police force), being a Boater with no postal address, and therefore not being a fully legible citizen, can be a disadvantage. Equally, the invasive surveillance which marks CaRT’s interactions with the Boaters, and which replaces the more routine surveillance arising from the relationship between a sedentary citizen and the state (a surveillance occurring through bureaucracy, official registration and discreet CCTV) can be paradoxically more stressful for the Boater wishing to avoid the state. From the point of view of governmental bureaucracy, Boaters are hard to account for with any accuracy, especially given the possibility of counting twice when volunteers set out to monitor continually moving Boaters living in moorings across a vast area. They are hard to tax, although most Boaters do pay their license fees to their central managing authority.They are also hard to police, given that they can move from authority to authority and one does not immediately know where

Can’t trust  39

to find a Boater who is wanted by the law (the inverse side of this situation is that Boaters find it harder to access the police when they need protection). Boaters are essentially ambiguous citizens,10 not fully part of the manageable citizenry of the state, nor fully outside of the state’s access or protection. For the Boaters, such a marginal or liminal relationship is agreeable, as it allows life to be lived relatively cheaply, to create a home which is personal to the self, and to have the freedom to move around the landscape in the course of what is often called a ‘better’, an ‘alternative’, or even a ‘utopian’ way to live. The Boaters are not fleeing the state, as such, but they are fleeing the financial burdens, restrictions and limitations of living in sedentary housing, all of which are encouraged by the state as they seek to make populations legible, mappable and taxable (see Scott 1998). Scott recognises this distinction, arguing that ‘it is critical to understand that what is being evaded is not a relationship per se with the state but an evasion of subject status’ (2011: 330). There is, therefore, a situation upon the waterways wherein the Boaters in their mobility find that they are harder to access from the point of view of the state, that they in turn cannot easily access parts of the state apparatus (as mentioned, the lack of a postcode is often the key impediment), and that agents of the state are predisposed to find them at least inconvenient and at most extremely threatening.They are part of the state, but are shadowy and hard to map or manage, living upon one of the last pieces of land which has not been subject to the enclosure processes which all but eliminated the commons and communal and public-owned free space (Polanyi 2001 [1944]).

The water conflict as a contested narrative Having been described, what does the water conflict tell us about the narratives used to justify the Boaters’ and the authority’s divergent positions? The above ethnography has within it at least two separate understandings of the history of life on the waterways, the ‘correct’ function of waterways authorities and the peculiarities of the law as it relates to boat dwellers. However, these broadly coalesce into two narratives, one belonging to the Boaters and the other to CaRT.These narratives are in conflict, with the general public, via news outlets and legal and political decision makers, acting as an audience to be persuaded through strength of rhetoric. CaRT frames the water conflict as a matter of fulfilling of their legal responsibilities to keep boats on the waterways moving and to provide a waterways environment that is balanced for the benefit of all users, including residential boat-dwellers.Their narrative carries significant power, as CaRT have a quasi-governmental status, a bureaucratic organisational structure and the ‘official’ platform that these bring. CaRT understand their position as being charged with the enforcement of law and a fulfilment of statutory duty under difficult conditions of underfunding and a lack of resources, with Boaters who are affected by their measures deserving sanction due to being ‘noncompliant’: a stubborn or even criminal element making life harder for a law-abiding majority. This narrative is also found scattered through the blogs, forums and magazines of traditional boating organisations (such as the Inland Waterways Association) that are broadly in accordance with CaRT’s actions and their constructed narrative.

40  Ben Bowles

The Boaters, on the other hand, have their own narrative: one of victimisation from a high-handed, often inept and frequently invasive authority. CaRT are said to have acted and continue to act outside of the remit of their legal powers (the ‘responsibility’ that CaRT have to enforce and police is rarely spoken about by Boaters, implicitly casting all enforcement action as unprovoked) out of disregard for the well-being of itinerant Boaters who are preventing them from privatising the waterways and increasing their profit margins.They are also seen as being biased towards sedentary residents who are assumed to dislike the presence of travelling Boaters in their locales due to anti-traveller sentiment. As is demonstrated in the case studies at the end of the chapter, the Boaters have threaded this narrative of CaRT’s skewed priorities and the bias of sedentary residents into their descriptions of the repeated vandalism of the facilities at Old Ford Lock. As demonstrated in the second case study concerning the 2012 Olympic Games, the Boaters have further added into their narrative a discourse of universal human rights and, in doing so, connected themselves to other high-profile struggles against power. The effects of these competing narratives are manifold. CaRT’s narrative allows them to cast categories of compliant and non-compliant Boaters, creating a moral justification for their actions that could be compared to the rhetorical power of the categories of ‘deserving’ and ‘non-deserving’ poor. Through emphasising their legal responsibility to act, their continuity to their more straightforwardly governmental precursors, and the balance of stakeholder needs in their actions, they strive to appear as a moral and official body, comparable to the police or judiciary, with a power that is engrained and similarly hard to contest legitimately. Which of these powerful competing narratives of the same struggle emerges as hegemonic and accepted in the form of legal judgement and public opinion (likely to be shaped primarily through journalistic narratives) is still fundamentally fluid and unset, although CaRT are broadly able to turn their resources into a wider ‘reach’ with regard to the wider public and powerful decision-makers. Legal judgements and news reports have, so far, not come down firmly on one side or the other (see Bowles 2015: 77–81), and, as such, it is important to continue to allow a variety of opinions, viewpoints and narratives to be brought out, and not only those of the powerful and well-resourced. This chapter is both an account of these narratives and an attempt to bring the Boaters’ narrative, somewhat more hidden from the wider public, into focus and to demonstrate its validity against fact. The chapter now turns to demonstrating how these narratives come through in two case studies of actual interactions between Boaters and the Canal and River Trust.

‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any a drop to drink’:11 water points and sanitation facilities Whereas sedentary people in the houses surrounding the canals enjoy easy access to utilities such as gas, heating, electricity, and water, Boaters face the difficulty of having to source these essentials themselves. Boaters burn coal and wood for heating and cook using gas canisters, all of which can be purchased from marinas or

Can’t trust  41

from the ‘coal boats’ or ‘working boats’ which ply their trade along the waterways. Electricity can be generated through a variety of methods, including harvesting solar and wind energy and running engines and generators. Water, however, must be collected from taps at locks and facilities moorings, which are run and maintained by CaRT and, on EA waters, by the EA or local councils. Boaters differ in how they opt to deal with their sanitary waste, with the two most common solutions being the installation of ‘pump-out’ toilets, where a sanitary tank holds the Boaters’ waste which is then pumped out by service boats, at marinas or one of a few CaRT-provided pump-out stations, and ‘elsan’,‘chemical’ or ‘cassette’ toilets, where the Boaters empty a smaller tank by hand at CaRT-provided elsan disposal facilities.12 For all Boaters, particularly those who must rely on CaRT twice, for both water and elsan facilities, these facilities moorings can become sites of contestation between Boaters, the authority and other outsiders. The irony is, of course, that Boaters live on water and tend to be avowedly self-sufficient and yet, in the matter of gaining domestic and sanitary water, they are uncomfortably reliant upon the bureaucratic system. This is illustrated below by two case studies that emerged over the course of my fieldwork.

Case 1: Old Ford Lock (Regent’s Canal) The first case concerns one of London’s busiest facilities moorings: those at Old Ford Lock at Victoria Park in Hackney. Boaters estimate that the population living on London’s waterways has grown dramatically over the past two years, although it is important to note that that there is no official data on how many boats London could support and how close the waterways are to this limit—London’s waterways are certainly not ‘full’. ‘Older’ Boaters in the community, who have been aboard for five years or more, remember when London’s canals were almost entirely deserted, whereas now they are teeming with narrowboats double- or even triple-moored alongside others. Rough estimates state that London’s Boater population has doubled over the last two summers and the capital has not met this increase in population with a corresponding increase in the provision of facilities. The elsan (toilet disposal) point and tap at Old Ford Lock have to support a population of Boaters covering the busy Victoria Park visitor’s moorings, the massive number of boats moored above and below Acton’s Lock and Broadway Market and, when the Mile End tap is out of action, as it frequently is, Boaters moored at Mile End and on the Hertford Union canal towards Hackney Wick (see Figure 1.2). This amounts to at least 200 boats, likely many more, meaning, as a rule of thumb, at least 300 Boaters. All of which makes it more than inconvenient that, during a particular period of my fieldwork, as soon as the tap was fixed, it was invariably vandalised, usually by the tap itself being removed, within a night or two. This specific and clearly not random act of vandalism occurred repeatedly throughout the entirety of the nine months of my official fieldwork, which I spent in London between late 2012 and September 2013. Boaters were, during this time, often forced to move long distances, to Angel or to Hackney Wick or Limehouse, to fill up with

42  Ben Bowles

A map image showing as a line the distance between the water points at Mile End, Angel Islington, and the other Old Ford Lock (River Lea); the population living within this area is made up of those who must rely on the Old Ford Lock (Regent’s Canal). The facilities mooring itself is marked with a pin. Source: Author, produced using Google Maps. FIGURE 1.2 

water, giving up their mooring spots in the process. My own full water tank would last for between one and two weeks, depending on the number of showers I had, but for one participant, Tom, who did not have a water tank, his journeys every two or three days to the water point with a water butt in tow were made time-consuming, unpleasant or impossible on occasions when his local tap was broken. This oddly specific and repeated act of vandalism can show the researcher a great deal about the relationship between the Boaters and their sedentary neighbours. I cannot vouch for the motives of the vandals as they remain unidentified, but the specificity of their target suggests that their act had a disruptive purpose and was not opportunistic. One is led to assume that the vandals objected either to the presence of the tap or to the Boaters who rely upon it. This assumption was supported by the Boaters’ reactions to the vandalism. The tap’s current operational status was a common topic of conversation on the waterways over this period, with Boaters quick to offer their own theories as to why these acts of vandalism continued to occur. Many stated that ‘locals’, ‘local gangs’ or ‘local kids’ were responsible. It is these groups who are most often blamed for other attacks and interferences, for example, the vandalising of boats, throwing stones at Boaters from canal bridges and setting boats loose from their moorings at night. Boaters often suggest that these kids are ‘bored’ or ‘just having a laugh’, though it is also admitted on occasion that there are groups and elements among wider sedentary society who see the Boaters as undesirable or threatening in a similar way to land-based Traveller-Gypsies and that these attacks may be due to this anti-Boater sentiment (Bowles 2014)—a sentiment which may have its roots in a more general distrust of the threatening nomadic ‘other’ (see Morris 2000; Okely 1983: 2; Okely 2014; Fonseca 1996: 227).

Can’t trust  43

One Boater with whom I spoke, blamed locals, but more specifically the residents of the nearest houses, who he hypothesised were breaking the tap as ‘it was making their water pressure drop’. This was, he stated, an example of how ‘ignorant’ and ‘selfish’ these particular residents were.There is a more general discourse among many Boaters which suggests that sedentary people are alienated from their environment and are closeted from the material realities of life; a typical quote from my fieldwork was that ‘they just turn a tap or switch on a plug and they have no idea about where anything comes from’. Whether or not the housed neighbours were the vandals, from my informant’s comments one can see a rhetorical line being drawn: Boaters understand the value of the tap and the scarcity of water, and the locals are disconnected from these realities and selfishly care only for the convenience afforded by the provision of high-pressure water. I have heard other Boaters differ from this orthodoxy of blaming local sedentary peoples and accuse CaRT. The authority are clearly unlikely to vandalise their own tap and, as such, the level of distrust between Boaters and CaRT is evident in the fact that their complicity is even casually mooted. Even those Boaters who do not think that CaRT could be responsible for the vandalism have been known to use the Old Ford Lock case as an example of how ineffectual and out of touch the authority are. One Boater commented that, rather than paying a plumber to replace the tap on a weekly or biweekly basis, the authority could ‘buy a padlock and a box for about a fiver [five pounds]’. The Boater commented that he himself would fit the security box if he were allowed, but that CaRT had not allowed him to tamper with their equipment. Many other waterways facilities are protected by locks, for which Boaters purchase a single master key. Another Boater later informed me that CaRT were trying to make Old Ford the UK’s first ‘app-powered lock’, meaning that it would open, close, fill, and empty when instructed by a mobile phone application.This information was provided with a sarcastic tone and when I replied, ‘Shouldn’t they get the taps fixed first?’ my informant burst out laughing. ‘Yeah’ he said, ‘you’d have thought?’ Water points are points of vulnerability for Boaters, as they are where Boaters must rely upon those from outside the community. The easily achievable vandalism of a single water point can greatly inconvenience a large number of Boaters and, clearly, some person or group has chosen to exploit this vulnerability. The problem is so irritating and inconvenient that one Boater volunteered to stage an ultimately unsuccessful night-time vigil at the lock in order to try to identify the vandals. As stated in the introduction, Boaters who use the waterways for mobility and freedom are tied to state services at these easily disrupted sites of water provision. What is more interesting in this case, however, is what it can show us about Boaters’ relationships with those outside the community. The Boaters’ description of this event clearly shows where fault lines between communities lie, whatever the motives for vandalism, and it is useful to unpack Boaters’ rhetoric around conflicts so that we may better see their view of the sedentary world, the state and their neighbours. When Boaters blame the ‘house-people’ around them, we can see that

44  Ben Bowles

evidence of the anti-Boater sentiment exists in certain areas, which can form a security risk for the Boaters (Bowles 2014). Also evident here is an implicit critique of sedentary peoples’ alienation and selfishness.When Boaters criticise CaRT’s attempts to deal with the situation, there is also an accusation of their being out of touch with the needs and priorities of Boaters and with the simplest ways to meet them.The tap therefore becomes a rhetorical weapon in the Boaters’ struggles against outsiders.

Case 2: the Olympics The second case perhaps shows an even clearer example of how water can be used as a weapon in the conflict between Boaters and CaRT, although it focuses upon a point in time rather than a point in space. Before the London 2012 Olympics, an ‘Olympic Exclusion Zone’ was set up on the waterways, effectively in order to keep all Boaters from the Central and East London waterways for the duration of the event. This forced many Boaters out west onto the Paddington arm of the Regent’s Canal at Ladbroke Grove and Greenford, and many others out east onto the rivers Lee and Stort. Between the lock closures of the Olympic Exclusion Zone, a number of Boaters in the East End of the city became stuck, unable to move, without access to a water point. According to an informant, Andrew Bailles, who was active within the organisation London Boaters at the time, CaRT promised to provide boats filled with drinking water, which would travel through the area and allow Boaters to fill their tanks. According to my informant, these promised boats did not arrive, leaving Boaters with a lack of drinking water. This event became paradigmatic for a number of reasons. Firstly, and much in line with the first example, CaRT’s failure to provide the boats was read as an example of their lack of care and concern for Boaters, their uncharitable attitude (pun intended) and their lack of understanding of the Boater’s lived daily reality. More importantly, however, the Boaters’ response showed Boaters that they had the potential to overpower and override the authority by accessing alternative discourses. CaRT may have had the power of law, the support of the Olympic and London authorities and a number of financial and material resources behind them, but the Boaters did not choose to fight on these fronts. My informant explained that London Boaters used their contacts in order to get the BBC [the major UK broadcaster] involved in the dispute, leading to a number of news reports which reflected badly on CaRT (see Melik 2012; BBC 2011). The Boaters began to use the language and discourse of human rights, making the compelling and attractive argument that they were denied the universal right to clean accessible water by, of all organisations, a charitable trust. Boaters used their media connections to claim that CaRT were contravening the Boaters’ human right to access water for drinking and sanitation. Such an argument, in the context of a country preparing for the Olympics and not wishing to attract poor publicity, was tactically effective. My informant explained, ‘We won! They started sending down

Can’t trust  45

boats with water and relaxing the movement restrictions.We proved that they didn’t have all the power and that the sympathy of a lot of people was with us’. The case of the Olympic water dispute has become a totemic victory for London Boaters, the organisation. At a recent meeting in which the purpose and future of the group was to be discussed, a few long-standing members took it upon themselves to explain London Boaters’ previous victories to the large numbers of new Boaters present. As well as the successful protests against the Olympic Exclusion Zone in 2012, prevalent in this narrative was London Boaters’ rejection of the Lee and Stort Mooring Consultation in 2011. When these events are spoken about, it is as an example of how Boaters have public sympathy and how they can use alternative mechanisms (for example broadcast media) and alternative discourses (for example the discourse of human rights) in order to outflank CaRT, whose support in official, legal and governmental circles can be mitigated by the Boaters’ popularity with a large section of the public—a public which tends to exoticise the Boaters and find the idea of boat-living to be quaint, idyllic and romantic.13 The Olympics dispute can also be seen, as in the previous example of Old Ford Lock, as an attempt to rhetorically position Boaters as agents who are concerned with reality and practicality, whereas CaRT are, at best, incompetent and, at worst, malevolent, either misunderstanding Boaters’ daily needs or ignoring them in order to force Boaters from the waterways. CaRT is perhaps the most frequent topic of conversation between Boaters. Telling stories about CaRT, at locks while travelling or at home on moorings, is not just information-sharing—it creates and reinforces a rhetoric of community, of coming together against an antagonistic foe and of having in common a shared project and set of challenges. As Barth (1998[1969]), Cohen (1985) and others describe, and Froerer (2006) compellingly demonstrated in her ethnographic account of Hindu nationalism in Central India, this idea of acting together against a boundary between the self and an antagonistic ‘other’ is a, if not the, major factor in the creation of community and ethnic sentiments. As shown, it is most frequently CaRT who are the ‘other’ against which the Boaters come together and assert their rights and their needs.

Conclusion As described, we find on the waterways an unusual situation whereby travelling Boaters are surrounded by ‘water, water, everywhere’ and yet are reliant upon an outside bureaucratic authority for ‘any drop to drink’. In the first case study, this led to a particular water point being a contested site, the vandalism of which clearly showed the fault lines between Boaters, sedentary residents and CaRT, despite the perpetrator(s) of the frequent crimes remaining undetected. In the second case study, I discussed how the provision of water during the Olympics became the point around which Boaters could rally politically, using alternative mechanisms and discourses to achieve their ends over a more powerful adversary. Here too, conflict over water allowed Boaters to describe themselves as part of a community who are different to others with conflicting understandings and priorities.

46  Ben Bowles

The irony is, of course, that water provision can limit the freedoms and the mobility that Boaters find through living aboard, by forcing them to move or to remain in certain areas and by dragging them into direct conflict with CaRT in situations where they may prefer a strategy of avoidance and non-engagement. The Boaters live a life on water which is notable for its flexibility, as the materiality of their living aboard allows them to change their location, allows them to live relatively cheaply in the city, and allows them to remove themselves from neighbourhoods of conflict and insecurity. For this flexible, fluid, and water-like existence (see Strang 2005) to be limited by the infrastructure of water provision is a sad twist in the Boaters’ story. The campaign for more facilities, and for those facilities to be cleaner and better managed, is a cornerstone of the Boaters’ complaints against CaRT. At a meeting between senior CaRT officers and a West London organisation called Cowley and Uxbridge Boaters (CUB), a number of Boaters heckled Sally Ash, CaRT’s then Head of Boating, from outside of the meeting room. Much of their critique focussed on the poor state and limited number of facilities moorings in West London; Sally Ash was stern with these Boaters, accusing them of trying to ‘disrupt the good work we’re trying to do here’, but they continued to interrupt. One shouted, ‘You’re checking boat numbers every week, why don’t you check the facilities whilst you’re going?’ and another, ‘Yeah, check the shitters [colloquial expression for toilets]’ (Extract from field notes, 14 January 2013). However, while CaRT have limited resources for the upkeep and management of facilities, and while the Boaters have very little presence in the public consciousness and a limited political voice, facilities provision is unlikely to be increased. The cynical Boater could be forgiven for suggesting that CaRT’s poor management of facilities moorings and their failure to build new facilities could be a deliberate ploy. After all, CaRT’s actions (and inactions) decrease motivation to live and cruise on a boat, increase the change of Boaters moving onto land or onto permanent residential moorings, and limit the population of residential Boaters that a locality can support. From the data I have collected, it is clear that, when examining water conflicts, it is important to note the ability of water infrastructure points (taps, drains, etc.) to act as paradigmatic scenes (see Davies 2010)—small flashpoints which can represent the whole and cast light onto wider issues.This is particularly the case when one is dealing with a mobile population, where the water point may be the only tool which the state has to tie them to a particular point in the landscape and to make them subject to the forces of the state as it tries to make them legible and ordered (Scott 1998). It has been seen that, in the case of a highly nuanced conflict involving differing legal understandings and a battle over public representations—as is the case between the Boaters and CaRT—water provision, being such a powerful symbol of individual’s and community’s inviolable rights, can become a crucial frame and an important representational battleground. Claims, counterclaims and narratives around water provision can therefore be important ways in

Can’t trust  47

which we can see the viewpoint of the Boaters on the state and their sedentary neighbours. As the work of Strang (2005) and others has shown, water, even in the industrialised western city, is not always a taken-for-granted commodity—particularly when forces of privatisation and the ‘market’ are seen to interfere with the common good which is a community’s water, bitter disputes can break out. Access to water remains intensely and fundamentally political, particularly when one of the parties involved in the conflict happens to be a vulnerable itinerant population.

Notes 1 The first part of this title comes from a satirical image produced by Boaters in my field site. In the image, the CaRT logo was modified to read ‘Can’t Trust’ and was attached to a flyer for a Boaters’ event. This image is demonstrative of the antagonism between the waterways authority and the Boaters. 2 It is important to note that limited parts of the waterway network are controlled by other authorities—often the government’s Environment Agency—although the majority of my fieldwork took place on CaRT controlled canals around London and therefore it is explicitly the situation between the Boaters and CaRT which I interrogate here. As a result of this, my work has a localised rather than nationwide focus, which does not precisely scale up to describe the entirety of the UK waterways system. 3 The change of the authority from quango—quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation—to charitable trust was part of the government’s so-called ‘bonfire of the quangos’ (see Walters 2010), a series of privatisations of government-linked agencies.This process was initiated due to coalition government of 2010–2015’s ideological commitment to neoliberalism and the contracting of public sector in favour of an expanding private sector (see Ganti 2014: 90). 4 In my article Gongoozled: Freedom, Surveillance and the Public/Private Divide on the Waterways of South East England (Bowles 2017), I focus on surveillance rather than enforcement, but make an argument largely similar to the argument that I make here. In that article I describe how the Boaters choose a relationship with the state that is at arms’ length and therefore changeable, more fluid and unfixed.They opt for a relationship where they are interpellated overtly rather than existing within the daily bureaucratic machinery of state institutions. 5 Bona fide is the legal term meaning ‘in good faith’. 6 This process is also recognised in the writings of Deleuze and Guattari and can be seen in their statement that ‘one of the fundamental tasks of the State is to striate the space over which it reigns’ (1987: 385). 7 The digression described here can take many forms. One form of difference is in the ownership of waterways, where for example CaRT control most of the towpath side or on-side of canals and smaller rivers, with private landowners controlling the offside, but with CaRT increasingly privatising parcels of towpath land. Larger rivers, such as the non-tidal Thames and some other waterways such as the Norfolk Broads, come under the control of the government’s Environment Agency, and there are even some privatelyowned waterways. Often it is unclear which local council or private landowner controls an area of offside or even towpath side land. Another digression is in the differences in enforcement procedure across CaRT’s waterways, where policies are sometimes trialled in particular places before being abandoned or rolled out further, and where officers

48  Ben Bowles

enforce legal requirements in their own idiosyncratic fashions. The situation becomes even more complex when attempting to describe legal responsibility for Boaters and for towpath space, as local councils have individual planning requirements towards their residents, even those of the non-permanent and itinerant kind, and government departments have additional responsibilities for ensuring the security of water infrastructures.The legal situation is complex and, in addition to a growing weight of case law, has generated at least one excellent dissertation in legal scholarship (North 2018). 8 ‘Section 8’ refers to a law distinct from the 1995 Act: the British Waterways Act (1983), Section 8 of which allows the authority to remove boats from their waterways under certain conditions—namely that the vessel is ‘sunk, stranded or abandoned … or left or moored therein without lawful authority’ (British Waterways Act 1983). This is the law that allows the authorities to remove a boat from their waterways if it has been refused a boat license. 9 Skidmore’s (2004) work on ‘incipient fascist’ Burma details how the random and haphazard nature of the state’s repressive threat makes the Burmese so unsure of the shifting political ground that they self-censor more than they may be caused to if the state’s measures were more brutal but predictable. This is, of course, a far more extreme example, where the state is capable of disappearing and torturing dissidents, and so comparing this to the ‘state intervention’ of serving fines and revoking licenses may seem glib. However, Skidmore’s description of the unease and fear created by the inept regime as opposed to the expert regime, precisely due to its unpredictability and lack of logic, closely mirrors the confusion felt in my field site when debating what the authority may be ‘up to next’, second-guessing the work of the unpredictable and ever-changing authority and its inconsistent monitoring and enforcement measures. Skidmore uses Turner’s (1990) concept of the ‘subjunctive mood’ to describe the uncertain position of the Burmese citizen in the face of what she calls the ‘deterritorializing’ efforts of the state, which do not present a logical or consistent position against which the citizens of Burma can act (Skidmore 2004: 182). She describes the state’s intervention as ‘transformative moments’ (ibid.: 182) and states that the concept of the ‘subjunctive mood’ is useful in describing the effect of these ‘rupture[s] in their [the citizen’s] sense of normalcy’ (ibid.: 182). For the Boaters also, the stepping up of enforcement measures over months or years of a modus vivendi in a particular area represents an unsettling rupture of this kind and reminds the Boater that their relationship with the state is far from simple, settled or predictable. 10 Boaters can be seen as ambiguous in the structuralist sense, as hard-to-categorise figures between the sedentary and the completely mobile, in line with Douglas (2002) and other classic theorists. 11 This section title comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1798) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and is a popular and well-known section of verse. 12 These elsan facilities are a grate covering a larger tank, and a tap for rinsing out the smaller tank or ‘cassette’. 13 Having written above about attacks on Boaters and their facilities by those who find them to be an undesirable element, it seems contradictory to write here of their support from the public. The Boaters have always experienced a mixture of demonisation and romanticisation from the public (Bowles 2014) and are not the victims of the same concerted negative rhetoric and media coverage as other travelling groups, for example the Gypsies. There exist, however, those in wider society who disapprove of the Boaters or ‘water Gypsies’ (as they are sometimes incorrectly termed) and are actively hostile towards them.

Can’t trust  49

References Barth, Fredrik. 1998(1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Culture Differences. Waveland: Prospect Heights. BBC. 2011. London 2012 Olympics Set to Impact on River Community. British Broadcasting Corporation, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15624329 (accessed 17 May 2015). Bowles, Benjamin O.L. 2014. ‘Dangerous Waters: Security Threats and Their Role in Community Formation among Itinerant Boat Dwellers on the Waterways of Southern England’, Student Anthropologist, 4(1): 6–17. Bowles, Benjamin O.L. 2015.Water Ways: Becoming an Itinerant Boat-Dweller on the Canals and Rivers of South East England. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Brunel University, London. Bowles, Benjamin O.L. 2016.‘“Time is like a Soup”: Boat Time and the Temporal Experience of London’s Liveaboard Boaters’, The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 34(1): 100–112. Bowles, Benjamin O.L. 2017. ‘Gongoozled: Freedom, Surveillance and the Public/Private Divide on the Waterways of South East England’, Etnofoor, 29(1): 63–79. British Waterways Act 1983 (c. 8). The National Archive, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukla/1983/2/pdfs/ukla_19830002_en.pdf/(accessed 19 May 2015). British Waterways Act 1995 (c. 3). The National Archives, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukla/1995/1/section/17/enacted (accessed 19 May 2015). Burton, Anthony. 1989. The Great Days of the Canals. Newton Abbott: David and Charles. Canal and River Trust. 2012. Guidance for Boaters Without a Home Mooring. Canal and River Trust, https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/library/633.pdf (accessed 1 November 2014). Cohen, Anthony P. 1985. Symbolic Construction of Community. Abingdon, London and New York: Routledge. Coleridge, Samuel T. (1798). Lyrical Ballads. London: J. & A. Arch. Croucher, Shane. 2015. ‘London Rents Crisis:This is How Bad it is and Things will Get Even Worse’ [Infographic]. International Business Times, 13 July, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/london-housing-crisis-this-how-bad-it-things-will-get-even-worse-infographic-1509578 (accessed 8 September 2015). Davies, Douglas J. 2010. Joseph Smith, Jesus, and Satanic Opposition: Atonement, Evil and the Mormon Vision. Surrey: Ashgate. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Douglas, Mary. 2002. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge. Fonseca, Isabel. 1996. Bury Me Standing:The Gypsies and Their Journey. London:Vintage. Froerer, Peggy. 2006. ‘Emphasising “Others”: The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in a Central Indian Tribal Community’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 12(1): 39–59. Ganti, Tejaswini. 2014. ‘Neoliberalism’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 43: 89–104. Hann, Chris and Keith Hart. 2011. Economic Anthropology. Cambridge: Polity. Hill, Dave. 2013. ‘London Housing Crisis: What is it, Exactly?’, The Guardian, 28 October, http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/davehillblog/2013/oct/28/london-housingcrisis (accessed 8 September 2015). Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Melik, James. 2012. ‘Olympic Canal Moorings a “Shambles”’, BBC News, 1 August, http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19044736 (accessed 18 May 2015).

50  Ben Bowles

Morris, Ruth. 2000. ‘Gypsies, Travellers and the Media: Press Regulation and Racism in the UK’, Communications Law, 5(6): 213–219. North, Abbie. 2018. ‘To What Extent Might A Heritage-ased Analysis of the Residential Use of The Inland Waterways Contribute to Advocacy for Itinerant Family Boats’. Unpublished Undergraduate Dissertation. University of York,York Law School. Okely, Judith. 1983. The Traveller-Gypsies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Okely, Judith. 2014. ‘Recycled (mis)representations: Gypsies, Travellers or Roma Treated as Objects, Rarely Subjects’, People, Place and Policy, 8(1): 65–85. Polanyi, Karl. 2001(1944). The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Rolt, Lionel T.C. 1999(1944). ‘Tom’. in Narrowboat. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven and London:Yale University Press. Scott, James C. 2011. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland South Asia. New Haven & London:Yale University Press. Skidmore, Monique. 2004. Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Smith, George. 1974(1878). Our Canal Population. Darlington: EP Publishing. Strang, Veronica. 2005. ‘Common Senses: Water, Sensory Experience and the Generation of Meaning’, Journal of Material Culture, 10(1): 92–120. Turner, Victor W. 1990. ‘Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual and Drama?’ in Schechner and Appel, By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walters, Simon. 2010. ‘George Osbourne Unveils £500m Bonfire of the Quangos’, The Mail on Sunday, 23 May, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1280566/Osborneunveils-500m-bonfire-quangos.html (accessed 8 September 2015). Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2 FIGHTING AGAINST HARMFUL RUMOURS, OR FOR FISHERIES? Evaluating framings and narrations of risk governance in marine radiation after the Fukushima nuclear accident Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe

Introduction In this chapter, we evaluate the narration of risk, uncertainty and safety in marine produce in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, since the 2011 nuclear disaster. Given the overarching theme of this volume, we pay particular attention to how the issue of contaminated water is narrated. Or, more specifically, how the potential for contaminated water to find its way into fish and seafood and then into humans is framed and managed by decision-makers at different levels. The more standard way to narrate this issue involves one-way communication of ‘science’ to educate consumers and wider society that marine produce from Fukushima is safe. However, an alternative narrative, which has emerged at the municipal or local level, framing post-disaster fisheries as a sociocultural issue as well as an economic issue, and openly acknowledging remaining uncertainties, may offer a more nuanced way of understanding how marine produce fits with post-disaster recovery. We assess these issues by focusing on Iwaki in the south of Fukushima Prefecture. Iwaki is one of two fishing districts within Fukushima—the other being SomaFutaba in the north—and is itself divided into numerous fishing ports (see Figure 2.1). Iwaki, like Soma, has been moving towards restarting its coastal fisheries. Its coastal areas were badly affected by the 2011 tsunami, and the coastal waters off Iwaki received much of the water-borne contamination from the nuclear plant. The material on which the ideas in this chapter are based comes from research the authors have been undertaking in Iwaki since spring 2011, involving field research in the form of interviews, focus groups, science cafes, ethnography, and participant observation, as well as desk research into how different actors narrate radiation risk in policy documentation, promotional and marketing literature, and the media.1 While in this chapter we put forth empirical issues, it is worth briefly outlining the theoretical underpinnings behind our arguments. Our approach borrows heavily

52  Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe

Location of Iwaki within Fukushima Prefecture (left) and ports and key fisheries locations within Iwaki (right). Source: Adapted from map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL (n.b. permission obtained for reproduction). FIGURE 2.1. 

Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries?  53

from the ‘risk governance’ school of thought (International Risk Governance Council 2005; Renn 2008). Just as environmental governance in a wider sense involves resolving conflicts through institutional arrangements that may facilitate or limit the use of environmental resources (Adger et al. 2002), we understand ‘risk governance’ in the environmental context to mean decision-making that balances a range of different and often competing perspectives on environmental risk. This is especially crucial for situations of high environmental and social complexity like contamination of a marine environment, where even ‘experts’ may disagree on the science underlying the issue (Pellizzoni 2003) and different understandings of what is meant by ‘risk’ (risk versus uncertainty versus indeterminacy and so on) may be at play (Riesch 2012). The result of this, Kasperson (2014) summarises, is that the increasing complexity of environmental risks comes alongside a decline in trust in scientists and policymakers who may previously have been expected to manage risks on behalf of society. It is because of this decline in trust that Kasperson (2014) believes there is a greater need for risk communication, which he understands as a deliberative and dialogic process towards reaching the most appropriate decisions for society on managing risk and uncertainty. Nonetheless, it is widely argued that in spite of the emergence of a large body of scholarly thought on the relationship between science and society, this ‘risk communication’ in practice often remains a one-way top-down process (e.g. Wynne 2006; Arvai 2014) concerned with correcting misunderstandings and bringing publics and stakeholders to understand and accept the techno-scientific ‘facts’ underpinning an issue. Apart from a range of different perspectives on what constitutes an acceptable level of risk, there may also be differing understandings of what ‘risk communication’ means and what its role ought to be in the risk governance process. What we are interested in this chapter is how different actors frame risk and uncertainty in a highly complex environmental situation, how their understanding of ‘risk communication’ may affect this framing, and how well these narratives are suited to balancing the range of competing conceptualisations of risk that may be at play.We return to these ideas in Section Discussion to theorise from our findings.

Background: 11 March 2011 and thereafter On the afternoon of 11 March 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 off the coast of north-east Japan triggered a large tsunami. The cumulative effects of this earthquake and tsunami left over 17,000 people either dead or missing, with the most severe effects being felt in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures. This event also took offline the cooling systems at the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear power plant (FDNPP) located on the coast of Fukushima Prefecture and operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). This in turn led to overheats and hydrogen explosions in three of the plant’s reactors, releasing radioactive contamination over the land and sea of Fukushima Prefecture and beyond. The resulting contamination led to over

54  Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe

120,000 people being evacuated from their homes, many of whom are still unable to return as the radiation dose around their homes remains above safe limits. More significant for our study, however, is the fact that 70–80 per cent of the radiation emitted from the FDNPP fell over the north-west Pacific Ocean (Yoshida and Kanda 2012). Highly contaminated water leaked into the Pacific Ocean in the aftermath of the disaster, and further leaks (albeit of less contaminated water) followed, as on-site contamination found its way into groundwater and/or drainage systems. Further, space for prefabricated tanks to store treated water, previously used to keep the FDNPP’s reactors cool, has been running out, and in spring 2021 the Japanese Government agreed to release this treated water—which contains potentially harmful tritium (Buesseler 2015)—into the sea. There have also been questions over the effectiveness of the ice wall commissioned by TEPCO to stop contamination from the reactors leaking into groundwater, with its chief architect admitting in spring 2016 that some water will still leak through the wall (Japan Times 2016). We will return to these issues later in the chapter, as they are important in illustrating the difference between viewing the FDNPP situation as ‘under control’ or narrating it as an ongoing incident that has not yet been resolved.

Effects on fisheries The tsunami itself was a major contributing factor in the stoppage of fisheries in Fukushima immediately after the disaster. Port infrastructure, boats, equipment, and fishers’ homes were washed away or destroyed, making the swift restart of fisheries impossible in any case. However, with the large radiation releases from the FDNPP, the Fukushima Prefecture Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations (FPFFCA) formally elected to temporarily suspend fisheries days after the tsunami. It is also interesting to note that Fukushima’s coastal fisheries have never technically been embargoed or ‘banned’ outright by the Japanese government. Rather, marketing and distribution restriction directives were issued by the national-level government on species of fish landed2 in Fukushima Prefecture after the discovery in 2011 of samples exceeding the national regulatory threshold. Between April 2011 and 2012, over 40 per cent of the sampled fish were similarly found to exceed the Japanese regulatory limit for radioactive caesium (Buesseler 2012). Hence, the stoppage of full-scale commercial coastal fisheries in Fukushima is described as a ‘voluntary suspension’ as it follows a directive rather than a law (FPFFCA 2016). This national regulatory threshold for radioactive caesium was initially 500 Becquerels/kilogram (Bq/kg3); however, in April 2012, this was lowered to 100 Bq/ kg. Marine contamination has been monitored by the Fisheries Agency of Japan on the coast and out at sea, and by the plant operator TEPCO in the immediate vicinity of the FDNPP. Further, Fukushima Prefecture’s Fisheries Research Section is responsible for monitoring of fish stocks, seawater and bottom sediment post-disaster (Wada et al. 2013). As Fukushima Prefecture’s own research vessel had foundered in the tsunami, fishers themselves supported this emergency monitoring at first, by catching fish in their own boats and bringing them to the prefectural laboratories for analysis.

Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries?  55

If radioactive caesium is not detected in fish species over a period of many months during this monitoring, species may be released for trial fishing operations. These trials, which run at less than one-fifth of pre-disaster capacity, aim to encourage fishers to resume fishing activities and also monitor the uptake of Fukushima produce as it returns to market, by brokers and consumers.The release of species for trial fishing operations is determined by dialogue between fishers, fisheries cooperatives, brokers, prefectural and national government scientists and policymakers, and academics. As of spring 2019, 211 species had been released for operations (Fukushima Prefectural Government 2019). However, the restart of commercial trials proceeded at a faster pace in Soma-Futaba than in Iwaki due to lower levels of contamination and closer proximity to markets and consumers in the large city of Sendai. Consumer uptake of marine produce from within Fukushima also remains divided. It is worth mentioning that the perception of the risk of marine contamination from the Fukushima disaster became an international issue. Other nations (e.g. China, Korea, Taiwan) banned the import of fish not only from Fukushima, but also in some cases from the north-east or even all of Japan. In late 2015, Canadian scientist Jay Cullen received death threats and was branded a ‘shill’ for the nuclear industry, after results from the Fukushima InFORM programme he ran tracking Fukushima radionuclides (Fukushima InForm 2015) suggested that while radionuclides were reaching the west coast of Canada, the risk to human health was virtually non-existent (The Globe and Mail 2015). This section has aimed to give a broad overview of the effects of the Fukushima disaster on the sea and in particular on the area’s fisheries. What we shall now do is evaluate two different narratives and framings for the governance of risk in the recovery of fisheries post-disaster.

Fuhyo higai: harmful rumours What we will call the ‘standard’ narrative of radiation risk in Fukushima produce is the one conveyed by those we would consider to be the most empowered actors, those with the greatest financial resources and the largest influence over policy-making processes and the media. Key actors in this group are the Japanese Government, TEPCO and the government of Fukushima Prefecture. This framing of post-disaster risk from radiation involves the management of rumours about the safety of fruit, rice, vegetables, marine produce, water, and any number of other aspects of the lived-in environment. The set phrase used in Japanese to describe such ‘misinformation’ and the consequences arising from it is fuhyo higai, normally translated into English as ‘harmful rumours’. At base, it refers to the idea that economic harm has been done to Fukushima Prefecture, its produce and the people who produce it as a result of baseless/untrue information discouraging consumers from buying Fukushima produce or visiting the region. For instance, the prefectural government narrated the situation in Fukushima thus:‘Fukushima Prefecture was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami which triggered the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Dai’ichi Nuclear

56  Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe

Power Station and subsequent damage to the prefecture’s reputation due to harmful rumours’ (Fukushima Prefecture 2011: 3). In a separate document from three years later, TEPCO stated it would continue to compensate local businesses for ‘damages due to groundless rumour’ (TEPCO 2014: 36). In setting out their own plans for post-disaster recovery, the Ministry of Trade and Environment (METI) too aimed ‘to revitalize business operations in affected areas suffering from decreased sales volume due to harmful rumours resulting from the nuclear accident’ (METI 2011: 2). Implicit in such accounts is the idea that a major barrier to the recovery of the Fukushima economy was the unwillingness of consumers to purchase Fukushima produce or spend time in the area, and that this apprehension was the result of concerns that have no basis. The continuation of this narrative reads that the solution to this problem is ‘educating’ consumers through the provision of more accurate information in greater volume. Fukushima Prefecture promised to ‘promptly and appropriately publicize the safety of Fukushima products at home and overseas by providing accurate information’ (Fukushima Prefecture 2011: 16).The Reconstruction Agency aimed for ‘eradicating reputational damage from harmful rumors by risk communication’ (Reconstruction Agency 2013: 41) and TEPCO likewise targeted ‘enhancement of risk communication activities … to counter harmful rumors’ (TEPCO 2014: 11). Particularly interesting to note in this regard is the equation of ‘risk communication’ with the end goal of engendering understanding or acceptance that the concerns leading to economic harm are unfounded. We return to this in Section 5 to consider slippages between the understanding of ‘risk communication’ in this narrative of fuhyo higai, versus how risk communication is increasingly understood within the scholarly literature. For now, though, it is sufficient to note that this standard narrative treats risk communication as a one-way transfer of techno-scientific information from the government and operators to the wider society. Given the nature of contemporary environmental risks we outlined at the start of the chapter and the associated requirements for risk governance processes, such a one-way and tightly bound narrative clearly has the potential to be problematic. The standard narrative of radiation risk in Fukushima focuses on the idea of the underpinning science somehow being known or settled, and that society needs to be brought ‘on side’ with this message. Such ideas of communicating ‘facts’ and raising understanding about radiation have equally appeared in some, if not all, physical science-based literature on radioactivity in Fukushima and elsewhere. Nonetheless, notwithstanding the fact that radiation was and continues to be emitted from the FDNPP and hence is present in the environment even if in small amounts, the idea of harmful or baseless rumours perhaps misses an important point— namely, that a narrative of safety based on technical and scientific information may be of limited value if those delivering the narrative are not trusted to be able to competently assess and manage the risks they frame as being manageable (see Wynne 1992). Such a narrative may even backfire if it gives the impression that uncertainties and limitations of human knowledge in comprehending complex technical and environmental systems—which after all contributed to the accident in the first place—have not been given sufficient consideration or taken seriously.

Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries?  57

This is particularly evident for fisheries in Fukushima, where a complete lack of trust between fishers and TEPCO over the failure to disclose information over leaks of contaminated water in a timely manner led to a breakdown in communications (Kyodo News 2015), even if the fisheries’ stakeholders with whom we spoke did not appear to fundamentally disagree with the content of the data TEPCO produced. The extent to which such lack of trust may work against assurances of safety given by TEPCO is illustrated by the fact that it was not until mid-2015, more than four years after the disaster, that arrangements were made for regular fishers to visit the FDNPP site. The absence of trust between fisheries, their cooperatives and TEPCO thus makes it difficult, if not impossible, to create opportunities like site visits, where fishers may verify TEPCO’s claims that the latter is competent to manage water on the FDNPP site. Indeed, it does not take much to understand why a narrative of absolute safety and ‘harmful rumours’ may arouse suspicion. The drive by the national government and TEPCO to demonstrate that the situation at the FDNPP is under control and that contamination of the environment is minimal (or at least can be easily remediated) was linked to a wider drive to facilitate the restart and continued use of nuclear reactors elsewhere in Japan (Perrow 2013; Sugiman 2014). Proving safety was also argued to be an important component of the return to normality (KottingUhl 2013) by expediting rehabilitation and resettlement, hence reducing the need for the government (and TEPCO) to make compensation payments (AsanumaBrice 2014). Likewise, claims to have the FDNPP situation under control formed a central plank of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s successful pitch for Tokyo to host the 2020 Olympics—itself widely believed to be the key to the national government’s economic growth strategy (Reuters 2013). In other words, those not bearing direct risks to health or livelihood from the accident may be viewed as standing to gain financially by arguing that there is no need for worry and that citizens ‘ought’ to eat Fukushima produce. However, scepticism around the wider motives of those who may stand to gain financially from dispelling ‘rumours’ is not the only reason the fuhyo higai approach (of unequivocal assurances about the safety of Fukushima produce) has come in for criticism. In literature with a more specific focus on the prospects of recovery for Fukushima produce, it has been argued that dismissing societal concerns as mere ‘harmful rumours’ ignores the complexities about how the region and its produce are perceived post-disaster. This, in turn, may actually hamper the rehabilitation of the region’s agriculture and fisheries. Morimoto (2015), for example, argues that the way ‘harmful rumours’ is deployed in some contexts can actually serve to reinforce a Fukushima/non-Fukushima binary. Morimoto’s reasoning is that the phrase ‘harmful rumours’ is applied almost exclusively to Fukushima and not to other prefectures adjacent to it or the rest of Japan, thereby giving rise to the idea that only produce from Fukushima—and not anywhere else—may be perceived as having the potential to be contaminated. Kimura and Katano (2014) hold that a fuhyo higai framing serves to dismiss concerns over the safety of produce as somehow ‘emotional’ and irrational, associating the purchasing and consumption of Fukushima produce with

58  Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe

heroism and patriotism. Following on from this, we too have argued elsewhere (Mabon and Kawabe 2016) that dismissing consumer concern as ‘harmful rumours’ overlooks the complexity of factors (e.g. trust, relationships, personal values) that inform legitimate consumer opinion on what constitutes an acceptable level of risk. Interviewed prefectural fisheries scientists, for instance, acknowledged that young mothers in the prefecture had an understandably precautionary view towards radiation risk, and that it was important to show respect for such viewpoints and not force particular groups towards the consumption of local fish. Specific to water, we also note that ‘harmful rumours’ tends to be applied in a general sense to all aspects of post-disaster Fukushima, treating fisheries in the same way as land-based produce and tourism. This may not be appropriate given the uncertainties and indeterminacies inherent in a marine environment, wherein limitations of financial, logistical and scientific knowledge may make it impossible to create data that guarantee 100 per cent freedom from radiation (see Section 5). The narrative conveyed by the fuhyo higai approach is that sufficient knowledge and measures are in place to guarantee the absolute safety of produce like fish, if only wider society can be made aware of this. If the idea that Fukushima’s produce is risky is only fuhyo higai, it is assumed instead that Fukushima produce is safe.4 In other words, by negating the possibility for produce to be unsafe, its safety is asserted.We suggest, however, that this may actually act as a barrier to attaining fuller revitalisation of activities like commercial fishing in Fukushima. The two main reasons for this are that it (a) may over-simplify complexities and uncertainties around the health effects associated with low levels of radioactive contamination, and more importantly (b) ignores the wide range of factors that may affect how the stakeholders and consumers, on whom the revitalisation of Fukushima depends, come to make decisions on risk. With that in mind, we now evaluate an alternative framing for post-disaster radiation that has emerged within Fukushima itself.

From Fukushima fisheries to Iwaki fisheries to Joban fisheries The dominant narrative—or at least the narrative emerging from the actors one would traditionally consider to be most empowered—has centred on building understanding that ‘Fukushima’ and its produce are not harmful. However, an alternative narrative emerging at the local level may offer a different pathway to the revitalisation of fisheries. As we explain, central to this, is the way risk and uncertainty are narrated, and the framing of marine radioactivity not only as a techno-scientific issue, but also as an issue of people and of place. Key in developing this more localised narrative—in our fieldwork at least—has been the municipal authorities and fisheries cooperatives, fisheries scientists, and extension officers working for Fukushima Prefecture, citizen monitoring groups working within the community, and fishers themselves. Crucially, as we elaborate shortly, these are all people who themselves live on the Fukushima coast and hence bear some risk of exposure to radiation. In a refinement of the narrative that there is sufficient knowledge in place to guarantee absolute safety of produce, indeterminacies and uncertainties in marine

Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries?  59

radiation are opened up to particular scrutiny. This happens not only within Fukushima, but also within the municipality and the fishing district of Iwaki.5 Contrary to the national government upper limit for radioactive caesium of 100 Bq/kg, the maximum amount permitted by the FPFFCA in marine produce for sale is 50 Bq/kg. Even within this 50 Bq/kg, screened samples of fish exceeding 25 Bq/kg are sent to the prefectural labs for further tests before being released for sale (and samples exceeding 50 Bq/kg are returned to the monitoring-only stage to be reconsidered for trial fisheries at a later stage). These 50 Bq/kg and 25 Bq/kg levels were set voluntarily by the cooperatives in Iwaki and Soma-Futaba—whose members are themselves fishers—as the fishers wished to take a stricter and more precautionary approach to radiation screening. Indeed, in marketing as well as screening, fishers who were members of the cooperatives expressed a desire to see more rigorous screening and traceability than that mandated by the central government. There are also other ways in which publics and those with less formal technoscientific knowledge (such as regular fishers) have shaped the risk governance process within the locality. The process of deciding which fish to monitor, where, and when to release them for trial commercial operations, involved right from the outset, significant levels of input from rank-and-file fishers to gauge motivation and timing for expansion of activities. This involved not only formalised committee meetings, but also informal face-to-face interaction between fishers and fisheries extension officers in the ports. Despite the suspicions raised in the previous section over Fukushima Prefectural Government as an entity, it is also true that individuals and departments within the Prefecture have worked to design and refine monitoring and communication strategies in a way that is responsive to publics’ needs (e.g. working collaboratively with outdoor workers and recreationalists to understand how and where to collect radiation data about complex forest environments). Lastly, in Iwaki, formal fisheries’ monitoring and screening processes are supplemented with additional periodic monitoring of marine radiation undertaken by the Aquamarine Fukushima laboratory in combination with local citizen group UmiLabo (2018). These data from outside the formal fisheries governance process are collected via rod fishing off piers and by boat off the coast of the FDNPP, driven by pride in local fisheries and also a concern with creating data perceived as ‘independent’ from the central and regional governments to allow citizens to make informed choices about eating local fish.While the data collected through this informal monitoring do not feed into the fisheries governance process, it is nonetheless uploaded to the UmiLabo blog (www.umilabo.jp/) and is explained to citizens both via blog posts and through public engagement events (see below). What is significant here is that most UmiLabo members possessed little, if any, knowledge of marine radiation prior to 2011, and yet, as citizens, their members have come to act as significant opinion-shapers within the Iwaki community through provision of data and hosting of public events. Apart from laying down standards, another pivotal activity within fisheries risk governance in Iwaki is the making visible of the processes through which claims to the safety of Iwaki fish can be made. Although a large part of this involves making

60  Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe

monitoring and screening data available online in a way that parallels the ‘information provision’ seen in the fuhyo higai framing, what makes the Iwaki fisheries narrative distinct, is transparency in data analysis. The Onahama Danish Trawl Seines Fisheries Cooperative and Iwaki City Fisheries Cooperative carry out screening of trial fisheries’ catches in a laboratory situated inside the New Onahama Fish Market. This laboratory is surrounded on three sides by large glass windows, thereby making the process of radiation monitoring visible not only to consumers, but also to fishers bringing in catches. Traceability plays a large part too in UmiLabo’s activities—any member of the public can join the UmiLabo research cruises and catch fish which form part of the organisation’s dataset, and at the TabeLabo (‘eating lab’) events run in conjunction with Aquamarine Fukushima scientists, participants are taken through the whole process of catching, analysing and ultimately eating fish and seafood caught in Iwaki. Information provision and public engagement are of course part of dispelling ‘harmful rumours’.The nuance here, however, is that rather than a narrative that says marine produce is safe, it is a narrative of how claims to the safety of some (but crucially not all) Iwaki fish being safe for consumption is made. In short, within Iwaki fisheries, risk and uncertainty are narrated not as something to be ignored or suppressed, but as something to be continually assessed, understood more deeply and lived within. Indeed, a large part of the monitoring and screening undertaken by fisheries scientists at the prefectural research station, by the cooperatives and by groups such as UmiLabo emphasises the heterogeneity of exposure to radioactivity within and between fish species. In turn, what is foregrounded is not only what is known, but also where the remaining limitations in researchers’ knowledge lie. The governance of risk and uncertainty at the local level is thus narrated not as a complete assurance as to the safety of all marine produce, but as an ongoing process of refining knowledge that is cognisant of where remaining uncertainties may lie and openly acknowledges the fact that some produce does, in fact, retain the potential to be harmful to humans and hence remains off-limits. In addition to the nature of radiation monitoring and screening at the local level, another central plank of the ‘Iwaki fisheries’ narrative is the prominence and nature of the people assessing/taking risks within this framing. While trust in the Fukushima Prefecture government as a larger entity appears to have been low, the fisheries scientists and extension officers employed by the prefecture but working ‘in the field’ within Iwaki—either at the Onahama Fisheries Research Station on the coast or the Fisheries Office in Central Iwaki—appear to be able to garner much higher levels of trust when engaging with fishers themselves on progressing trial fisheries, and when connecting with citizens, brokers and local media on the results of monitoring data. Part of this, we suggest, may be due to the fact that they themselves are ‘citizens’ living and working in the area and hence are as equally exposed to the risks of radiation from the sea as are the citizens and less empowered stakeholders with whom they engage. The narrative of knowledge for decisions about marine radiation being produced by those who themselves are risk bearers as well as risk assessors may similarly extend to the screening of trial fisheries catches by local fisheries cooperative employees,

Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries?  61

many of whom were born and raised within Iwaki and have had to learn the metrics and processes of radiation risk assessment from scratch since the 2011 accident. This may also be seen in the way some of the more localised monitoring groups—such as UmiLabo and Aquamarine Fukushima—make the enjoyment of consuming locally caught produce themselves a key part of their research process. Pride in the quality of their area’s fish and seafood, and a related desire to help the recovery of Iwaki fisheries by showing fellow citizens that Iwaki fish are both safe for consumption and delicious, was one of the motivating factors behind the commencement of this citizen monitoring activity (see Mabon and Kawabe 2016). The human dimensions of post-disaster fisheries have been similarly played on by the Iwaki City municipal government, whose TV and textual advertising campaign ‘Aiming Towards Return to Full-Scale Iwaki Fisheries’ placed a heavy emphasis on showing the fishers, brokers, administrators, and managers involved as ‘serious and hardworking’ fishers (Iwaki City 2014).This alternative narration of fisheries’ recovery being led from within, not only in Fukushima but also in its cities, presents fishing not just as an economic activity, but as something integral to the community and the people within it. Rather than just a means of restoring profit for those who were spatially removed from the worst effects of the nuclear disaster, fisheries recovery is thus framed as something that is intrinsically bound up with the recovery of the whole Iwaki community. Recovery is thus both part of the narrative and a goal of the narrative, something to be perpetuated by telling the story of what has been achieved so far. The Iwaki-led narrative of post-disaster fisheries also draws upon associations with place. Since late 2015, the Iwaki City municipal government’s fisheries section has been leading a campaign to evoke the old Joban Mono name historically given to marine produce from the Iwaki area. Key in the narrative which draws on the Joban Mono title are the physical environmental characteristics of the Iwaki coast. The meeting of the warm Kuroshio current from the south and the cold Oyashio current from the north is described as producing nutrient-rich waters that give the fish landed in Iwaki a distinctive flavour (Iwaki City 2015). In much of the discussion about Fukushima’s waters and its fisheries post-disaster, the focus has been on how the marine environment may reduce the quality of marine produce. The emphasis has been on the radioactive particles contained within the sea that have the potential to make seafood harmful to eat, or at least create the perception that Iwaki fish may be harmful. The narrative from the municipal level, however, presents the physical environment as something which enhances the quality of Iwaki fish. Further, it is also interesting to note that the Japanese characters used to denote the Joban name—常磐—are a combination of the Japanese characters historically used for the place names of Hitachi (常陸) and Iwaki (磐城). Crucially, however, Hitachi actually belongs in the adjacent Ibaraki Prefecture, hence the name being revived for post-disaster Iwaki fish borrows elements from outside Fukushima. The Joban Mono campaign thus arguably offers a different framing to Fukushima/non-Fukushima fisheries by situating Iwaki and its fisheries in a complex environmental system, one that is influenced by ocean currents and processes from outside the prefecture, yet run by the people within a distinct municipality.

62  Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe

One, of course, has to be careful not to over-celebrate this alternative narrative. The aim of monitoring, screening and trial fisheries is ultimately to return to full-scale commercial operations, and the desired outcome of making monitoring processes transparent and engaging with citizens—for the fisheries cooperatives and prefectural scientists at least—is to encourage people to consume (and thus purchase) Iwaki marine produce. Given that this rehabilitation of fisheries depends on having citizens and brokers prepared to pay for local fish and seafood, these narratives are thus instrumental in increasing the number of people prepared to support Iwaki fisheries. Narration becomes all the more important when we consider that as one always has the option to ‘opt-out’ by buying fish caught elsewhere, there is little else that can be done to widen the consumer base. The success of these more precautionary governance initiatives at the local level is still, however, completely at the mercy of decisions taken at the individual or household level as to whether to consume Iwaki fish. There appears to be broad consensus within Iwaki that consumers are divided into two groups—those who are willing to eat locally landed produce, and those who will not, even though monitoring has been undertaken and the relevant information has been provided. Moreover, what a narrative of incremental and precautionary restarts based on continuous monitoring cannot do is to prevent further changes in the situation at the FDNPP. None of the actors involved in the narrative led from within Iwaki City are in charge of the ongoing process of decommissioning the damaged reactors, working to remove the remaining fuel, safely storing contaminated water and ensuring that radioactive material from the FDNPP site does not find its way into the groundwater or the sea. This is the responsibility of operators and regulators working at the national or international level, such as TEPCO and its subsidiaries and subcontractors, and the various agencies of the Japanese government. And yet the narrative that is being constructed within Iwaki City rests on the premise that the worst of the accident is over, that there will be no more large-scale releases of radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean. Thus, the Iwaki-led narrative of fisheries recovery works only if processes outside of its control do not change for the worse. Indeed, the 2015 leaks into the sea and the 2021 decision to release treated water containing tritium and other substances into the Pacific Ocean to reduce pressure on on-site water storage facilities demonstrate that the FDNPP site will retain the potential to be harmful to oceans, fish and by extension, humans for some time yet. In sum, the alternative narrative of ‘Iwaki’ fisheries offers a different and more nuanced framing of risk from marine radiation post-disaster, but, in practice, its success or otherwise as a means of progressing debate on the future of Iwaki and Fukushima fisheries may ultimately depend on processes outside the control of fisheries governors. It is the nature of ‘communication’ about water which we now theorise by connecting our findings to, and building on, extant literature in this area.

Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries?  63

Discussion Connecting our impressions from Fukushima to wider thinking, we draw out wider lessons for the framing and narration of conflicts related to water that arise from this case study. We reflect on how risk, uncertainty and indeterminacy in the ‘science’ related to an environmental disaster underpinning a conflict are framed and narrated. This concerns, more precisely, how the different actors appear to understand risk communication and how this affects the way they narrate (or not) uncertainties and unknowns. As discussed at the start of the chapter, there is a concern that risk communication in practice remains focused on the one-way communication of techno-scientific information in order to garner support for a desired outcome.This may become problematic for the governance of water-related conflicts if, by closing down the discussion to a narrow one-way focus on science and thereby side-lining a wider range of concerns, it gives rise to claims of procedural or epistemic injustice (McLaren 2012). That is, claims to injustice may arise from citizens or stakeholders who feel that a risk governance process designed around the one-way provision of techno-scientific communication does not give them an opportunity to raise concerns arising on, say, ethical grounds (procedural injustice), or if the emphasis on correcting misunderstandings through techno-scientific arguments marginalises arguments based on local or lay knowledge (epistemic injustice). Practically too, attempts to close down risk governance to a narrative of hard science understanding (i.e. understanding based on scientific principles derived from disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology, and geology, presented as if there is complete agreement within the discipline and little remaining uncertainty) may act as a barrier to reaching solutions. This could happen if ‘hard science’ arguments create tension—and thus reduce the likelihood of different actors engaging in constructive debate or dialogue—by marginalising or ignoring the viewpoints of those who do not buy into the idea of science being ‘settled’ or whose concerns stem from, say, ethical, moral or values-based arguments. Indeed, a useful framework for evaluating how decision-makers and governors may respond to controversy is provided by Sundqvist (2014). Similar to Stirling (2008) on ‘opening up’ and ‘closing down’, Sundqvist suggests that the governance of controversy can be framed as either a ‘heating up’ (opening up the issue to dialogue and debate between decision-makers, scientists, stakeholders, and publics) or a ‘cooling down’ (allowing a particular course of action to take place through means of allaying or at least calming down concerns). It is too much of a simplification to categorise the national and regional government response to marine radiation in Fukushima as ‘cooling down’ and the more local response as ‘heating up’. After all, local fisheries cooperatives too are striving to restart the sale of fish. Many of those undertaking monitoring of fish stocks outside of the fisheries business (e.g. the UmiLabo citizen science group members and the Aquamarine Fukushima scientists supporting them)

64  Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe

are motivated to do so because they are personally proud of the quality and heritage of their area’s fish and want to support the rehabilitation of fisheries by demonstrating to consumers within Iwaki that local fish are both safe and delicious. However, the assumption underpinning the fuhyo higai approach that there is no cause for concern as to the safety of marine produce—and that not buying or consuming produce out of such concern is hindering the economic recovery of the region—parallels a ‘cooling down approach’. That is, it seeks to neutralise concerns by establishing a baseline position that Fukushima fish are safe for consumption. By contrast, governance of risk and uncertainty at the local scale could be seen as more of a ‘heating up’ (or at least cooling down after heating up) in that decisions over whether or not to proceed with trial fisheries for particular species are taken through a dialogic process, and the aim of engagement with consumers is geared more towards providing them with information to allow them to make their own decision on whether or not to consume local fish and seafood. Sundqvist argues that both ‘heating up’ and ‘cooling down’ framings can be successful in the right circumstances.Yet, what we can see in Fukushima fisheries is that the high-level narrative aiming towards ‘cooling down’ by presenting the science as somehow agreed or settled may be of limited value, or may even broaden scepticism, if those conveying the narrative are not trusted or if significant difference in perception of risk or uncertainty remains. One may question whether these two narratives can in fact work together to completely close down discussion on risk and safety around Fukushima and the sea. It is certainly true that there is potential for the high-level narrative on absolute safety and the local-level narratives of quality and transparency to work together and provide multiple pathways for citizens to buy into the safety of Fukushima fish. However, it is worth pointing out that many of the individual opinion-shapers informing the narrative of ‘Iwaki’ fisheries also have a close interest in the nuclear plant through their activities. For instance, manga artist Tatsuta Kazuto frequently brings the eating of Iwaki fish into his Ichi-Efu series, a memoir about the time he spent working at the nuclear plant post-disaster (e.g. Tatsuta 2016). The Encyclopedia of the 1F: A Guide to Decommissioning of the Fukushima Dai’ichi Nuclear Power Station, edited by sociologist Hiroshi Kainuma, juxtaposes the complexities and long-term challenges of decommissioning with guidance on restaurants serving local produce in nearby townships (Kainuma 2016). Such accounts, while not critical of local produce, nonetheless convey nuanced views on the speed and prospects of recovery on the Fukushima coast. In essence, while it is of course the case that there is significant pride among citizen activists in Iwaki fisheries and an aspiration for full revitalisation, it is also true that the Fukushima Dai’ichi Nuclear Power Plant and the continuing complexities around its management are not erased from this narrative. Thus, for the narration of conflicts related to water, an important lesson to draw is to consider what different communicating actors seek to achieve through their framing of techno-scientific risk and uncertainty. Even if conveyed by more empowered actors such as national or prefectural governments, narratives that seek to close down debate and discussion by presenting the underpinning science as somehow settled or agreed upon may backfire if they give the impression that those producing the

Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries?  65

narrative have given insufficient consideration to uncertainty or indeterminacy. By contrast, even if they are still ultimately based on scientific understanding, narratives that give more situated and nuanced accounts of remaining uncertainties may offer a pathway towards governance that is able to encompass a range of perspectives on what is considered an acceptable level of risk.That is, narrating the process of data collection and analysis, and where the limitations and uncertainties are within this, stops short of telling consumers that their concerns are unfounded and instead leaves them to make their own decision on whether they think the level of risk is acceptable or not. This is especially important for water-related conflicts, where it may be very difficult, if not impossible, to claim that things can be known with complete certainty. The reason for this is that collecting data at sea is an especially costly process, requiring research ships (and crew wages) and technologically sophisticated equipment in the form of diving gear or remotely operated vehicles to collect samples from the seabed. Highly specialised skills such as competence in diving may also be required, and additionally, there may be issues pertaining to access to certain areas of water— this is particularly pointed for Fukushima, where access to the waters around the FDNPP has been strictly controlled. Moreover, the complexity of marine ecosystems—where the precise movements of currents and the species and material contained within them cannot be known completely—means that there are still limitations to knowledge about how contamination moves through the sea, and how it finds its way into fish and ultimately to humans. All of these factors mean that there are limits on who can collect data in a marine environment, how much data they can collect, and what they can claim based on the analysis of these data. It is because of this inherent uncertainty, and the issues around trust in the risk assessor and differing ideas on what constitutes an acceptable level of risk that it engenders, that the need for risk governance is all the more acute in water conflicts.

Conclusions In this chapter, we have presented two different narratives that convey two different approaches to risk governance of marine radiation in Fukushima. One—the fuhyo higai/harmful rumours narrative—places an emphasis on assuring the safety of Fukushima produce based on a linear understanding of ‘risk communication’. The other—the Iwaki fisheries/Joban Mono narrative —appears to strive towards transparency in the knowledge-making process and the situation of post-disaster fisheries within a much wider social and environmental context. These narratives should by no means be considered polar opposites. For instance, the provision of environmental monitoring data (i.e. the basis on which claims to safety are made) is increasingly becoming part of dispelling ‘harmful rumours’. Likewise, it may well be that the ‘Iwaki fisheries’ framing emphasises respect for differing viewpoints and strives to allow citizens to come to their own informed decision on whether or not they feel the consumption of locally landed fish is an appropriate risk to take. But the implicit hope within this is that the consumption of local marine produce will increase. It is also imperative not to forget that radiation is a real and harmful phenomenon,

66  Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe

one which will continue to be an issue in the Iwaki waters for some time. Hence, a narrative emphasising dialogue and the human dimensions of recovery still has to be supported with scientific research and data on the radiation situation. Nonetheless, the case of Fukushima and Iwaki fisheries demonstrates that the framing and narration of a conflict can greatly influence not only the outcomes that are reached, but also the process taken to reach that destination. In particular, when it comes to governing conflicts over water with the inherent uncertainty this brings, we suggest looking at whether actors seek to ‘open up’ or ‘close down’ controversy through their narratives, which can give analytical insight into what they aim to achieve and how they seek to get there. In this account, we have not sought to offer answers or solutions to the framing of risk governance in post-disaster Fukushima and Iwaki fisheries. Nor have we sought to offer comment as to the safety or otherwise of the area’s fish and seafood. Rather, we have sketched out how two narrations and framings of a water-related conflict can lead to rather different courses of action and give rise to different sets of concerns, even if the envisioned end result of both narratives (in this case, the revitalisation of fisheries) is essentially the same. What may be a valuable next step is to refine the theoretical challenges we raise for water around narrating uncertainty and framing scale through application to other uncertain, value-driven water conflicts in different environmental and cultural contexts.

Notes 1 Fuller discussions on the methodology used and the kind of analysis undertaken can be found in Mabon and Kawabe (2015). 2 ‘Landed’ in this context refers to the location of the port at which fish caught at sea are brought ashore—that is, where they are taken off the boat after fishing. For coastal fisheries in Fukushima, fish ‘landed’ at a Fukushima port will also have been caught in Fukushima waters, as fishing rights are divided up by prefecture. 3 The Becquerel is the unit of choice for measuring radioactivity in food as it gives a basic physical measure of the amount of ionising radiation released through radioactive decay per kilogram of produce. 4 It is worth noting that the provision of ‘evidence’ to support the claim that the produce is not harmful, in the form of online radiation monitoring data for various foodstuffs and locations, has started to form a part of the strategies for countering ‘harmful rumours’. Fukushima Prefecture is one such institution to have started providing such data in the name of dispelling ‘harmful rumours’. 5 Similar processes likewise take place within Soma-Futaba, but here we focus on the narrative that is emerging specific to Iwaki. Hence, when referring to processes or actions specific to this more localised narrative, we talk about ‘Iwaki fisheries’ rather than ‘Fukushima fisheries’.

References Adger, W.N., K. Brown, J. Fairbrass, A. Jordan, J. Paavola, S. Rosendo, and G. Seyfang. 2002. Governance for Sustainability: Towards a ‘Thick’ Understanding of Environmental DecisionMaking, CSERGE Working Paper EDM 02-04. Norwich: University of East Anglia.

Fighting against harmful rumours, or for fisheries?  67

Arvai, J. 2014. ‘The End of Risk Communication as We Know It’, Journal of Risk Research 17(10): 1245–1249. Asanuma-Brice, C. 2014. ‘Beyond Reality—or—An Illusory Ideal: Pro-Nuclear Japan’s Management of Migratory Flows in a Nuclear Catastrophe’, Asia-Pacific Journal, 12: 47. Buesseler, K. 2012. ‘Fishing for Answers off Fukushima’, Science, 338: 480–482. Buesseler, K. 2015. ‘Radioactivity in Our Ocean: Fukushima & Its Impact on the Pacific’, Vancouver: Canada, 14 September, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaXKLz3X9aU (accessed 22 April 2019). Fukushima InForm. 2015. ‘Fukushima Contamination Detected at Shoreline in British Columbia’, http://fukushimainform.ca/2015/04/06/fukushima-contamination-detectedat-shoreline-in-british-columbia/(accessed 26 March 2019). Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations. 2016. ‘The Undertaking of Trial Fisheries in Fukushima Prefecture’ (in Japanese), http://www.fsgyoren.jf-net.ne.jp/siso/sisotop.html (accessed 11 March 2016). Fukushima Prefecture. 2011. Vision for Revitalization in Fukushima Prefecture, Fukushima Prefectural Government: Fukushima City, https://www.pref.fukushima.lg.jp/download/1/vision_for_revitalization.pdf (accessed 26 March 2019). Fukushima Prefectural Government. 2019. ‘Marine Seafood’ Fukushima Prefectural Government: Fukushima City, https://www.pref.fukushima.lg.jp/uploaded/attachment/317965.pdf (accessed 26 March 2019). International Governance Council. 2005. White Paper on Risk Governance:Towards an Integrated Approach, Geneva: IRGC. Iwaki City. 2014. The Story of the Trial Fisheries (in Japanese), http://misemasu-iwaki.jp/ cm/index.html (accessed 20 March 2015). Iwaki City. 2015. What is Joban-Mono? (in Japanese), http://misemasu-iwaki.jp/joban/ item/A5guidebook-201510.pdf (accessed 20 March 2016). Japan Times, 2016. ‘Fukushima No. 1 Plant’s Ice Wall Won’t Be Watertight, Says Chief Architect’, Japan Times (Online Edition) http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/04/29/ national/fukushima-plants-new-ice-wall-will-not-be-watertight-says-chief-architect/#. VyQeMdKLTIW (accessed 26 March 2019). Kainuma, H. 2016. Encyclopedia of the 1F: A Guide to Decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (in Japanese). Tokyo: Ohta Books. Kasperson, R. 2014. ‘Four Questions for Risk Communication’, Journal of Risk Research, 17(10): 1233–1239. Kimura, A.H. and Y. Katano. 2014. ‘Farming after the Fukushima Accident: A Feminist Political Ecology Analysis of Organic Agriculture’, Journal of Rural Studies, 34: 108–116. Kotting-Uhl, S. 2013. ‘Japanreise 2013: Tag 7 – Fukushima Daichi’, http://kotting-uhl.de/ site/japanreise-2013-tag7 (accessed 3 February 2015). Kyodo News. 2015. ‘Fukushima Prefecture Fisheries Association: “The Relationship of Trust has Collapsed”: Angry Voices at Discharge of Contaminated Rainwater’, 25 February 2015 (in Japanese), http://www.47news.jp/CN/201502/CN2015022501001290.html (accessed 30 June 2015). Mabon, L. and M. Kawabe. 2015. ‘Fisheries in Iwaki after the Fukushima Dai'ichi Nuclear Accident: Lessons for Coastal Management under Conditions of High Uncertainty?’, Coastal Management, 43(5): 498–518. Mabon, L. and M. Kawabe. 2016. ‘Engagement on Risk and Uncertainty—Lessons from Coastal Regions of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan after the 2011 Nuclear Disaster?’, Journal of Risk Research. doi:10.1080/13669877.2016.1200658 McLaren, D. 2012. ‘Procedural Justice in Carbon Capture and Storage: A Review’, Energy and Environment, 23: 345–365.

68  Leslie Mabon and Midori Kawabe

Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. 2011. Challenges and Actions in Economic/Industrial Policies, Tokyo: METI, https://www.manufacturing-policy.eng.cam.ac.uk/documentsfolder/policies/japan-challenges-and-actions-in-economic-industrial-policies-meti/ at_download/file (accessed 26 March 2019). Morimoto, R. 2015. ‘Interpretative Frameworks of Disaster in Society Close-Up’ in A.E. Collins, S. Jones, B. Manyena, and J. Jayawickrama (eds), Hazards, Risks, and Disasters in Society, pp. 324–353. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Pellizzoni, L. 2003. ‘Uncertainty and Participatory Democracy’, Environmental Values, 12 (2): 195–224. Perrow, C. 2013. ‘Nuclear Denial: From Hiroshima to Fukushima’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 69(5): 56–67. Reconstruction Agency. 2013. Towards the Creation of ‘New Tohoku’ (The Interim Compilation of Discussions). Tokyo: Reconstruction Agency, http://www.reconstruction.go.jp/english/topics/2013/08/20130823_Towards_the_Creation_of_New_Tohoku.pdf (accessed 26 March 2019). Renn, O. 2008. Risk Governance: Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex World. London: Earthscan. Reuters. 2013. ‘Japan Olympic Win Boosts Abe, but Fukushima Shadows Linger’, Reuters, 9 September http://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-2020-japan-idUSBRE98806P 20130909 (accessed 26 March 2019). Riesch, H. 2012. ‘Levels of Uncertainty’, in Roeser, S., R. Hillerbrand, P. Sandin, and M. Peterson (eds), Essentials of Risk Theory, pp. 29–56. New York: Springer. Stirling, A. 2008. ‘“Opening Up” and “Closing Down”: Power, Participation, and Pluralism in the Social Appraisal of Technology’, Science,Technology and Human Values, 33 (2): 262–294. Sugiman,T. 2014. ‘Lessons Learned from the 2011 Debacle of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant’, Public Understanding of Science, 23(3): 254–267. Sundqvist, G. 2014.‘“Heating up” or “Cooling Down”? Analysing and Performing Broadened Participation in Technoscientific Conflicts’, Environment and Planning A, 46(9): 2065–2079. The Globe and Mail. 2015. ‘Canadian Researcher Targeted by Hate Campaign over Fukushima findings’, 1 November, The Globe and Mail (Online Edition), http://www. theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/canadian-researcher-targeted-by-hatecampaign-over-fukushima-findings/article27060613/ (accessed 26 March 2019). Tokyo Electric Power Company. 2014. FY2013 Earnings Results (1 April 2013–31 March 2014) Presentation Material. Tokyo: TEPCO, http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/corpinfo/ir/ tool/presen/pdf/140430_1-e.pdf (accessed 26 March 2019). Tatsuta, K. 2016. Ichi-Efu: An Account of the Cleanup at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (in Japanese). Tokyo: Kodansha. UmiLabo. 2018. ‘Iwaki Sea Survey Team UmiLabo’ (in Japanese), http://www.umilabo. jp/(accessed 26 March 2019). Wada, T.,Y. Nemoto, S. Shimamura, T. Fujita, T. Mizuno, T. Sohtome, K. Kamiyama, T. Morita, and S. Igarashi. 2013. ‘Effects of the Nuclear Disaster on Marine Products in Fukushima’, Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, 124: 246–254. Wynne, B. 1992. ‘Misunderstood misunderstanding: social identities and public uptake of science’, Public Understanding of Science, 1(3): 281–304. doi:10.1088/0963-6625/1/3/004 Wynne, B. 2006.‘Public Engagement as a Means of Restoring Public Trust in Science: Hitting the Notes, but Missing the Music?’, Community Genetics, 9(3): 211–220. Yoshida, N. and J. Kanda. 2012. ‘Tracking the Fukushima Radionuclides’, Science, 336: 1115–1116.

3 ROOM FOR THE RIVER, NO ROOM FOR CONFLICT Narratives of participation, win-win, consensus, and co-creation in Dutch spatial flood risk management Dik Roth, Jeroen Warner and Madelinde Winnubst

Introduction The Netherlands, a low-lying deltaic country, shaped historically by the combined influences of the North Sea and the transboundary rivers Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt in the west, and Ems in the north-east, is known worldwide for its flood protection infrastructure. With 17 million people living in a relatively small area (41,543 km2), the country is densely populated, especially the western conurbation, which is also the most industrialised. About 26 per cent of the country lies below sea level, while another 29 per cent is sensitive to flooding (Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency 2004, 2010). The west is the most flood-sensitive part of the country. Historically, specific institutional arrangements and practices of flood defence and water control developed through the so-called water boards (waterschappen). Originating in the Middle Ages, for many centuries these were key local water governance institutions. Before 1900, there were an estimated 3,500 water boards. Since then, their number has radically decreased, from around 2,600 in 1950 to the current 21 (see https://dutchwaterauthorities.com; accessed on 28 October 2018). The reduced number of boards and their decreasing importance as local institutions was the consequence of the establishment and growing power of the national water management agency (Rijkswaterstaat) from the late eighteenth century onwards (Toonen, Dijkstra and van der Meer 2006; van Heezik 2008). Since 1953, when a North Sea storm surge caused more than 1,800 victims in the southwestern part of Netherlands, the Rijkswaterstaat, which had developed into a hierarchically structured organisation, started making serious coastal defence works (the Delta Works programme) and, later, river dike enhancements. However, in the 1960s and the 1970s, interventions for diking along rivers and damming along the coast increasingly led to protests by concerned inhabitants: societal protest heralding the demise of uncontested power and authority through Europe had brought

70  Dik Roth et al.

about changes in the Dutch water world as well. Concerned citizens, professional groups (fishermen) and nature and environmental NGOs saw their property and values threatened. Claims of professional engineering skills and expertise no longer sufficed to maintain authority and legitimacy for policies, plans and interventions. In the 1990s, near-floods and a growing awareness of climate change spurred a move away from purely infrastructural flood protection towards combined spatialinfrastructural ones. Simply put, infrastructural flood protection here refers to the practice of diking to confine rivers within their beds, thus also reducing their space. Spatial measures increase the space for the river by, for instance, deepening the river bed, removing obstacles, relocating dikes, creating river bypasses, or preparing special areas for temporary water storage (calamity storage). These new approaches resulted in a policy line called ‘Room for the River’, which was implemented between 2006 and 2015 (van Stokkom, Smits and Leuven 2005). As ‘Room for the River’ created new linkages between land and water, making the latter flow rather than confining it and separating it off from human settlement, this policy posed new challenges for interaction with citizens affected by river interventions. In the past, water policies brought technical solutions devised and implemented top-down by the Rijkswaterstaat. There was little awareness of the importance of dealing with societal protest and conflict. This top-down tradition has also influenced the ‘Room for the River’ programme. Conflicts with citizen groups, caused by the new approaches, often arose because local inhabitants felt excessively or unnecessarily hit by planned interventions (Wolsink 2006; Warner, Edelenbos and van Buuren 2013a; 2013b). In this chapter, we discuss such conflicts against the background of the shifts from top-down to ‘stakeholder’ or ‘governance’ approaches to water management and the accompanying policy narratives. These shifts created new opportunities for citizens to become involved in planning and decision-making as ‘stakeholders’ (Warner, Edelenbos and van Buuren 2013a). However, the flipside is the depoliticisation of the issues at stake and the co-optation of critical citizens incorporated into ‘sounding-board groups’ (klankbordgroep) or similar arrangements for orchestrated participation. Thus, conflicts over water interventions tend to be ‘managed’ and concealed rather than faced and dealt with. To illustrate this, we use a historical approach, in which we discuss and compare experiences with three spatial-infrastructural interventions for flood risk management in the last two decades: the first, during the transition towards spatial policies that intensified water–land interactions; the second under the ‘Room for the River’ programme; and the third in the post-Room for the River period, under the recently developed Delta programme. Each of these programmes has a specific narrative which can be explained as ‘making meaning’ (Abma 1999: 12). Narratives may be ideological, prescribing how the world should be viewed. In other words, by narratives we mean an organised form of discourse (see Kaplan 1993). Narrative framing, then, is a strategy to fixate certain meanings by developing narratives with a view to making a particular discourse hegemonic (van Buuren and Warner 2010).

Room for the river, no room for conflict  71

The chapter is structured as follows: after this introduction, we give a brief overview of the recent changes in Dutch flood risk management policies and of the policy narratives that have supported them. Next, we discuss three examples that illustrate various dimensions of the conflicts that emerged in the interventions based on the policy shifts towards spatial measures. We pay specific attention to the narratives used by parties in the conflicts to either support or contest these interventions. Thereafter, our analysis will compare the examples, noting similarities and differences in how conflicts developed and how these developments relate to the identified narratives and framings. We end with a short conclusion.

From dikes to space: Dutch flood risk management policies at the crossroads Dike reinforcement: ‘battle against water’ This section discusses the important stages in flood risk management policy, of which the cases discussed below are representative. Until the mid-1990s, dike construction as primary flood defence was the dominant approach in the Netherlands (Enserink 2004). The age-old narrative of ‘battling against water’ meant separating water and land through dikes (Wiering and Immink 2006). For centuries, the main rivers (Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt) had been straitjacketed, but their infrastructure suffered from bad maintenance. Immediately after the 1953 storm surge flood, sea defence was prioritised over the quality of river dikes. Only in the following decades, with more intensive land use and increasing value of economic infrastructure, more attention was given to river dikes. The resulting dike reinforcement policy under the aegis of the Rijkswaterstaat was characterised by an authoritarian government style with little room for deliberation or citizen engagement (Pröpper and Steenbeek 1999). The Rijkswaterstaat distinguished different flood safety levels, anchored in law, for different regions (Enserink 2004). The probability norm for the river dikes in the Netherlands was one flood event per 1,250 years, based on an estimated (design) discharge of 16,000 m3/s for the river Rhine.1 River safety was largely viewed as a technical engineering problem, solvable by modelling combined with costbenefit analysis. The agency’s engineers used probabilistic arguments—the possibility of flood occurrence—using past events to predict future effects (Enserink 2004).While the water boards were in charge of implementing dike reinforcements, the provinces, as competent authority, had to weigh the different interests. Protests were organised by environmental organisations that acknowledged the values of natural landscape and cultural heritage. Citizens protested against the demolition of houses and loss of cultural and landscape values as a result of dike enhancements. This sharpened the polarisation between proponents of dike enforcement, particularly engineers propagating ‘safety first’, and its opponents, mostly citizens and environmentalists defending natural and cultural landscape values. As a result, the programmes were adapted, while the Rijkswaterstaat incorporated ecological concerns in its policy (Wiering and Immink 2006).

72  Dik Roth et al.

The spatial turn: making ‘room for the river’ and ‘accommodating the water’ High-water events in 1993 and 1995 demonstrated the susceptibility of river dikes to floods, for instance, through undermining of the dike by piping (Te Linde, Aerts and Kwadijk 2010), which necessitated the Rijkswaterstaat to act. While a crash programme of additional dike enhancements, the Delta Plan for the Large Rivers, was implemented in the late 1990s, discussion started on whether such measures were sufficient for the long-term. This discussion led to an apparent paradigm shift in flood risk management, also in view of climate change and its possible implications for river discharges (e.g. changing rainfall patterns, snowmelt). River widening was increasingly seen as an effective flood risk mitigation strategy (Wiering and Immink 2006). Whereas in the old paradigm, water management had been based on resistance through dikes, the new idea promised more flexibility and resilience against extreme discharges. Policy-makers changed from a probability approach towards a risk approach (Wolsink 2010). Space became the guiding principle in river management and land-use planning. These changes required the Rijkswaterstaat to change its tack, as land behind the dikes is needed for dike relocations, bypasses and water storage. This required institutional changes at all levels, including different forms of governance (Wiering and Immink 2006). The main policy instrument to realise this shift, the Room for the River programme (Ruimte voor de Rivier),2 aimed at improving safety against flooding of the Rhine and Meuse by accommodating a discharge capacity of 16,000 m3/s for the Rhine and 3,800 m3/s for the Meuse (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment 2012a, 2012b, 2012c).The second objective was improving the ‘spatial quality’ of the river landscape. The Rijkswaterstaat engineers, however, normatively prioritised flood safety over other river-related values and functions, such as landscape and biodiversity (Wiering and Arts 2006). Note that in water engineering, scientific and policy circles, there was an absence of full agreement on this shift towards spatial measures. Its efficacy was also questioned, among others by those who put their bets on much bigger ‘climate dikes’. As with earlier dike enhancements, the Rijkswaterstaat could not prevent citizen protests against interventions in the landscape behind the dikes, which were seen locally as disturbing existing communities, landscapes and rural livelihoods (e.g. farming and livestock enterprises). Although protesting citizens were not against measures for flood prevention, they often questioned the need to implement them in the way or at the location designated by the government. Thus, many protests were negatively characterised by a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude on the part of local stakeholders confronted with Room for the River plans. Protesting groups often questioned the axioms underpinning flood interventions, such as the design discharge norm of 16,000 m3/sec for the river Rhine. Some projects even had to meet a 18,000 m3/sec norm, which was not included in the legislation.3 These assumptions were the weakest part of the justificatory arguments framing the governmental plans for water interventions as necessary and effective. Protesters

Room for the river, no room for conflict  73

argued that, even during the biggest ever quantitatively documented flood, in 1926, the discharge had reached only 12,600 m3/sec. In some cases (e.g. calamity polders and the river bypass Varik-Heesselt; see below), protesters pointed out that, given the current flood risk management policies and dimensions of the dikes in upstream Germany, such quantities of water can never reach the Netherlands. Other citizen strategies included publicly questioning the proposed economic or demographic growth model (e.g. the Kampen case; see below) or the measure itself, by presenting an alternative plan, hiring expert knowledge, mobilising politicians, inhabitants and the media, and forming alliances with government agencies and societal organisations.

The Delta programme: ‘working together with water’ In 2008, the (second) Delta Committee, a political advisory committee, presented a vision for long-term protection of the Netherlands in a changing climate (Boezeman, Vink and Leroy 2013). Its advice, titled ‘working together with water’, suggests active cooperation between ‘us’ (citizens) and ‘water’ (sea, rivers). The national collective focus is stressed by framing flood safety as a public interest (Vink et al. 2013). Based on this advice, the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management established a new Delta programme.While Room for the River had a limited time frame (2000–2015), the time frame of the Delta programme is much longer (into 2050 and even 2200) (Boezeman et al. 2013) to make adaptation to long-term climate change effects possible. Contrary to Room for the River, the Delta programme was disconnected from the traditional political process. The Dutch Cabinet appointed a Delta commissioner to connect the different ministries, governmental layers, entrepreneurs, civil society, and citizens (Vink et al. 2013). The Delta Committee’s legitimising argumentation is that flood safety is too important for political bargaining and budgetary negotiations, requiring a depoliticised, topdown mode of governance (see Vink et al. 2013: 97,Table 1).To justify its long-term scope and depoliticized mode of governance, the Delta Programme refers to the climate scenarios of the Dutch meteorological expert centre Koninklijk Nederlands Metereologisch Instituut (KNMI), and to the international study Rheinblick 2050, stating that, in 2100, the possible range of design peak discharges for the river Rhine will lie between 17,000 and 21,000 m3/s. Water governance arrangements in the Delta programme framework are particularly directed at, and open to, governmental actors; planning is delegated to regional and local governments, which need to co-finance flood risk projects. There is a special budget for ‘co-linking’ (meekoppelkansen) to garner financial support from the region. The point of departure is that co-financing a river project gives the cofunder a voice in the final project plan, such as including a new harbour to generate new economic activities in the region. Acting boldly, the Delta programme started planning river projects without being supported by a legal framework, as the new dike and design discharge norms of the rivers4 still needed to be politically decided on in parliament. In the meantime, a Delta fund, a Delta Act and Delta decisions were instated.

74  Dik Roth et al.

Losing the political? Three cases of depoliticised flood risk management intervention As shown in this overview, whatever the governance arrangements, protection measures against flooding have been contested since the 1970s. Whether centring on dike reinforcement or including spatial measures, conflicts about river interventions abound. The past two decades have seen a gradual shift away from top-down planning towards a more participatory style of intervention including ‘stakeholder involvement’. According to a corporate brochure of the ministry responsible, creating room for the river is making ‘room for governance’ (Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment 2012c). However, as we will argue, the flipside of this development is a trend towards depoliticisation of decision-making. For instance, it is up to experts and policy makers to determine what risks are acceptable, while societal support is sought by claiming considerable regional economic benefits from colinking. Stakeholder meetings are organised without clear rules, agenda or outcomes. Citizens are heard in special meetings, but objectives, responsibilities and scope for influence remain unclear. Who is in charge? The regional government because of its lead position in proposing river plans? Or will the Delta commissioner finally decide? The governance arena is increasingly difficult to grasp for citizens. Social scientists and development sociologists (e.g. Cleaver 1999; Harriss 2002; Mouffe 2005a, b) would explicitly recognise forms of protest, resistance and ‘counter-development’ (Arce and Long 2000) as relevant and functional forms of participation. However, policy-makers tend to be conflict-averse (see Shore, Wright and Però 2011). In The Anti-politics Machine, Ferguson (1990) makes the point of depoliticisation specifically for the workings of ‘development’ interventions, in which discourses of neutral and universal expertise hide the basically interested and biased character of development interventions. Mouffe (2005a: 9) has further developed such criticism of depoliticisation into a more fundamental criticism of the marginalisation of ‘the political’, the basic antagonisms that constitute societies. According to Mouffe, conflict and antagonism are inherently part of a democracy based on the plurality of values. The political arena is the place to come to terms with such antagonisms by establishing a hierarchy among political values (Mouffe 2005b). Concurring with Mouffe, we argue that giving room to ‘the political’ may be a more productive way of dealing with conflicts than assuming consensus or trying to enforce it through consensus-seeking processes that are not acknowledged by all contending parties. In the following sections, we discuss three interventions directed at the river Rhine and its branches, in which conflicts about spatial interventions emerged.5 The first one represents the period of transition from the ‘battle against water’ towards the ‘spatial turn’. It focuses on the Ooijpolder in Gelderland Province, where plans for calamity storage of water from the river Rhine led to massive protests by citizens’ organisations against the intervention. The second intervention, in the Room for the River programme, discusses conflicts developing around the construction of a bypass for the river IJssel (a branch of the river Rhine) in Kampen, Province of Overijssel. It

Room for the river, no room for conflict  75

shows that ‘water conflicts’ are not necessarily about water alone. The third intervention concerns plans under the Delta programme for another river bypass for the river Waal (another Rhine branch), in Varik and Heesselt.6 Some inhabitants of these villages were organising themselves against these plans. As we will argue, taken together, these manifestations of spatial-infrastructural policies in the last two decades show two important things: first, they provide a relevant comparative understanding of the changing trends in river flood management and the consequences of these for water governance; second, they show the role of conflict, how conflict is dealt with, and the important narrative elements used to justify or contest interventions in relation to the interests and objectives of the actors involved.

From dike enhancement towards radical spatial solutions: conflict about the Ooijpolder As noted, the Dutch flood management debate showed changes after two high-water events in the 1990s. Flood risk gained prominence again, the main argument being that rivers had historically lost their space while population and economic values behind the dikes had continued to increase. The old recipe for ‘fighting the water’, dike reinforcements, was increasingly seen as having reached its limits. Gradually, the climate change argument emerged and advanced as a legitimising narrative for the shift towards spatial measures (Vink et al. 2013). The new government (the Rijkswaterstaat) narrative started moving away from guaranteeing ‘safety behind the dikes’ towards stressing an omnipresent ‘residual risk’, even with well-maintained dikes. It stressed the need to move from resistance towards accommodation and ‘living with water’ (see Wiering and Driessen 2001; Wiering and Immink 2006). Thus, simultaneously with a crash programme for dike enhancement in reaction to earlier high waters (to deal with bad dike conditions and overdue maintenance), the Room for the River policy was conceived in 1996 to create more space for water to deal with residual risk. There was a major problem, however: the earlier government narrative of ‘sleeping safely behind the dikes’ had gradually made the Dutch less aware of flood risk and left them unprepared for small floods or disaster.7 The intended policy shift towards spatial measures and ‘living with water’ required a higher awareness of flood risks. Only broad acceptance of the flood risk narrative under construction would create legitimacy for the planned Room for the River interventions. In early 2000, therefore, the functionary responsible, Vice-Minister Monique de Vries, decided to use a rough remedy against this low flood risk awareness. During a meeting to present the Room for the River policy line, she also launched plans for the selection and establishment of so-called calamity polders.8 This concept was part of the new flood risk management narrative, legitimising a search for spatial solutions that were to affect many inhabitants. Contradicting the earlier policy—safety behind the dikes had been the main source of political legitimacy of the Rijkswaterstaat—the minister now openly stressed that absolute safety behind the dikes was impossible and that the ‘residual risk’ can no longer be covered exclusively by diking. Spatial solutions

76  Dik Roth et al.

were presented as unavoidable, and ‘calamity polders’ were posited as the safety valves to save densely populated and economically developed areas located downstream of these polders. Designation and redesign of a small number of strategically located polders as ‘calamity polders’ was assumed to make ‘controlled flooding’ of these polders possible, thus reducing uncertainty and insecurity by making evacuation and protection against damage in the calamity polders plannable (see Roth and Warner 2007, 2009). The plan for ‘calamity polders’ was widely covered in national and regional media, creating a stir among the population of the designated areas, particularly in the Ooijpolder, a scenic area with a 2003 population of around 13,000. As the plans caught them completely unaware, the inhabitants were furious and felt bypassed by the policy process. A wave of protests from citizens, Gelderland Province and municipalities, farmers’ associations, regional Chamber of Commerce, and employers’ organisations ensued. Water experts from Delft University were critical of the scientific justification for the plans and provided counter-expertise. Gelderland Province publicly declared its unwillingness to cooperate in implementing the calamity polders. Realising the conflict potential of the issue, the government decided to postpone its decision and instituted an expert commission, the Commission on Calamity Polders, appointed in 2001 to advise, among others, on the appropriateness of calamity polders as a solution, area selection and its consequences (Commissie Noodoverloopgebieden 2002). Notwithstanding the commission’s self-image of ‘rational experts’, the way it operated created growing distrust among critics of the plan and rapidly turned the issue into a conflict in which the parties came to be at loggerheads. The commission had derisively labelled the initial protests as based on ‘emotion’, uncritically accepted climate-adjusted peak river discharge volumes9 as a point of departure for its work, limited its interactions with the general public to a number of organisations regarded as representative of society at large, and started propagating the idea of calamity polders as a kind of ‘airbag’ to cushion the river system from crashes. Unsurprisingly, in its 2002 report, the commission advised designation of calamity polders in three areas, including the Ooijpolder (see Roth and Warner 2009). With the Vice-Minister opting for ‘decisiveness’ (that is, implementation) on the basis of this report, calamity polders seemed to be in the can. However, a growing number of Ooijpolder dwellers began to realise that this was serious business. The designation of their polder for emergency storage meant property prices would plummet. Initially, protests therefore came from property owners, farmers and entrepreneurs, with support from a local branch of the RABO bank, where most inhabitants (especially farmers) had an account.The chairman of the expert commission also happened to chair the national RABO bank’s supervisory board. In the course of 2002, the local bank director took the initiative of inviting the chairman of the expert commission to come to the polder and explain the plan directly to the inhabitants. It is noteworthy that this had not been done earlier. The previous year, the communications section of the Rijkswaterstaat had prepared a ‘stakeholder analysis’ about the calamity polder issue. However, instead of bringing contrasting opinions around

Room for the river, no room for conflict  77

the table, it was advised to turn ‘dangerous’ stakeholders—the unruly ones, who protested against the plans—into supporters of the plans by bombarding them with propaganda on the calamity polders (see Roth and Warner 2007, 2009).The information meeting with polder dwellers, where the idea of calamity polders had been propagated but no serious debate had been possible, had given opponents the final push to organise themselves as a platform against the plans of creating a calamity polder. The chair of the well-organised citizen group, Hoogwaterplatform (High Water Platform) explained the citizens’ mood:‘It [the meeting] was a shocker [for the citizens], its typical top-down approach … Until then, the possibility that the Ooijpolder might be designated as a calamity polder was withheld from them. Before, there had been neither commotion nor resistance.The publication of the commission’s report, which the regional newspaper paid attention to, and the important role of the local bank [that organised the information meeting] stimulated the citizens’ awareness of the plan.The chair [of the commission] was invited, a very kind man; there was no anger among the 400 citizens. The question arose: “what do they want?” The meeting made that very clear to the citizens.’10 The citizen group mobilised the citizens and organised counter-expertise on river engineering and hydrology, to critically review the plans and engage in debates with experts propagating the measure. A retired Delft professor of civil engineering,Wybrand van Ellen, dubbed the polder a ‘bathtub’ (Aarden 2003). Van Ellen stated that water retention in emergency areas is ill-conceived: In a delta like the Netherlands with many rivers, it is important that the river water is flowing rapidly to the sea. It is not useful to store it in water retention areas like emergency retention areas. Some eight- to nine-metre high dikes are needed near the pumping station at the entry of the polder to hold the water in the retention area.11 Around villages, the same high dikes will be needed, the so-called mini polders, resulting in a ‘bathtub’ effect in case of a high water period (see Figure 3.1). Technical and legal counter-expertise were also needed to develop alternative plans, as the Hoogwaterplatform wanted to avoid accusations of NIMBY-ism. At a later stage, as all attempts to start a dialogue had proved in vain, the group declared the Vice-Minister the enemy. Instead, the focus shifted to intensive contacts with politicians, providing them with regular updates on research and inviting them for a guided tour through the polder. Further, the group strengthened its transboundary alliance with the Germans. The Ooijpolder borders an area called Düffel in Germany; the two areas are actually one polder system. The Dutch planners had failed to share the calamity polder plan with their neighbours; neither the German regional government nor the inhabitants of the Düffel were pleased with the Dutch plans, which initially did not include a border dike to prevent calamity storage water from flowing into Germany! This created an opportunity for forging a transboundary alliance against calamity polders. The protests generated several critical research initiatives that gradually undermined the commission’s advice: inter-regional research between Gelderland

78  Dik Roth et al.

Illustration of the inlet of the proposed retention area of the village Millingen in the Ooijpolder. At a later stage, the water will flow into the village dike ring, the so-called bathtub effect. Source: Studio Nuijten, Kekerdom FIGURE 3.1 

Province in the Netherlands and Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany; critical research by Delft University, commissioned by Dutch and German municipal authorities; and a critical study on effectiveness, cost and benefits of the calamity polder concept.12 The Hoogwaterplatform continued stressing that the inhabitants were willing to accept the plans on the condition that alternatives had been seriously researched and proven ineffective, and the calamity polder demonstrably proven to be the best solution. Eventually, this strategy proved effective; the tides turned against the commission. The demise of the calamity polder plan took place in 2005, when the Dutch Parliament adopted a motion demanding the transfer of the budget for calamity polders to the Room for the River programme.

Kampen: river bypass as vehicle for urban planning These conflicts about plans for calamity polders, imposed on society in a top-down way, coincided with the planning of Room for the River projects, characterised by narratives of participatory planning and ‘governance’. It was expected that urban areas would show a larger support base for change in this way (van Drimmelen and van Buuren 2004). However, belying the dream of flood-safe urban development, the new interconnectedness of water and land-use planning generated conflicts of its own. Developments around the Kampen bypass illustrate how water conflict is often not only about water, but a convenient flashpoint for other contentious

Room for the river, no room for conflict  79

issues. Although Room for the River was declared an administrative success (ten Heuvelhof et al. 2007; Rijke et al. 2013), several of its 34 projects were confronted with fierce opposition. Along the river IJssel, branch of the Rhine, a set of river interventions had to be realised to loosen the river’s bottleneck in urban areas by creating ‘opportunities for new urban functions and landscapes.’These interventions were presented as ‘a string of pearls’, one of which is the IJssel delta. The IJssel delta, in which Kampen is situated, spans an area of approximately 162 km2. It has a population of about 60,000. The region is vulnerable to flooding; Kampen is in fact flood-prone from two sides, Lake IJsselmeer and the river IJssel. Kampen’s built environment, which runs up into the floodplain, is considered a bottleneck for future river discharge (see Warner and van Buuren 2011). In 1995, Kampen narrowly escaped being flooded.Among alternatives to increase river capacity inventoried at the national level in 2001, a flood relief channel (bypass) seemed the most effective and cheapest alternative.Widening the river and lowering the floodplain level by 1–1.5m as a short-term measure, and a bypass as a long-term strategy to save the Kampen bottleneck from larger influx in the future, became the preferred solution. Laid down in a 2003 parliamentary decision, a spatial reservation was to be made there as a ‘climate buffer’, banning future development. The Kampen bypass will be the last Room for the River project to be finalised, probably by 2025, with costs now estimated at a staggering 426 million Euros. Kampen’s municipal administration felt it was carrying the costs of the bypass while missing out on the benefits, as the bypass will also protect many non-urban citizens. The bypass is projected in an area with many planned developments, including a motorway, a railway, housing, a river bypass, and nature. The provincial authorities sought ways to combine the bypass with urban expansion, upgrading the capacity of two motorways and a new railway to connect the north-east with the western conurbation, plus a new station. There were also plans for development of 300 hectares of ‘new nature’,13 for improving the regional agrarian structure and for strengthening infrastructure for tourism and recreation. In early 2005, the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning mandated Overijssel Province to develop an integrated ‘regional development plan’, including the bypass. After pro-project parties won the 2006 local elections, Kampen’s municipal authority joined the project enthusiastically. A regional development plan with so many land-use functions has to meet several opposing interests, which will obviously lead to conflict. A participatory process was started for organising a smoothly running project. In 2006, 100 participants from 32 organisations were involved in a massive consultation on the project. In an intensive process, five scenarios were developed by a small intergovernmental team (Van Buuren and Warner 2014). When farmers in Kamperveen complained about the plans, they were involved in the development of a new alternative. The inhabitants of the hamlet of Noordeinde in the neighbouring province of Gelderland, who feared being washed away in a flood event, were promised that the bypass would not cross their territory. The project manager sought to make the bypass inevitable by already starting to buy farmland from farmers known to be willing to sell, and

80  Dik Roth et al.

through upfront investments in an infrastructural ‘node’ (Grijzen 2010): the bypass would cross the railway line twice, necessitating a tunnel and a flyover. A 30 million Euro ‘node’ would enable a smooth crossing. Various trajectories and formats for the bypass were mooted, including an ‘open’ and a ‘closed’ model. An open, navigable bypass would be more dynamic, but would also require higher dikes and raise groundwater levels. It was therefore opposed by the regional water management board (Groot-Salland) and farmers in the region. In the end, a closed bypass was chosen. Among several conflicts, the conflict between flood security, nature and landscape values, agrarian interests and infrastructure was presented as solvable and conveniently backgrounded the ‘growth coalition’, a coalition of local and provincial governments, underlying the planning. The provincial authorities of Overijssel and the city of Kampen eyed the area for urban development and recreational navigation, which they felt could attract well-to-do residents. They were driven, among others, by the prospect of paying for the bypass from the rise in land value. Put simply, local authorities see growth as prestigious.The local and provincial governments negated the interests of those living in the area of natural beauty south of Kampen, where dairy farmers also operate. A municipal hearing in 2010 sought to put an end to the confusion. But while the formation of a ‘project core group’ in 2010 brought more clarity to the process, for those who would be affected by the plans, it also allowed opposition to harden (Grijzen 2010). An anti-growth coalition had formed early on, an unusual alliance consisting of nature conservationists, farmers, religious conservatives, and old-school socialists. Landscape conservationists resisted urban expansion across Zwartendijk, a village famous for its national cultural heritage and built in 1302 to save the country from the Zuiderzee floods.14 Zwartendijk also delimits the built-up area of Kampen town to the South. Their vehicle, the Werkgroep Zwartendijk (Working Group Zwartendijk), worried that dikes protecting the bypass would become so-called climate dikes. Climate dikes are higher and broader levees than what current necessity dictates, with a view to meeting future extremes, while also permitting urban development on top of them. They therefore opposed both the dike and the urban development. Lower levels of urban growth would obviate the need for building across the Zwartendijk barrier. Werkgroep Zwartendijk mobilised knowledge, including demographic projections that foresee a population slump in the region from the 2010s. They showed that the development plans were based on unrealistic projections that assume that housing supply generates demand. While scientific demographic prognoses predicted a slump, municipal authorities preferred to go with a privately developed demographic model, Primos, that also included ‘municipal ambitions’ in the (usually bullish) prognoses. The opposition, moreover, gained momentum when it transpired that the fifth alternative developed by an inter-governmental team may make the region safer except for Kampen. With the town embanked on all sides, water would not drain to the South but might rise fast to up to 2.7 metres, and thus claim many more

Room for the river, no room for conflict  81

casualties after a dike break. Werkgroep Zwartendijk was informed about this scenario which was found in a report cited in the Environmental Impact Analysis (HKV 2005): 540 lives and 1.4 billion Euros could be lost, as against 100 fatalities and 400 million in losses without it (Sligter 2009). This boosted Werkgroep Zwartendijk’s opposition to the bypass, even allowing for a different urban expansion location. Displacing the ‘string of pearls’ as the central image, the Werkgroep Zwartendijk ran with the ‘bathtub’ moniker, coined by an affected local farmer, to support his conservation platform. Since the drafting of the report, the plans have changed substantially and their impact has been revised accordingly—the ‘bathtub’ label, however, stuck and changed the narration and dynamics of the conflict. The safety discourse boomeranged (van Buuren and Warner 2014), making the bypass difficult to accept (Figure 3.2). Another victory was won in an administrative lawsuit filed by Werkgroep Zwartendijk, in cooperation with, among others, another conservationist association (Vereniging Voor Natuurstudie en Bescherming IJsseldelta). The Council of State (Raad van State, the highest Dutch administrative court) quashed plans for new development in February 2015: the Council failed to see a pressing need for 1,300 luxury properties with 1,100 mooring places, dismissing the private report on development potential (Satink 2015). It also ruled that the bypass should not be made fully

Kampen as a bathtub (c/o Werkgroep Zwartendijk). Source: Werkgroep Zwartendijk. http://www.zwartendijk.nl/bestanden/flyer.pdf (accessed 11 December 2018) FIGURE 3.2 

82  Dik Roth et al.

navigable and claimed that it clashed with European ‘Natura 2000’ (nature conservation) regulations by disturbing bird habitats. Meanwhile, the political climate for urban expansion had changed. In 2016, the province of Overijssel and 10 municipalities including Kampen pledged not to build more than the projected housing development (RT Oost 2016). The speculative 40 million Euros to be made from housing projects according to 2007 projections had turned into a 43 million Euro loss by 2016.15 Kampen then looked into alternatives for a ‘bypass for the bypass’ that would still enable navigation. Tourism and economic development remain valuable to Kampen, but so are the birds and the landscape to conservationists.

Any real alternatives? Contested plans for a river bypass in Varik-Heesselt Since 2010, when the Delta programme was started, the Delta commissioner worked in a multi-level governance setting on measures to further reduce flood risk beyond 2015, with a view to managing future climate extremes. The search for so-called promising river projects was delegated to regional governments, in this case the Gelderland Province. The bypass in Varik and Heesselt, the two wards of the municipality of Neerijnen along the river Waal, was considered ‘promising’ because of an estimated lowering of the peak discharge level by up to 50 cm. When some citizens discovered an outline of the plan on a local website, they organised themselves into a citizens’ action group called ‘Waalzinnig’ (‘Rhinediculous’).16 They questioned the need for the bypass and the grounds for using the 18,000 m3/s norm for the river Rhine, which was not yet required by law. They specifically questioned whether this discharge level could even enter the Netherlands at all, in view of the impact of German flood policy.17 Let’s consider the Delta Commissioner’s and the Minister of Water Management’s respective replies as disseminated through the news media. In a media interview, the Delta commissioner admitted that nowadays expropriation is difficult: [I have] no overriding authority, but people know that I will make the final proposal and I can organise it in such a way in The Hague [seat of government] that it [the bypass] will likely be accepted [as a Delta decision]. Sounds cool, huh? … Of course, there are opponents. A number of houses will need to go, but that would also be the case for dike reinforcement. (NRC 2014) The Delta commissioner has the institutional means to act. ‘There is an act, the Delta Act, there is a programme, the Delta Programme. There is money [the Delta Fund], we are taken seriously. Whatever we invent, can be implemented’ (NRC 2014). The former Minister of Water Management had a message for the citizens of Varik and Heesselt. She claimed to have learned from earlier experiences that once citizens understand why the bypass is planned and what its private consequences are, support will increase: ‘Citizens will need to trust the government in compensating the costs

Room for the river, no room for conflict  83

for eventually moving out. But we will take the measures to increase the safety of four million citizens in the area’ (De Gelderlander 2014). The minister’s reaction is a follow-up of the government mantra that citizens will be safe behind the dikes. At the end of 2013, the province and the municipality invited 22 citizens to become members of a ‘sounding board group’,18 among other farmers and fruit growers holding land in the projected bypass area. According to the provincial project manager, they could discuss the plans and express their concerns, so their advice could be used in decision-making.19 In the sounding board group, proponents and opponents of the bypass were represented. During the process, most proponents changed position because of the safety issue: In case of a dike breach, the polder in which the villages Varik and Heesselt are situated, will rapidly fill up with water viz. the bathtub effect; consequently, residents won’t have time to evacuate. The members worked on three bypass scenarios. In the first one, the ‘compact scenario’, some 12 houses would have to disappear to make space for a deep and narrow (300 metre) bypass, also known as the ‘blue bypass’. Once in four years, on an average, water would flow through the bypass. In this area, there would be no room for housing and agriculture, but recreation and nature conservation could be developed. In the second, the ‘space scenario’, the width of the bypass would be narrow, in order to spare as many houses as possible. Later, the bypass could be widened up to some 800 metres. Once every 15 to 25 years, water would flow through the bypass. There are opportunities for housing (on mounds), sustainable agriculture, recreation and nature conservation development.The third, ‘functional’ scenario, for which some 30 houses would have to be removed, is a straight bypass with dikes and an inlet for giving space to the water. Once in four years, water would flow through the bypass. In the area, agriculture would be possible, but fruit trees would not survive.20 As a member of the sounding board, the chair of the resident group Waalzinnig criticised the three scenarios: In fact, these three scenarios are not meant to be real alternatives … The design is different, but the project remains the same … From a technical perspective, the first scenario … is not possible. If … implemented, the water level in the Waal will decrease significantly, at the cost of shipping. The third alternative cannot function even as a channel.21 In June 2014, the ‘promising’ bypass project was included in the ‘final preferred strategy’ of the Delta programme for the Rivers. The Gelderland provincial council’s white paper on regional development, Waalweelde West, was the forerunner in the list of proposed flood risk measures in this region. The village council opposed the bypass but had not been taken into account in provincial decision-making. Instigated by the village council, the responsible municipal executive councillor wrote a letter to the provincial delegate to express his concern. At the same time, the municipality was of the opinion that the planning process should continue (Brabants Dagblad 2014). In the fall of 2014, Waalzinnig commissioned Wageningen University’s Science Shop22 to critically review the legitimation of the 18,000 m3/s safety norm.23 As already

84  Dik Roth et al.

mentioned, among experts, the region is known as a ‘bathtub’ due to its deep polders and high dikes. Anticipating imminent flooding in 1995, 250,000 inhabitants were evacuated. Since then, dikes have been reinforced and groynes24 and other obstacles in river and flood plains removed. But according to the provincial delegate, both new dike reinforcements and a bypass are probably needed to guarantee the safety of the inhabitants. The citizens of Varik and Heesselt fear that they will be worse off: now it would take days to fill the bathtub with water, so inhabitants would have sufficient time to evacuate.With the bypass,Varik and Heesselt will be an island surrounded by dikes. It is feared that in a flood emergency, the bathtub’ created between the river dikes and the new dikes along the bypass could rapidly fill up with water (DG 2016a). The study conducted by the Wageningen Science Shop shows that first, there is no decisive scientific proof that the design discharge of 18,000 m3/s into the river Rhine in 2100 is realistic. Even with a much smaller water volume, parts of Germany will be flooded because the dikes are not dimensioned for such a water volume (see During, Pleijte and Vreke 2016). So, the water will not reach the Netherlands in the first instance. Second, the assumptions, on which the technical arguments underlying the design standard are based, are not made explicit and hence cannot be criticised. With respect to the norms and measures in the field of flood risk management, there is no coordination with Germany. Those who are affected do not play any role in decision-making.The chair of Waalzinnig explained: We asked Wageningen Science Shop whether it is able to scientifically underpin the legitimation of the plan for a bypass.We run a risk because the research must be independent, and outcomes might disappoint us. But we must not shirk from that risk … and we are of the opinion that if the bypass is the solution, we should bow to it. (DG 2016b) While the local media picked up the story, the national media did not pay attention to the issue, nor did the national government react to the criticism expressed, among others, in the Wageningen Science Shop report. The provincial delegate did: It is correct that we cannot prove that it [18,000 m3/s] might happen. But inversely, others cannot prove that it won’t happen. Our figures are based on assumptions which have not fallen out of the clear blue sky.The forecast will be sounder in the near future.The threat will not only come from Germany.Today, heavy rains are more common … We cannot wait to take a decision until the moment we are unsafe. We are absolutely safe now, but not in the medium to long-term. Accordingly, we have to decide in late 2017 or early 2018. (DG 2016a) From a river hydrological point of view, this is a foolish plan based on a tunnel vision, creating a risky ‘bathtub’ situation for the villages concerned, and contributing little to nothing to regional development. In February 2018, the steering

Room for the river, no room for conflict  85

committee advised negatively on the bypass. Despite that, the province persevered in its support for the plans. In 2016, discussions about the bypass seemed to have totally stagnated, and a decision in favour of the bypass seemed likely. Waalzinnig had not been able to convince the more powerful governmental-administrative proponents. The Wageningen Science Shop report had caused some stir but did not become a game-changer. Members of the ‘sounding board group’ had their hands tied by the group’s narrowly defined role (discussing and co-designing the alternative bypass options). In 2017, nonetheless, the situation changed radically.The turning point was the mobilisation and active engagement of several independent critical experts: picking up on the critical Wageningen Science Shop report and adding their own incisive criticism to the plans. They started working out alternative combinations of diking and interventions in the flood plains of the river. After several attempts to marginalise and delegitimise such critical alternative initiatives, critics could no longer be silenced. As a result, opinions changed and the plan was finally voted down in the national parliament in June 2018.

Analysing conflicts about spatial flood risk management policies: the consensus bias This section will briefly compare the three interventions discussed above, noting similarities and differences with regard to the nature of the conflicts, legitimising narratives that play(ed) a major role, the constellation of competing positions, motives and interests that have driven them, and the degree to which the existence of conflicting views was allowed into the process or suppressed. All three conflicts about river interventions (Ooijpolder, Kampen and VarikHeesselt) can be understood as arising from the fact that spatial flood risk management measures require land-use interventions in a densely populated country. Previously, infrastructural measures triggered conflicts about the impact of dike reinforcements on houses and landscapes adjacent to the dike. The shift towards spatial interventions has, however, a much wider impact on the river landscape, its inhabitants and other users. The leading narrative justifying such interventions is that dikes alone can no longer provide sufficient protection and cannot be endlessly enhanced. The climate change argument has strengthened this narrative since the mid-1990s (see Vink et al. 2013). The main institutional producer of this waterclimate-space narrative is the national water agency, the Rijkswaterstaat, backed by a wide variety of research institutes and consultancy firms whose livelihood is tied to floods. At the turn of the century, government communication on water safety was popularised, making use of slogans like ‘living with water’ and ‘working together with water’ (see e.g. Deltacommissie 2008). Such narrative framings of ‘the problem’ and, by extension, its solution, are crucial in gaining public acceptance of and support for interventions; together they stress the urgency of the environmental challenge, the incontestable character of the analysis, and the appropriateness of the solution—though overstating it can easily backfire (van Buuren and Warner 2014). Thus, narrative framings are deployed to

86  Dik Roth et al.

justify the intervention and, at the same time, legitimise the role of the government agency and the funding it receives. This narrative framing continued after a new institution, the Delta Commission, was established. Since then, narrative framing has been directed at various publics. Targeting the lower-level authorities, the need for jointly working on water is emphasised by delegating responsibilities and tasks, aimed at raising awareness among citizens about the long-term threat central in the communication strategy, based on climate scenarios from the Dutch meteorological institute. As a consequence of this divergence, alliances between lower-level governments and citizens were unlikely—as was the case in both the Ooijpolder and Kampen interventions. A key similarity in the three cases concerns the important role of expert claims and the attempts by critics to mobilise counter-expertise to delegitimise the government narratives underpinning the relevance, urgency, efficiency, and benefits of interventions. While citizens mobilising counter-expertise played a crucial role in the Ooijpolder and Kampen interventions from the beginning of the project, this was initially not the case in the Varik-Heesselt intervention. Due to the multilevel governance setting and depoliticisation of the policy process, citizens in VarikHeesselt had no formal role in decision-making. Instead, citizens were considered as a ‘support base’. In the final stage of the project, however, various experts fiercely criticised the underpinnings of the plan in a way that made it impossible for the proponents to sideline the criticism. They mobilised residents and formed a broad coalition, including nature conservation organisations and experts from universities. Another similarity in the three cases is the emergence of other issues or ‘development agendas’, included in plans to get support of lower-level governments or the public. In the Ooijpolder and Kampen interventions, the narrative of ‘room for the river’ also means ‘room for nature conservation and recreation’ (Ooijpolder), enabling ‘integrated regional development’ (Kampen) and ‘co-linking opportunities’ (Varik-Heesselt). This did not resonate well with inhabitants and landscape conservationists, the spoilsports who failed to acknowledge development opportunities. There are also differences between the three river interventions (Ooijpolder, Kampen and Varik-Heesselt). First, there are differences between the styles of planning of the interventions discussed above. In the Ooijpolder intervention, this style was unmistakeably top-down and hierarchical. The responsible government agency, the Rijkswaterstaat, did not see a need for involving citizens at an early stage, saw stakeholders as obstacles, and viewed communication with stakeholders as a one-way propaganda effort to make critics change their minds. In the end, the war was won by the well-networked Hoogwaterplatform, which cleverly decided to seek alliances and political support against calamity polders at all levels and even across national borders, rather than to engage in discussions with the Rijkswaterstaat. They meanwhile mobilised authoritative expertise to undercut the technical claims underpinning the necessity for the proposed water storage plan. By contrast, the Kampen bypass, spearheaded by local authorities, tried a very inclusive and elaborate participatory process, involving a variety of local groups. However, this involvement was set as the exercise of solving a conflict over space

Room for the river, no room for conflict  87

faced with multiple development claims. The Working Group Zwartendijk, in collaboration with a conservationist association disputing the need and desirability of this development, was blindsided. They too uncovered that the axioms buttressing the intervention, of both flood safety and regional growth, were based on unrealistic scenarios. They managed to change the discourse and to win an administrative lawsuit concerned with curtailing developmental ambitions. Their anti-growth activism swaying the political tide was also helped in no small measure by the economic crisis forcing authorities to revise and downscale their plans. Finally, the Varik-Heesselt bypass shows a strictly hierarchical government style, based on depoliticised flood risk policy in which citizens do not have any influence. Citizen involvement was particularly directed at legitimising the plan for a bypass and giving inputs for its design, but stopped short at the question about its functionality, necessity and availability of real alternatives. Rather than including citizen values, the lower-level authorities marginalised the citizens’ critical comments. The role of the Delta Commissioner was key: he either invoked his authority at crucial moments during the planning process or was relatively invisible, avoiding direct contact with citizens. Here, too, citizens called on science and counter-expertise to criticise the assumed need for a bypass in their backyard. In all the cases, the critical expertise mobilised was not publicly available to citizens and sometimes even intentionally obscured.Technical consultants’ scenarios casting doubt on the safety impact of the river interventions were ‘buried’ in public reports and, in the Ooijpolder case, even initially denied. The consultants involved were in no mood to draw public attention to themselves, as that may disqualify them from obtaining future assignments. In the Varik case, the Wageningen Science Shop even met with initial university-imposed restrictions on publishing its critical study on the rationality of the safety assumptions. While the Wageningen Science Shop is still predicated on serving civil society, the university has increasingly become a ‘concern’, relying on paid public and private assignments. The aura of consensual decision-making, buttressed by economic interdependence, was not to be broken by enterprising critics claiming ‘voice’ in the policy arena. However, as evidenced by the parlimentary decision in 2018 not to implement the bypass plan, this strategy has clearly backfired.

Conclusion The standard representation of latent or open water conflict by government agencies in the Netherlands is to deny such conflict. Despite well-intentioned decentralisation and participation efforts, the Netherlands water sector remains beholden to a technical discourse, bypassing debates over values, and relegating opponents to a powerless ‘sounding-board’ council. The attempt to include opponents was rarely pursued. Two out of three (planned) river interventions discussed here,VarikHeesselt and Ooijpolder, were conducted in a top-down manner, underpinned by specific flood risk management policy. In the same interventions, top-down decision-making was justified by legitimising narratives characterised by highly

88  Dik Roth et al.

paternalistic language. The third river intervention, Kampen, a regional alternative to the bypass, was much more inclusive, but excluded alternatives based on values different than growth. In each case, local stakeholders feared the river intervention would create ‘bathtubs’ or otherwise reduce rather than enhance their safety. The ‘bathtub’ proved a powerful image in the narrative of the opposition, iconic for these conflicts that can tip the discursive balance. In each case, there was a lack of a debate on values. Opponents discovered semi-hidden information and access to ‘facts’, that is, expertise undermining the interventions’ guiding assumptions. Once outside the circle of water professionals, this expertise became ammunition in the ‘war’ against river interventions. Before Varik-Heesselt was in the final decision-making stage, there was still some scope for avoiding the frustrations experienced in the Ooijpolder and Kampen cases and for confronting local worries head-on. This opportunity was, however, not seized in the basically top-down and technocratic decision-making culture of the Delta programme, and the plan was finally voted down. All three Dutch river interventions discussed here, whether top-down or more participatory, were conflict-averse. Conflicts are elided from the process, hidden from view and covered by narratives of consensus. It is no coincidence that the Dutch self-image of inclusive consensus-seeking, ‘poldering’, tends to take the political out of decision-making. Safety from floods is presented as so important that political quibbles should give way to decisiveness from the top down. As we have shown in this chapter, flood risk management, including river interventions like bypasses, is inherently about struggles over space between various, often diverging, interests, varying from public interest of flood safety (national and regional government), economic interest (the infrastructure and housing lobby) to private interest (citizens) and nature conservation interest (environmental organisations). Both flood risk management and land-use planning in the Netherlands are cloaked in technical rationality and therefore operate as an ‘anti-politics machine’ (Ferguson 1990; De Jong and Duineveld 2013).

Notes 1 This means that river dikes were dimensioned for a once in 1,250 years flood probability, assuming that the river system should be able to cope with a (maximum) discharge of 16,000 m3/sec (cubic meters per second) for the river Rhine. 2 See https://www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl/english/ (accessed 15 September 2015). 3 The design discharge was increased as a result of the high-water events in the 1990s and, later, in reaction to growing concerns about climate change. 4 Basically, the water volumes that the dikes should be able to contain, given certain risk standards.These are now to be complemented by norms on individual and collective risk exposure. 5 All three interventions have been researched by the authors of this chapter, using a combination of policy research, ethnographic methods, in-depth interviewing of a widely diverse range of respondents, and analysis of policy documents and media coverage. The Ooijpolder case study (situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands) was carried out from 2000 to 2005, the Kampen case study (situated in northern part of the Netherlands)

Room for the river, no room for conflict  89

was conducted from 2004 to 2015, and the Varik-Heesselt case study (situated in the centre of the Netherlands) was carried out during 2014–18. All authors were engaged in the Ooijpolder case study, while Jeroen Warner studied the Kampen case, and Dik Roth and Madelinde Winnubst studied the Varik-Heesselt case. 6 The plans for this river bypass were shelved in February 2018. After growing local protests and the mobilisation of critical counter-expertise, a steering committee, consisting of representatives of the province, water board, municipality, and ‘sounding board group’ (see below), advised negatively on the bypass plan. A final (national) government decision on the issue is expected in the course of 2018. 7 Until the recent past (and even nowadays in some places), inhabitants of the riverine landscapes were better prepared: no expensive and vulnerable carpeting on the ground floor, hooks in the walls to lift furniture whenever needed etc. 8 A polder is a flat and low-lying area surrounded by dikes and reclaimed from sea, floodplains or coastal marshes. The water level in the polder is controlled by pumping devices (originally windmill-powered). A ‘calamity polder’ is a polder located upstream of areas to be protected along the river, designated for temporary water storage during extreme discharges. The term ‘polder’ is also used as a verb, as ‘poldering’, a tradition of inclusive consensus-seeking in negotiations, with which the struggle against the water is often associated. 9 Key issue was the assumption that a design discharge of 18,000 m3/sec or even higher could enter the Netherlands through the river Rhine, justifying the search for additional measures to deal with the ‘residual risk’. 10 Interview with H.B.A.M. Sanders, Chairman of the Hoogwaterplatform (Kekerdom, 7 June 2005). 11 Interview with Marieke Aarden, De Volkskrant, 27 December 2003. 12 As the latter study was deemed too critical (and therefore endangered the plans) it ‘disappeared’ for several months. After its existence became known to the Hoogwaterplatform, the group had to invoke the Government Information Act to force the government to make it available. 13 Since the 1990s, the regional development focus has increasingly extended to ‘nature development’: in contrast to conservation, natural values are designed and engineered into the river landscape in an attempt to ‘rewild’ the Netherlands. 14 The Zuiderzee was an open and dangerous water body until it was dammed in the early 20th century. It is now known as IJsselmeer (Lake IJssel). 15 http://www.deltaprofessionals.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Bypass-IJsseldeltapresentatie-Hein-Pijnappel.pdf (accessed 19 June 2018). 16 Waalzinnig is a pun on Dutch ‘waanzinnig’ (ridiculous); as the river Waal is a branch of the river Rhine, ‘Rhinediculous’ comes closest to its meaning. 17 Interview with chair and member of citizens’ group Waalzinnig, 28 April 2014. 18 A ‘sounding board group’ (klankbordgroep) is a consultation body, involving stakeholders and experts with no mandate, whose views will be ‘taken into account’. 19 Interview with provincial project manager, Arnhem, 6 January 2016. 20 Leaflet ‘“Bypass Varik-Heesselt”, a pre-exploration of the bypass near Varik-Heesselt: jointly running ahead for a decision for more room for the river’, 2014. 21 Interview with chair and member of citizen group Waalzinnig, 28 April 2014. 22 ‘Science Shops are small entities that carry out scientific research in a wide range of disciplines—usually free of charge and on behalf of citizens and local civil society … A Science Shop provides independent, participatory research support in response to concerns experienced by civil society’ (http://www.livingknowledge.org/science-shops/ about-science-shops/ (accessed 26 October 2018).

90  Dik Roth et al.

23 The present authors were not part of the research team responding to this request, but two authors (Roth and Winnubst) were members of the supervisory team of the study. 24 Dam-like structures in the river, constructed perpendicular to the riverbank, to prevent erosion and check water flows.

References Aarden, M. 2003. ‘Laat de Ooijpolder niet verzuipen’, De Volkskrant, 27 December 2003. Abma, T. 1999. ‘Telling Tales: On Narrative and Evaluation’, Advances in Program Evaluation, 6. Arce, A. and N. Long. 2000. Anthropology, Development and Modernities. London: Routledge. Boezeman, D., M. Vink and P. Leroy. 2013. ‘The Dutch Delta Committee as a Boundary Organization’, Environmental Science and Policy, 27: 162–171. Brabants Dagblad. 2014. ‘Bypass near Varik Heesselt Remains Promising’, Brabants Dagblad, 4 June 2014. Cleaver, F. 1999. ‘Paradoxes of Participation: Questioning Participatory Approaches to Development’, Journal of International Development, 11: 597–612. Commissie Noodoverloopgebieden. 2002. Gecontroleerd Overstromen. Advies van de Commissie Noodoverloopgebieden. The Hague: Projectsecretariaat Commissie Noodoverloopgebieden. Deltacommissie. 2008. Working Together with Water. A Living Land Builds for its Future. Findings of the Deltacommissie 2008, http://www.deltacommissie.com/doc/deltareport_full.pdf (accessed 26 October 2018). De Jong, H. and M. Duineveld. 2013. De ruimtelijke ordening als anti-politics-machine. Ruimtevolk. https://ruimtevolk.nl/2013/02/06/de-ruimtelijke-ordening-als-anti-politics-machine/ (accessed 26 October 2010). De Gelderlander (DG). 2014. ‘100 Per Cent Safety is Impossible’, De Gelderlander, 15 April 2014. DG 2016a. ‘Higher Dike is Already Needed’, De Gelderlander, 14 June 2016. DG. 2016b. ‘The Little Bathtub of Varik-Heesselt’, De Gelderlander, 4 June 2016. During, R., M. Pleijte and J. Vreke. 2016. Legitimatie van de nevengeul voor de Waal langs Varik; Constructies van risico’s uit onzekerheden die redenen geven voor voorzorg. Achtergrondrapport, rapport 324 deel b, juni 2016. Wageningen UR: Wageningen. Enserink, B. 2004. ‘Thinking the Unthinkable – The End of the Dutch River Dike System? Exploring New Safety Concept for the River Management’, Journal of Risk Research, 7(7–8): 745–757. Ferguson, J. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grijzen, J. 2010. Outsourcing Planning:What do Consultants do in Regional Spatial Planning in the Netherlands. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Amsterdam. Harriss, J. 2002. Depoliticizing Development:The World Bank and Social Capital. London: Anthem Press. HKV Lijn in Water. 2005. Aandachtspunten Bypass Kampen. A report commissioned by Groot Salland Water Board, HKV, Pr1075.10, November 2005, HKV Lijn in Water, Delft. Kaplan, T.J. 1993. ‘Reading Policy Narratives: Beginning, Middles, and Ends’, in Fischer, F. and J. Forester (eds). The Argumentative Turn in Analysis and Planning, pp. 167–185. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, Programme Directorate Room for the River. 2012a. Room for the River. Safety for Four Million People in the Dutch Delta, http:// www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl/meta-navigatie/english/publications/(accessed 8 April 2014).

Room for the river, no room for conflict  91

Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, Programme Directorate Room for the River. 2012b. Making Room for the Dutch Approach. Corporate Brochure Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management, http://www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl/media/82838/ factsheet making room for the Dutch approach.pdf. (accessed 26 October 2018). Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, Programme Directorate Room for the River. 2012c. Making Room for Governance, http://www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl/ media/82841/factsheet making room for governance.pdf (accessed 26 October 2018). Mouffe, C. 2005a. On the Political. Routledge: London. Mouffe, C. 2005b. The Return of the Political. London:Verso. Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. 2004. Dutch Dikes and Risk Hikes: A Thematic Policy Evaluation of Risks of Flooding in the Netherlands. Extended Summary. National Institute for Public Health and the Environment: Bilthoven, The Netherlands. Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. 2010. Correction Wording Flood Risks for the Netherlands in IPCC Report, http://www.pbl.nl/en/dossiers/Climatechange/content/correction-wording-flood-risks (accessed 26 October 2018). NRC. 2014. ‘That is Quite Something, a River in Your Village’, NRC, 30 August 2014. Pröpper, I. and D. Steenbeek. 1999. De aanpak van interactief beleid: Elke situatie is anders. Bussum: Coutinho. Rijke, J., S. van Herk, C. Zevenbergen, and R. Ashley. 2013. ‘Room for the River: Delivering Integrated River Basin Management in the Netherlands’, International Journal of River Basin Management, 10(4): 369–382. Roth, D. and J.Warner. 2007. ‘Flood risk, Uncertainty and Changing River Protection Policy in the Netherlands: The Case of “Calamity Polders”’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 98(4): 519–525. Roth, D. and J. Warner. 2009. ‘Rural Solutions for Threats to Urban Areas: The Contest over Calamity Polders’, Built Environment, 35(4): 545–562. RT Oost. 2016. ‘A Place for a Maximum of 600 Houses in Plan Reeve near Kampen’, RT Oost, 15 December 2016. Satink, M. 2015. ‘De IJsselstad, de hoogwatergeul en het gewraakte dorp’, Reformatorisch Dagblad, 12 February 2015. Shore, C., S. Wright and D. Però (eds). 2011. Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power. New York: Berghahn Books. Sligter, A. 2009. ‘Bypass Construction at Kampen Dangerous’, De Volkskrant, 29 March 2009. Te Linde, A.H., J.C.J.H. Aerts and J.C.J. Kwadijk. 2010. ‘Effectiveness of Flood Management Measures on Peak Discharges in the Rhine Basin under Climate Change’, Journal of Flood Risk Management, 3: 248–269. ten Heuvelhof, E., H. de Bruijn, M. de Wal, M. de Kort, M. vanVliet, M. Noordink, and M. Böhm. 2007. Procesevaluatie Totstandkoming PKB Ruimte voor de Rivier. Utrecht: Berenschot. Toonen, T.A.J., G.S.A. Dijkstra and F. van der Meer. 2006. ‘Modernization and Reform of Dutch Waterboards: Resilience or Change?’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 2(2): 181–201. van Buuren, A. and J. Warner. 2014. ‘From Bypass to Bathtub: Backfiring Policy Labels in Dutch Water Governance’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 32: 1000–1016. van Buuren, A. and J. Warner. 2010. ‘Klimaatverandering en waterveiligheid, tussen ernst en enthousiasme. De discursieve framing van bedreigingen en kansen’, B&M, 37(1): 14–28. van Drimmelen, L. and M. van Buuren. 2004. Ruimte voor de Rivier als cultuurhistorie van de toekomst. Zoektocht naar de aard van een ontwerpopgave. Landschap, 21(1): 55–64, http:// www.landschap.nl/wp-content/uploads/2004-1_55-64.pdf (accessed 26 October 2018).

92  Dik Roth et al.

van Heezik, A. 2008. Battle Over the Rivers: Two Hundred Years of River Policy in the Netherlands. Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, The Hague. van Stokkom, H., A. Smits and R. Leuven. 2005. ‘Flood Defense in the Netherlands: A New Era, a New Approach’, Water International, 30: 76–87. Vink, M.J., D. Boezeman, A. Dewulf and C.J.A.M. Termeer. 2013. ‘Changing Climate, Changing Frames: Dutch Water Policy Frame Developments in the Context of a Rise and Fall of Attention to Climate Change’, Environmental Science and Policy, 30: 90–101. Warner, J., J. Edelenbos and A. van Buuren. 2013a. ‘Making Space for the River: Governance Challenges’, in J. Warner, A. van Buuren and J. Edelenbos (eds), Making Space for the River. Governance Experiences with Multifunctional River Flood Management in the US and Europe, pp. 1–13. London: IWA Publishing. Warner, J. and A. van Buuren. 2011. ‘Implementing Room for the River: Narratives of Success and Failure in Kampen, the Netherlands’, International Review of Administrative Sciences, 77(4): 779–801. Warner, J.F., A. van Buuren and J. Edelenbos (eds). 2013b. Making Space for the river. Governance experiences with Multifunctional River Flood Management in the US and Europe. London: IWA Publishing. Wiering, M.A. and B.J.M. Arts. 2006. ‘Discursive Shifts in Dutch River Management: “Deep” Institutional Change or Adaptation Strategy?’, Hydrobiologia, 56(5): 327–338. Wiering, M.A. and P.P.J. Driessen. 2001. ‘Beyond the Art of Diking: Interactive Policy on River Management in The Netherlands’, Water Policy, 3: 283–296. Wiering, M. and I. Immink. 2006. ‘When Water Management Meets Spatial Planning: A Policy Arrangements Perspective’, Environment and Planning C, 24: 423–438. Wolsink, M. 2006. ‘River Basin Approach and Integrated Water Management: Governance Pitfalls for the Dutch Space-Water-Adjustment Management Principle’, Geoforum, 37: 473–487. Wolsink, M. 2010.‘Contested Environmental Policy Infrastructure: Socio-Political Acceptance of Renewable Energy, Water, and Waste Facilities’, Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 30: 302–303.

PART 2

Instrumentalisation of the idea of water conflict

4 TOCKS ISLAND AND THE END OF THE BIG DAM ERA IN THE USA Gina Bloodworth

Introduction In the arc of American water management, a huge turn of policy, mindset and actions took place in the latter half of the twentieth century. This generational upheaval forced a rethinking on the policy of building dams from an established narrative that building big dams universally promoted economic development, spurred progress, controlled nature, and brought water to the western U.S. desert. Now, as we enter the twenty-first century, large dams, once the dominant scheme of federal scale water management, are no longer seen as the easy solution for all problems related to economic development, water management and regional power generation. This transformation can be traced at the national scale by following changes in both federal dam-building agencies, and the legal framework before and after the landmark environmental legislation of the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). By examining water conflicts over dam-building that occur before, during and after this window of time, we can see fundamental change across the spectrum of governmental interaction with society in several ways. The rise of the American environmental movement during the decade of the 1960s and 1970s, in conjunction with a cluster of very divisive fights over the building of dams in specific cases reveals deeper societal changes taking place, part of which includes the rise of media as a tool in the arsenal of grassroots protests to reframe the narrative surrounding environmental conflicts. Specifically, one fight in the Delaware River Basin over the building of the Tocks Island Dam did more to tarnish the reputation of the previously hegemonic U.S. Army Corps of Engineers than almost any other water conflict, despite the Corps’ many efforts to utilise media to legitimise its agenda and prioritise the interests of this agency over the interests of local residents in the region. This chapter

96  Gina Bloodworth

deconstructs the role of newspaper coverage, propaganda and media manipulation by the dominant hegemon, as well as wealthy boosters and disenfranchised stakeholders, all to dominate the narrative surrounding the building of the Tocks Island Dam on the Delaware River and either control or suppress public opinion regarding the project. Interviews, archival research and content analysis within a mixedmethod case study reveal a nuanced, complex unpredictable dynamic between large bureaucracies, special interests and grassroots activists in settling or derailing water conflicts. This particular water project centred on using media to either control or shift the narrative of the project. Media was first used by the Corps to set the narrative regarding this dam project as unstoppable progress, then by boosters to amplify and restructure the narrative as regional economic growth; however, grassroots protesters managed to reframe the narrative as environmental destruction and needless federal spending that would oppress local citizens. The focal point of this case study sits in the backyard of the densely populated East Coast of the U.S. The Delaware River Basin is spread between the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and serves the most heavily industrialised and intensely populated area of the United States; this includes the metropolitan corridor of New York City, Trenton and Philadelphia. For its small size, the Delaware River Basin has a disproportionately large impact as nearly 20 million people obtain all or part of their water supply from the basin. In the upper reaches of the watershed where the river flows southeast, it forms the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York, while in the middle reaches of the watershed, the river divides the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and the river itself flows through a steep narrow valley creating this political border. The topography of the valley is quite rugged relative to the urban areas nearby. At the historic Delaware Water Gap, the valley is a U-shape with Kittatinny Mountain rising 1,100 feet on the New Jersey side of the river. On the Pennsylvania side, a belt of farmland rises gently away from the shore then abruptly changes to the 500-foot bluff that marks the beginning of the Poconos plateau. In this valley, planners envisioned building a dam on the Delaware River, utilising an existing island (Tocks Island) in the middle of the stream as part of the site location. Had the project succeeded, the Tocks Island Dam would have been the eighth largest project the Corps ever attempted to build.1 The plan included damming the river to create a deep thin reservoir, stretching nearly 40 miles in length; this would flood the valley by the building of a dam approximately 160 feet in height. For more than three decades, this dam was the main water management plan for the Delaware River, and the keystone of a comprehensive basin development scheme that included 10 smaller dams to be built along the tributaries. But the Tocks Island Dam alone would flood more land and hold back more water than all 10 of the small dams combined and was the lynchpin for the entire scheme. In 1962, Congressional funds had been authorised, to the preeminent public water works agency—the United States Army Corps of Engineers (hereafter, the Corps) to build the Tocks Island Dam.2 To the surprise of many, nothing went as planned. Rapidly expanding costs, difficulty in purchasing lands within the flood zone, changing laws, lawsuits, injunctions,

Tocks Island and the end  97

and escalating grassroots protests all played a part in the chaos that ensued. As the conflict became more heated, various stakeholders vied to control the narrative, and portray the project as either inevitable progress or needless federal destruction of local culture and natural beauty. Eventually, this dam project became a regional environmental fight of swelling proportions, and the entire project was put on hold by the Corps. By 1975, what had at first seemed like an unstoppable federal force, was re-cast as the Goliath, brought to its knees by a coalition of small and outnumbered protesters fighting like David to slay the bureaucratic giant, whose water project got foisted upon them by decision-makers without names, in offices far away, with no real connection to the lives and interests of the ‘little guy’ on the Delaware River. This image of ‘big government’ versus ‘small but determined protesters’ came about in no small part because of the media war that erupted between protesters and supporters of this massive project.The Tocks Island story is one in a specific cluster of water conflicts, in a unique window of time that marked a turning point in federal water policy—the transition from the previous dam-centric era of federal water projects in America to the more eco-centric era of environmental protection. The previously unquestioned narrative of dams as progress, taming nature and improving the public good, now suddenly had to withstand growing questions and scrutiny as societal values changed. Situated in a unique position in both time and geography, the Tocks Island Dam project on the Delaware River provides a long window of examination before, during and after environmental legislation took hold in the 1970s. Its location, unlike most other water conflicts over dam projects, in a populated area within reach of the densely urbanised Eastern Seaboard, also provided an opportunity for media to become a prominent tool, utilised in different modes, by various stakeholders vying to control the narrative of this project, and thus its ultimate fate. A mixed-method qualitative analysis examines how the Tocks Island Dam project fell apart after three decades of controversy, dissent, coalitions, propaganda wars, legal manoeuvring, lawsuits, and chaos; in this fight, conflicting alliances continually fought to reframe the narrative of the dam project as either inevitable or inept. Using data from 16 interviews of Corps employees, archival and legal records, and three tiers of media coverage (local, regional and national) by more than a dozen newspapers, allowed for triangulating between three different but overlapping directions of research: legal trajectory, media analysis and geography. This research provides a contextual understanding of how the Delaware River became the nexus of conflict between water management plans, changing social values and regional cultural identity, and an illuminated look at how media can be used to shape the narrative of environmental conflicts. Water conflicts can reveal the topographic lines of social and environmental tensions that often lie unseen in a region until a conflict erupts. This intersection between geography, law and media requires crossing disciplinary boundaries to examine data from various formats in new and inventive ways. But the reward is connecting deeper threads of social issues and complex environmental conflicts related to natural resources. A few intrepid geographers have cut a path before this study, but the lack of robust interdisciplinary examination is a more telling trend (see Blomley 2001). This case study argues that proximity to media outlets worked

98  Gina Bloodworth

both to coalesce and encourage grassroots protesters on the one side, and to control the narrative on the other side of this complicated war of perception between those who held structural power and those who did not in the Delaware Valley.

Background of federal water conflicts For most of the twentieth century in America, two hegemonic technocratic federal agencies, the Corps of Engineers (Corps) and the Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) dominated the narrative regarding water policy. These agencies amassed power, money and technical expertise and were instrumental in promoting, administering and sculpting the agenda of dam building, without resistance. But, by the end of the 1970s, that unchallenged dominance faded. After a series of much-publicised dam-centric water conflicts, each agency suffered major loss of credibility and trust; they were also forced to incorporate transparency, public input and environmental considerations in the decision-making process. At the early stages of this arc, dam-centric water conflicts in the Colorado River (e.g. Glen Canyon Dam) in the West, as well as the Tennessee River (Tellico Dam) in the East resulted in dams being built, but under increasingly tense political and environmental contention/protest3 (Palmer 1986). At the other end of the policy arc we see dam-centric water conflicts that resulted in dams not being built on the Delaware River (Tocks Island Dam) in the East and the Verde River (Orme Dam) in the West.4 While each of these cases has their own stories with different alliances, and tools of resistance, a pattern clearly emerges on the side of the federal government. Large technocratic agencies had to reform and readjust in response to rapidly changing social, environmental and societal changes; and in so doing, these individual water conflicts resulted in the aggregate outcome of destabilising the federal dam-building agenda that had gone unquestioned for generations.

Esprit de Corps In order to understand the enormity of structural power that the Corps wielded, one must examine the breadth and strength of its bureaucratic rise. The origins for the controversy over the Tocks Island Dam project can be seen in the policies, culture and water management objectives from preceding decades, and how those policies failed to reflect societal changes during the same time period. Some entrenched decision-making styles and cultural qualities of the Corps included a proclivity to seek solutions for difficult choices through elaborate technical analyses and planning processes, and an organisational identity as the tightly controlled, even militant ‘can do’ agency of public works in water management. These and other operating styles were set down as fundamental operating principles at the Corps from its inception. The early Corps leadership borrowed heavily from French training and favoured a planned economy where the army-guided construction and science was the methodical tool of a centralised government (Shallat 1994: 2). This philosophy infused into the Corps deeply and its self-image as an elite cadre of scientific and

Tocks Island and the end  99

government planners echoed far into the twentieth century, and also emboldened the Corps with values such as a flair for monumental construction that empowered the nation-state.5 These dominant cultural qualities made change within the bureaucracy difficult, irrespective of the direction of desired change. Its original mandate in the 1790s revolved around building fortification, but quickly expanded into the realm of water management with the landmark Gallatin report, in 1808, that stressed the need for national roads and improved waterways as part of its assessment for ensuring cohesion of the young United States—both of which were delegated to the Corps, although the improvements to waterways became its signature duty (USACE 2003). By 1824, this included a survey of all roads and canals of national importance and established the Corps’ role in the improvement and maintenance of inland waterways (Cech 2010: 222–232). The Corps secured authority to regulate construction activities along navigable rivers in the 1899 Rivers and Harbors Act (1899). And, by WWII, Congress again expanded the Corps’ activities to include improving levees and channels along rivers, as well as draining swamps and wetlands. There weren’t many places left, or many water tasks that didn’t fall under the purview of the Corps, and its range of activities is breath taking: the Corps dams rivers, straightens rivers, deepens rivers, ripraps rivers, builds bridges across rivers, builds locks and dams in rivers, builds hatcheries, breakwaters and piers along rivers and beaches (Reisner 1986). In fact, the Corps employed so many people pursuing so many divergent types of work that, by 1962, its various activities would sometimes cancel each other out. For instance, the Corps dams control flooding while its stream-channelization and wetlands drainage programmes cause floods. The cascading impacts of such massive reworking of natural systems cannot be ignored. By draining wetlands so they may then become cultivated fields, the Corps essentially subsidises intensive agriculture which increases soil erosion that then pours sediments into the nation’s rivers, which the Corps then must dredge more frequently than before. With a mere 215 military engineers in the highest ranks of leadership, the Corps required more than 40,000 civilian employees for these various projects across the nation by the mid-1950s. In summary, by 1962, the Corps dominated water politics in the East; it controlled the fate of most navigable waterways and wetlands, having grown in stature as legislation continually expanded its mission and responsibilities. At the height of its power, the Corps had an internal culture derived from elite sensibilities, militant professionalism, centralised planning, and a tradition of monumental projects. And in 1962, the focus of its bureaucratic weight, power and ingenuity was aimed at building the Tocks Island Dam, in the Delaware Valley. The Corps held very instrumental views of dominating and re-plumbing the waterways as its standard culture, but the nation was changing rapidly and its values also changed. The rise of recreation and the environmental movement both occurred while the Corps continued in its inflexible and often arrogant attitudes regarding nature. Constrained in its traditions, the Corps somehow missed this rapid evolution of ideas, values and changes in society happening all around it, and this myopia would come back to haunt them.

100  Gina Bloodworth

The rise of recreation and environmentalism While the Corps exploited and developed water resources in previous generations for the central purpose of economic growth and expansion, the post-WWII generation may have been the first generation to seek recreation as a priority in water use. Mutually reinforcing trends of agricultural and industrial development transformed America’s economy, lifestyle and culture. This meteoric ascent on the world scene produced the wealthiest generation of Americans yet as WWII ended (Nye 1998: 187). The post WWII generation ate better, worked less, lived longer, and enjoyed more free time than any previous generation. This generational evolution is crucial to revealing why the timing of our particular case study made it so powerful; it likely impacted the ultimate outcome of this conflict as much as the pro-active strategies of grassroots protesters or its advantageous geographic location. Suburbs sprouted like mushrooms in fields all across the countryside, and car sales soared. For people who had just one generation ago lived in rural landscapes or in large cities, the suburban migration created a paradox: suburban expansion scarred the landscapes as it obliterated and then transformed vast stretches of countryside; it simultaneously encouraged those same people who now lived in growing material affluence to seek out nature in ever larger numbers. With more free time, more financial stability and more mobility, recreation became an American passion—and a substantial portion of that took place outdoors. Demand for outdoor recreation boomed in the decades after the Second World War and the Corps was slow to become aware of this national trend. When it did encourage recreation, ‘multi-use’ became the industry buzzword as the Corps expanded its efforts in response to a perceived national need.6 The ability to repackage water storage projects from that of navigation or flood control, to include recreation could, in one fell swoop, raise the exalted position of dambuilders from technocrats to techno-wizards and simultaneously help sugar-coat the exponential rise in costs of large public works projects. So, at a time when ‘driving for pleasure’ was the top-ranked recreational activity nation-wide, the new currency of persuasion in the realm of water resources and public works projects became the word ‘multi-use’.7 In the Corps’ efforts to build this project, Tocks Island Dam, what began with the logic of flood control swirled from its original purpose to include ever-expanding uses including water supply, hydroelectric power generation and eventually recreation, all under the wide umbrella of a ‘multi-use’ dam project. As projected costs increased, more uses were promoted to help sell the value of the project to the public. But the Corps had not understood that new recreation lovers would bring different ideas about the values and purpose of water management, dams and reservoirs, and for that matter all public lands; this included opportunities to hike, camp, swim, boat, and watch wildlife. Thus, water resources became valued for aesthetics, and other noneconomic attributes. By contrast, the Corps viewed those resources in terms of consumption: industrial development, flood control, irrigation, and hydroelectric power generation.

Tocks Island and the end  101

It is worthwhile to consider this conundrum more deeply, as the evolving environmental ethic had its own blind spots. An entire generation of people awakened to non-consumptive uses of water resources and the need to protect those resources at the very same time that rapidly rising water use and resource consumption per capita was made possible by the development of those same resources.8 This obvious conflict never surfaced in the public debate, and remains an unsettled question lurking at the heart of many environmental issues. Most Americans express strong values for protecting the natural environment, and yet they appear to divorce the destruction of that environment from the processes required to support their commoditised, consumptive lifestyles.Vast dams and reservoirs were needed to spin the washing machines and sprinkle the lawns of the sprouting suburbs that were left behind during the summer recreational migration to quiet lakes and isolated streams people loved. In 1962, people were only beginning down the path of suspicion that all was not quite right in the natural environment or even that the natural environment should rank as a priority in and of itself. But by 1975, a central value that united protestors became the tragic loss of one of the most beautiful pieces of nature left untouched by industry, urban development and suburban sprawl, should the Tocks Island Dam be built on the Delaware River and, in the process, flood the scenic Delaware Valley. Thus, the time frame of the project spans this rapid transformation of social understanding and the evolution of environmental concerns. This changed the rules of the game and brought concerns about how water projects impact the environment to the forefront of social debate.

Changing the rules of the game In this same time frame from 1962 to 1975, landmark environmental legislation changed the landscape of federal agencies forever, in the form of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) signed into legislation in 1970 and the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Federal agencies were required by the NEPA to create what is known as an environmental impact statement (EIS) before beginning a public project; the EIS is essentially a listing of all potential negative environmental impacts a proposed project might create. Requiring the EIS before a project begins, rather than revealing or enumerating negative impacts after a project is complete would, in theory, make environmental disregard much less likely. More importantly, the NEPA became a testing ground for multiple environmental controversies and provided an unanticipated venue for judicial review across the entire nation. One of the first environmental impact statements ever produced came from the Corps’ plan to build the Tocks Island Dam. Consisting of only seven pages, this enraged many as an arrogant disregard of both the law and environmental concerns. The Environmental Defense Fund filed a lawsuit for non-compliance mere days after the EIS was submitted. Thirty years in the planning, the Tocks Island Dam included a price tag larger than $90 million, filled 11 volumes of surveys, plans and documents; thus, the Corps had difficulty explaining the thin seven pages of potential

102  Gina Bloodworth

environmental impacts such a massive project might generate. Forced by the courts to make a serious effort to comply with the law, the Corps appeared oblivious to both the damage to its reputation and the image its insolent attitude caused. The Corps spent more than two years compiling its next EIS, which numbered more than 6,000 pages—in what might be considered either pugnacious retaliation, or overblown attention to detail, in light of increasing scrutiny the agency now faced. Ironically, during the time lag this first major delay generated as the Corps prepared its amended EIS, another piece of landmark environmental legislation was passed, the Endangered Species Act. By 1973, this new law required that no federal money shall be spent on a project if an endangered species (or its habitat) is reduced by the project. This set off an entirely new round of energetic citizens, agencies and scientists conducting studies to determine whether any endangered species existed within the proposed project area, filing injunctions, and examining the Corps’ every move. Again, the rules of the game changed, and the Corps was slow to adjust. Had the project come to fruition even one year earlier, we would very likely be diagnosing how the dam came to be built, rather than how it did not get built. So, due to the timing of this project, it became a social, legal and bureaucratic fulcrum around which generational priorities changed and values morphed.

Land acquisition As plans moved forward for the Tocks Island Dam project, the Corps faced the daunting process of acquiring land from people who already lived in the Delaware Valley. The large tracts of public land in the West allowed for rather simple and truncated negotiations, if any at all. But land in the East was privately owned for the most part and had been densely populated compared to the relatively vast and empty American West. Acquisition was to start in the Delaware Water Gap at the bottom end of the future reservoir site and spread each year, up the valley until the sixth year of land acquisition when land would be acquired at the top end of the reservoir site in Milford, PA—just as the dam was filling up with water. During the selling process, the property owner could continue to live on the premises for one year after purchase, receive salvage rights to move the dwelling to another location, or if the property was not within the flood zone, take a life tenancy option which allowed living in the home for up to twenty-five years. (TIRAC 1966: 1)9 The ambitious scope of plans for the Delaware River Basin becomes more apparent when one realises how much private property was involved.Within the Delaware Valley, the Corps of Engineers would ultimately need to acquire approximately 112 square miles of land which already existed in an intricate patchwork of ownership and land-use tenure; it was the first ever federal land acquisition for primarily recreation purposes, and the first involving such large amounts of predominately privately owned land.

Tocks Island and the end  103

And while those in favour of creating a recreation area touted the valley as a wilderness area that needed protecting by the federal government, the region was hardly empty. The acreage contained 7,344 separate tracts of land in 22 municipalities in three different states. Estimates and figures varied, but the ‘wilderness area’ actually contained 2,400 to 2,600 homes (including seasonal homes), 25 summer camps and sportsmen’s clubs, 100 to 125 farms, 100 to 200 non-farm businesses and dozens of public buildings including at least seven churches and three schools. Also sprinkled throughout the valley were 5,000 graves and numerous historical buildings (Albert 1987, 1988). This seemingly orderly process was to plague the Corps relentlessly throughout the entire decade and engender some of the bitterest resentment among local residents and anti-dam activists. A patchwork of private holdings that would eventually become flooded to create the reservoir posed more than an obstacle to process—it tested the Corps’ abilities in public relations, negotiations with individuals, and need to balance landscape changes with public acceptance, tests the Corps failed at in many ways. Before Congress had yet to appropriate any funds for land acquisition on the project, the Corps notified 208 landholders by letter that their properties were being considered for the initial year of purchases for the Recreation Area. Revealing a worse miscalculation of the need for public agreement, the Corps published a map of lands needed in a local newspaper even before notifying the actual landholders that their land would be needed.To make matters worse, not everyone wanted to sell. This information did not sit well with a local resident, Nancy Shukaitis, who would become one of the most effective grassroots protesters and organisers against the Tocks Island Dam.10 Shukaitis began as a middle-aged housewife, who resided in the zone of acquisition for the reservoir, but grew into a powerful voice of indignation, protestation and ultimately a force for change in both the Corps, and in Congress. She went to Washington several times to oppose the dam and recreation area at congressional hearings and pleaded for public hearings to be held in the Tocks Island region—a virtually unheard of practice in Washington at that time.11 She continually pointed out how many voices had been excluded from the decision to build this dam, fought tirelessly to change the culture of exclusion that holding public hearings in Washington D.C. created, since people actually impacted by the proposed action could not travel to be heard. And she ultimately organised property owners in the area to become the Delaware Valley Conservation Association (DVCA), a conservation-based protest alliance, headed by her, to give a united argument against land acquisition. Shukaitis and the DVCA started a publicity campaign to counteract the pro-dam contingent; its members began giving speeches, writing letters, placing ads in local newspapers, and lobbying various government officials—including President Johnson, to whom the DVCA also sent a petition with 2,000 signatures. While the Corps of Engineers represents a behemoth governmental bureaucracy with its own culture, it is important to note the power of a few very angry, motivated individuals to coalesce into a movement of protest.These two entities exemplify two sides of the Tocks Island Dam conflict—massive and impersonal government agencies and grassroots protesters. Each of these groups used the media in complex ways.

104  Gina Bloodworth

Media wars Even before Congressional authorisation of the Tocks Island Dam project, a sophisticated media campaign went on beyond the reach of average citizens. The Tocks Island Dam in the eyes of the Corps clearly centred on flood control and drinking water. But those uses did not suffice to sway the U.S. Congress to fund the project. Only a concerted and well-funded media campaign aimed at legislators pushed recreation onto the front lines of discussion about Tocks Island. After Congressional authorisation, when many local citizens began expressing concerns about the project, the media became a tool of dissent as well. A series of protest events were planned in order to encourage media attention towards what was happening in the valley. As early as 1959, different local, regional and national interests relished the idea of a national recreation area in the East. The National Park Service (NPS) portion of the Corps’ Delaware River Basin Report first mentioned the possibility, suggesting that Tocks Island Reservoir could become the most significant non-urban recreational area in the East (USACE 1957). It further recommended that the federal government should fully develop the Tocks Island Reservoir and Recreation Area (USACE 1957). The Corps’ report acknowledged the need for any project to have broad national or regional significance in order to qualify for federal funds, thus the wording appeared to be an implied suggestion that Tocks Island should have a recreational area attached to it. For those boosters of the dam project who anticipated an economic boom in the region, the dry bureaucratic wording in Corps reports did not do enough to paint an exciting and rosy picture of opportunity, so they formulated a glamourous pro-dam media campaign. Among the private groups that began to organise behind the push for recreation at Tocks Island was the Water Research Association of the Delaware River Basin (WRA/DRB) who lobbied for the industrial interests within the basin; it was a pro-dam citizens’ group, with very select citizens that included representatives from various power companies, chemical firms, petroleum firms, and other elements of industry (Reich 1976). Within its first year, this well-funded organisation developed a mobile exhibit that travelled to various locations, published six widely disseminated newsletters, two pamphlets, two television commercials and a filmstrip; its members spoke at various locations around the basin and testified at Senate hearings.12 During Congressional debates on the Delaware River Basin Compact, WRA/DRB publicity efforts promoting the Tocks Island recreation areas continued unabated; the WRA/DRB gave speeches and held conferences extolling the virtues of recreation in the region.13 They created a series of pamphlets in 1959, 1960 and 1964 that highlighted the benefits of recreation in the Delaware River Basin in a determined push for recreation as a part of the Tocks Island Dam.14 Showcasing glossy pages, bright photos and the practised persuasion of professional production, the pamphlets looked much more enticing than the 11-volume comprehensive technical report from the Corps. The WRA/DRB pamphlets spoke of the potential for recreation in the basin as ‘clothed in the national interest’15 and describes recreational benefits:

Tocks Island and the end  105

… excellent for such activities as bathing, fishing and boating … the banks could be developed in such a fashion as to satisfy the broadest range of outdoor recreational interest, with picnic grounds, sites for group camping, cabins and cottages, trails flanked by rare and attractive phenomena, scenic drives, and parking areas overlooking the water and surrounding formations. (WRA/DRB 1959: 21) Compare the persuasive lure of development and recreation in the first WRA/ DRB pamphlet, to that of Tocks Island as a piece of a larger rational multiplepurpose plan for the entire basin. Of prime importance is water; man can survive without food longer than without water.What is true of the individual is true of his civilization. History has proven that civilizations perish, dwindle, or migrate because of lack of water, which in most instances occurs when the demand exceeds the supply. This does not happen all at once, but is in nature a slow process; however, if the impending disaster is evaluated and provided for, the loss of growth and development can be prevented. Lest we forget—the water resources problems of the future loom large indeed. (USACE 1960: 6) The Corps expressed the dire need for water, and a militant call to control nature, namely, the Delaware River. Shortages of water had to be avoided, and natural disasters had to be averted by subjugating the flow of the Delaware River to the needs of civilization. The lobby’s pamphlet speaks of a happy valley and cottages on the shores of Tocks Island Lake. The WRA/DRB acknowledged no upper limit to hyperbolic propaganda— calling the proposed recreation area ‘Central Park for Megalopolis’ and anticipating extremely optimistic estimates of more than 10,000,000 yearly visitors, from nearby urban centres of New York City, Trenton and Philadelphia—filled with people ‘deprived’ of recreation; they gave speeches, sponsored conferences, fed information to the news media and even produced a documentary film, all before the Corps plans had even been implemented. While pressing for the expanded recreation area around the Tocks Island Lake and reservoir in the highest echelons of power, the WRA/DRB also involved itself at the local scale. Charles Bensinger, president of the WRA/DRB at the first public informational meeting in Bushkill, Pennsylvania in 1964 commented: As Colonel Yates [District Engineer for the Corps] has explained, the Tocks Island dam and reservoir project is started and, undoubtedly, will continue on the schedule developed by the Army Corps of Engineers. As far as you the residents of this Bushkill area are concerned, this means only one thing. By the date or dates mentioned by the Colonel, you will have to move.The decision this faces you with can be very simply stated: Do you the residents of this

106  Gina Bloodworth

area wish to move together to a new town, that is, do you wish to relocate as a unit? Or do you prefer to each move individually to whatever city or town or village that you choose? The decision facing Bushkill, therefore deals with the matter of relocation. (Bensinger 1964) Clearly, the impression given was that there existed no alternative, no possible compromise and no real choice among the residents of this small community. The government had decided to build a dam, and the residents merely needed assistance in adjusting to this new reality. Certainly, the Corps thought this since they too produced a pamphlet to that effect16 and distributed it all over the valley. The Corps sought to use media, namely in the proliferation of pamphlets showing an architect’s rendering of the project in its completed form, to create the narrative of this project as a complete and non-negotiable decision regarding the Delaware River. Either through arrogance, or the presumption of total power, this strategy of media saturation ultimately backfired for the Corps; they created ever more optimistic renderings of the Tocks Island reservoir as the voice of protest became stronger and more threatening. This disconnect ultimately portrayed the Corps as either a bullish bureaucracy using its full might to set the agenda, and force a project into existence, simply by producing enough designs of it as a fait accompli, or an out-of-touch and unresponsive bureaucracy steamrolling over people on the ground who did not want this project. On the side of the economic boosters, it appears that the underwriters saw no irony in their brochure’s claims that developers would overrun the area, unless the government stepped in to create a recreation area—that was presumably lobbied for by the WRA/DRB specifically because it would bring untold riches resulting from a massive influx of tourists, and the ability to industrially develop the area based on new sources of water. WRA/DRB pamphlets contained nothing about conservation issues, or the preservation of local culture, history or rural economy. Underlying conflicts of interest inherent in the motives of the NPS, which clearly had a mandate to protect lands set aside for National Parks and Recreation Areas, and those of the WRA/DRB who wished very much to gain from development potential in the Delaware River Basin (DRB) made this an unexpected and odd alliance. That collective expecting to gain included three of New Jersey’s largest power companies: Public Service Electric and Gas, Jersey Central Power and Light Company, and the New Jersey Power and Light Company (Pocono Reader 1956: 11). This carefully timed minor media blitz apparently did not filter down to the level of the average citizen. Thus, it is more likely that the strategic publicity campaign aimed its sights on the Congress. So, two diverging forces emerged, the optimistic supporters aligned with the Corps, and the disenchanted local population, who felt excluded and manipulated by the intensity of the Corps’ actions and expectations, in combination with an inability to meet with or talk to any of the decision-makers in Washington D.C. The aggregation of these efforts had a galvanising effect that generated excitement, and presumably public support, for water-development in the Delaware River Basin, as well as growing resentment.That same year, Congress created the Delaware

Tocks Island and the end  107

Water Gap National Recreation Area (DWGNRA) and appropriated $34 million to acquire 46,675 acres of land with another $18 million to build recreational facilities (DWGNRA 1965). Since the Corps was already acquiring land for the dam and reservoir, it was now tasked with the acquisition of the added land that would then be used as a buffer of recreation land above and surrounding the top of the reservoir water line, in a cigar-shaped oval of real estate.

Sunfish pond With the addition of this recreation corridor, the scale of the project jumped from large to grandiose. A dam on the Delaware made dubious economic sense from a purely water-supply or flood control perspective; it was the recreation element that helped create a favourable cost-benefit ratio.The dam theoretically protected a downstream floodplain of approximately 10,000 acres. But because of the added watersupply storage capacity, the Tocks Island Reservoir actually flooded 30 per cent more land than it protected. So, more than any other of the multi-use claims, recreation made Tocks Island credible—and eligible for federal funding. But Tocks Island had a tremendous cash flow problem due to its size and escalating cost estimates. The top of Kittatinny ridge would overlook the Tocks Island Reservoir, thus making the top of the ridge a prime location for pumped storage. Pumped storage uses a power company’s off-peak generating capacity to pump water from a lower reservoir to a higher one.Then, during peak power demand, that same water can be returned to the lower reservoir, utilising gravity, via turbines that harness the falling water to generate electricity. However, the consortium of electric companies17 which had contrived for nearly a decade to build such a project, underestimated the aesthetic value of their chosen location to the local residents. Sunfish Pond, the location in question, is a 44-acre glacial lake that overlooks the Delaware Valley, and is also one of the last places in New Jersey not accessible by car. The Appalachian Trail also happens to skirt the western edge of the lake.18 The scheduled demise of the pond went largely unnoticed until two citizens from Warren County, New Jersey began separate efforts to save the pond. Glenn Fisher, an employee of the Soil Conservation Service, had travelled across the country as part of his work of performing soil testing, and had seen local protests against other dams in the West. When he realised that Sunfish Pond was to become part of the Tocks Island project, Fisher began writing letters to local newspapers and government officials in an attempt to alert the public to this impending loss. Casey Kays, a resident of Hackettstown, New Jersey, had been a long-time hiker and nature lover who also began writing letters and informing hikers along the Appalachian Trail of the Corps’ plan to transform Sunfish Pond. A chance meeting connected the two men, and in 1966, they formed the Lenni Lenape League (LLL) that merged their campaigns—which included letter-writing campaigns and collecting signatures on a petition by standing at Sunfish Pond along the Appalachian Trail. With early success, the LLL decided to plan a protest march up to the pond where they collected over 600 signatures from hikers along the Appalachian Trail.

108  Gina Bloodworth

Letters began raining down onto the offices of government officials at all levels, as the ‘Save Sunfish Pond’ campaign developed steam. For people who supported the dam, this campaign created a crisis of consciousness. Numbered among the dam supporters were many who did not care about the dam but saw the recreation area as a valued addition to the region. But supporting the dam meant supporting the pumped storage advocates, thus supporting industrial development and the destruction of Sunfish Pond and perhaps damaging a piece of the Appalachian Trail, which sharply conflicted with the values of those conservationists who thought creating the DWGNRA would be deterring development. Suddenly, conservation organisations with no stated opinion on the subject began to look carefully at what was happening in the Tocks Island region. As tensions rose and dissent grew, the Corps acting either with calculated deliberation, or clueless indifference, put out a second pamphlet, again attempting to portray the dam as inevitable.19 Tocks Island was already gaining a reputation as a bottomless money pit. By 1966, the project was behind schedule. Unhappy citizens had filed a lawsuit, and now a small protest over Sunfish Pond had erupted. These setbacks did not stop the steam-roller of support for the project at the highest levels of government though, and the array of money, interest and power allied in the effort to create the Tocks Island Dam and Reservoir and the DWGNRA could easily be characterised as stellar. The collection of interests included: the Corps, the U.S. Congress, the individual states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and the Water Resources Association of the Delaware River Basin (WRA/DRB.) In 1966, Tocks Island Dam appeared to be a ‘done deal’ that people would simply have to accept, like so many other bumps on the road to progress. But the fight was not over yet.

Sunfish media blitz By serendipity, perseverance and a great boost from media coverage, the campaign took on undreamed-of proportions over the four years between 1966 and 1970. In June of 1967, the LLL organised another protest hike; this one brought the unexpected appearance of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. A New Jersey native who had childhood memories of the pond, Douglas made quite a splash at age 68 hiking up to Sunfish in decidedly un-judicial attire. Supreme Court justices simply did not participate in activist protests. The appearance of a Supreme Court justice and over a thousand other hikers made newspaper headlines throughout the valley the next day. Suddenly little Sunfish Pond had a big new advocate with a public face that galvanised interest all over the basin about its fate. Emotions ran high on both sides, and long-time foes from PA and NJ traded allegations and insults.20 Again, papers across the region caught this fiery exchange. Negative headlines again did nothing to inspire confidence within the Delaware Valley about the political viability of the Sunfish portion of the Tocks Island project. In response to a deluge of letters, by December of 1967, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall declared that the federal government would do everything possible to save Sunfish and pressed for modifications of the storage design in order to avoid harm to the little glacial lake.

Tocks Island and the end  109

A third pilgrimage to Sunfish in 1968 drew at least 2000 hikers; meanwhile, the New Jersey legislature responded to calls for a public inquiry into circumstances surrounding the sale of Sunfish to the power companies in 1954 and whether the state could buy the property back. In late May of 1968, on the eve of the planned protest hike, the New York Times declared its support for the two bills then under discussion in the New Jersey legislature that would repurchase Sunfish Pond, exerting still more pressure from the media concerning ‘a small but irreplaceable natural asset, which for that reason alone, deserves preserving’ (New York Times 1968).With ample descriptions of the pine and hemlock forests, date and time of the hike, as well as directions to the meeting place, the editorial mourned the ‘total desecration of this legacy from the glacial age’ (ibid.). Thus, with the aid of the New York Times and flawless weather, the 1968 pilgrimage to Sunfish Pond attracted many people who had never heard of Sunfish Pond before, new soldiers in the growing army to ‘Save Sunfish Pond’ (ibid.). In corridors far beyond those of the New Jersey Statehouse, the fight to save Sunfish became a cause célèbre as Sunfish Pond took on talismanic qualities for urban-dwellers who sensed the loss of something more than just a pond and some trees—the last tangible wilderness in an overdeveloped region—the urbanised Eastern Seaboard. A compromise was reached in 1968 that gave Sunfish Pond back to NJ in trade for 100 acres of nearby land. Use of Sunfish would be avoided by raising the height of one of the Tocks Island projects’ upper reservoirs to gain potential for power generation; in October, the DRBC officially amended its comprehensive plan concerning pumped storage facility development to preserve Sunfish Pond (DRBC 1968). For those in support of pumped storage, and Tocks Island, this compromise was assumed to be the end of the fight. Unexpectedly though, the fight over Sunfish pond worked like a champagne cork—releasing pent-up emotions that spilled over into the public debate and flowed in unpredictable directions. Bumper stickers, fliers, posters, and lapel pins transformed from ‘Save Sunfish’ to ‘Save the Delaware’ slogans. Suddenly, what began as scattered protests by individuals, became scattered groups such as the LLL and the DVCA, and ultimately it all coalesced into a movement against this project.

Squatters and hippies! The most surreal turn of events in the Tocks Island fracas originated from within the Corps itself, and both its origin and outcome centred on the use of media. The Corps accumulated a stockpile of empty houses and buildings in the valley as it acquired land in the flood zone. However, legal delays, protests and rising costs kept delaying the start of construction on the dam. Under pressure to cut costs, the Corps offered these buildings for rent, on short-term lease, through classified ads in regional newspapers—including the widely read New York City paper, the Village Voice. Presumably, the rental income would offset the loss of local tax revenue, thereby salvaging some goodwill with local communities. Instead, what resulted was a multifarious collection of rent-paying tenants and squatters that occupied former

110  Gina Bloodworth

farmhouses.Via word of mouth, and largely unknown to the Corps, more and more hippies and naturalists streamed into the Delaware Valley.The most prominent of the new residents in the valley, the Cloud Farmers commune, started in New Jersey in Sussex and Warren Counties, and eventually moved across the Delaware River to settle on the Pennsylvania side of the border. To understand the magnitude of the confusion the Corps unwittingly unleashed on itself, here is Albert’s description of the scene: In 1970, the Corps allowed the leases on the New Jersey properties to expire. Many of the houses, however, had no lease, and rent was rarely paid on those that did.The Cloud Farmers and other New Jersey hippies were then evicted by the New Jersey State Police, and the dwellings were demolished. Meanwhile, squatters had completely taken over the lower Valley in Pennsylvania near Wallpack Bend. About two dozen houses and the historic Zion Lutheran Church, located on a hill overlooking the valley, was renamed the ‘Church of Ecology’, and marijuana grew in its cemetery. Scattered among the houses were tent camps, Indian tepees, homemade structures, and a variety of innovative homes, including one geodesic dome built on a raft in the Delaware River. (Albert 1987: 136) The situation with the squatters would not be easily resolved. Once settled, many pursued a dream of environmental agrarian utopia with no technology, no government intervention, and no intention of leaving this beautiful bit of remote countryside, tucked away in the backyard of the Eastern Seaboard.21 One could imagine nothing more foreign to the entrenched culture of militaristic engineering structural bureaucracy in the Corps than hippie squatters. A perfect distinction in archetypes could be drawn. The Corps represented the establishment, order, the taming of resources through technological dominance, big government, bureaucratic unity, and the elegant expression of man’s power through civil engineering; hippies and environmentalists represented complex, changing political and social values, flight from urban decay, wholesale rejection of big government, and an awakening concern for environmental sustainability. If the rigidity of the Corps and its highly evolved operating procedures did not accommodate the variety of local citizens and circumstances previously in the valley, it had no contingency plans whatsoever for squatters and hippies! By 1972, the Tocks Island project when closely examined proved to have more than a few gaps and inconsistencies. And yet, the Corps bureaucracy was so large and slow moving that it appeared to be unaware yet of just how far awry things were going. Most of the Corps’ decision-makers worked in offices in Philadelphia, Trenton and Washington D.C., where life was calm. Meanwhile, the eyes of the region were now focused on the Delaware River and many people who had taken no notice of the impending dam and reservoir were suddenly looking at every detail of planning and implementation. Then a final media event signalled the beginning of the end for the ill-fated Tocks Island Dam project. In a desperate attempt to rid themselves of the hippie

Tocks Island and the end  111

squatters, the Corps pressured New Jersey to send its national guard out to evict the squatters. And when they did this, the media was there to capture it—police in full riot gear, batons and riot shields, tossing out barefoot women and children into the February snow. When that fateful moment wound up in the Philadelphia Enquirer Sunday Magazine, the tide of public opinion turned irreparably against the Corps, and Tocks Island Dam.22 Evicting squatters created a storm of negative publicity. The Corps described the situation as ‘deteriorating’ in a 1973 Pocono Record interview (Drachler 1973: 11), a statement that could be seen as merely a phlegmatic understatement, or as a reflection of a profound lack of understanding about what was happening on a daily basis in the valley. Adding to their sinking reputation, in its accelerated bulldozing of buildings to prevent the squatters’ return, the Corps made some irretrievable mistakes. One house not yet purchased by the Corps was destroyed accidentally, old buildings on the National Historic Register were mistakenly demolished, and the 200-year old Zion church was gutted (Haefele 1980; Albert 2002; Feiveson 1974). After the church incident, the DVCA, the Sierra Club and the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG) obtained a restraining order to stop all further demolition. The Delaware Valley had become a battle zone. Extended press coverage of squatter activities, court fights, evictions, flattened buildings, all worked strongly against the Corps’ credibility, raising very large doubts about the Corps as a whole and changed the narrative from unquestioned progress to environmental destruction and local oppression. If a large bureaucracy like the Corps of Engineers could not handle the land acquisition process and a band of ‘flower children’ then how could it be trusted with complex projects or complex environmental problems? Even dam proponents were left scratching their collective heads at the chaos and anguish in the valley, with not even a shovel of dirt yet moved, and more than $250 million already spent. In Washington, things were changing fast as well. Not only was the Tocks Island project becoming unwieldy and outmoded, but in many senses, so was the Corps of Engineers.The greased grooves of political machinery that carried the Tocks Island project to the eve of its creation had now been slowed to a halt, and suddenly every aspect of the project was laid open to inspection. Close attention by the public or even Congress to every detail of planning and execution was unfamiliar territory for the generation of decision-makers and engineers within the Corps whose careers had been rooted in the culture of the expert. For more than a hundred years, projects went through elaborate incubation, planning and execution stages with virtually no outside intrusion, scrutiny or public input. In the end, the project’s benefits did not hold up to the increased scrutiny of its fiscal, human and environmental costs, and the project did not succeed.

Conclusion By 1973, one of the Corps’ strongest allies in Washington, the Congress, was reacting to changing values in the rest of society that would make the rarefied atmosphere in which the Corps operated ever harder to maintain. At this point, multiple

112  Gina Bloodworth

scales of agitation collided, and the Tocks Island project happened to be sitting in the middle of this path. National interest in protecting the environment had been gathering steam over the previous decade. The passage of NEPA, and the Endangered Species Act, rather than stemming this tide, seemed to give it a burst of energy. Locally, concerns about the imminent destruction of Sunfish Pond galvanised scattered citizen groups across the valley and the entire region, which now scrutinised every aspect of the Tocks Island project with a new vision of saving the entire river and watershed. Decades of rankling over big government and big corporations created natural enmity within the valley when individuals found the fate of their future tied to far away legislators and large utility corporations with no public face. And the seemingly unstoppable Corps of Engineers now had to rethink its fundamental assumption of unquestioned instrumental power. More stakeholders than ever imagined had joined the fray over the dam on the Delaware River, and in reaction to this, the delicate alliance between the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York began to fray. Tocks Island transformed from a large-scale public works project in 1962 to a seemingly intractable environmental conflict by 1975. In the end, the Corps along with the governors of all the states in the Delaware Valley agreed to shelve the project indefinitely.To be rid of the embarrassment, the Corps (faced with land acquired, but no project to complete) deeded all the acquired lands over to the National Park Service, which then created the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (DWGNRA) that is still there now. Today, the Delaware River remains the only river east of the Mississippi without a dam on its main stem, and the DWGNRA, wild and scenic, is visited by more than 10 million visitors each year. For the Corps, this time period was nothing short of soul searching. The ‘old guard’ of elite technocrats literally spent entire careers on this one 30-year project and then saw it all come unravelled, as institutional power structures seemed unable to respond to changing circumstances. Now, the Corps has a ‘new guard’ of employees that includes more diverse viewpoints, as well as public input, but these changes did not come voluntarily, and still have not infiltrated up to the highest ranks of decision makers within the Corps. In the end, what can be learned from this most unexpected outcome of a most unexpected environmental conflict? When only one actor controls the narrative of a conflict, this can and often has suppressed or ignored the voices of other stakeholders, and different priorities that do not fit within the dominant narrative. This case reveals how expanding numbers and types of grassroots protests changed the previously unquestioned narrative surrounding this dam and reservoir project. Most of the stakeholders relied heavily on media as a tool to control the narrative, in the hopes of controlling the fate of the project. The Corps used brochure publications to promote the narrative of progress, power and expertise. And in the face of growing public resistance to the project, the Corps simply pushed out more and more media to reinforce its power and vision. The stakeholders, who resisted, used media to widen public awareness and change the narrative from that of progress to that of oppression and destruction.

Tocks Island and the end  113

Can we say that what happened in the Delaware River at Tocks Island provides a road map to other future environmental conflicts? Case studies often reveal patterns in either process or outcomes, leading to a re-thinking of accepted wisdom. But can we translate this particular outcome in the Delaware Valley to other environmental conflicts? Can we always expect that stakeholders who resist a project can utilise media, or protests, or any tool of resistance to predictably alter the narrative, and ultimately the fate of future environmental conflicts? This case study can set the groundwork for formal comparative analyses on a larger scale of the attributes that most impacted the outcome of this environmental conflict, but no two conflicts are exactly the same. In America, this conflict was part of a cluster of dam fights that, in the aggregate, changed the entire direction of federal water policy, and foretold the end of the Big Dam era, but nobody saw it coming. Future research should seek to understand patterns related to the main attributes that controlled the process and outcome of this conflict: geographic context (including sense of place), political/legal infrastructure, array of stakeholders, and tools for framing of the narrative. In this particular case, one hegemonic agency set and controlled the narrative on dam building for several decades. That agency was then forced to change by combined changes in the legal and social landscape, in combination with grassroots protests, and media coverage that changed the narrative of the entire project. In countries with different political and legal traditions, this might never occur. In regions that are isolated from urban areas, or have restrictions on media freedoms, this same scenario likely could not unfold in the way that it did within the Delaware Valley. In situations where public input is consistently incorporated into decision-making, the conflict itself may have been avoided in the early stages of planning. In situations where the narrative is not dominated by the priorities of narrow powerful interests, conflict might result in shared compromise and/or a wider toolkit of acceptable options for conflict resolution. In the realm of environmental conflicts, circumstances vary so widely that several facets of the process remain unpredictable.

Notes 1 Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area boundary within the DRB is available at https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 87 (accessed 10 December 2020). 2 Architect’s Development Plan for Tocks Island Dam, with Powerhouse and Intake Facilities and a Visitor’s Center with Semi-circular Gardens is available at https://etda. libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 124 (accessed 10 December 2020). 3 See Morgan (1971), Stine (1993), and Wolf (1996), for more complete histories of both water development and the Corps in America. 4 For more details on dams that did not get built, see Albert (1987) and Espeland (1998), Miller (1993) and Sax (1972). 5 See USACE (2003), Shallat (1994) and Cech (2003) for a fuller account of the infusion of French values into the early Corps of Engineers and the ensuing cultural competition between the French and British governmental traditions. Shallat notes that competition became so entrenched that the army ordnance board rejected British equipment for inferior French designs, just because they were French.

114  Gina Bloodworth

6 Personal correspondence with NPS and Corps personnel, summer 2003. 7 U.S. Outdoor Recreation Review Commission as cited in Yaffee (1994). 8 For an in-depth treatment on the rise of suburbia, see Jackson (1985), Rome (2001) and parts of Lindstrom (2003). 9 Each of these options could occur at the discretion of the federal government, not the land owner, and each option had penalties associated with it. 10 Interview data (Activist-1 2003) 11 Interview data (Activist-1 2003) 12 See Bensinger (1964), Dressler (1964) and Feiveson, Sinden and Socolow (1976). 13 Interview data (DRBC-2 2003). See also, Albert (1987). 14 “WRA/DRB pamphlet showcasing the potential for recreation, and its strategic location, relative to the surrounding major urban areas” is available at https://etda.libraries. psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 125 (accessed 10 December 2020). 15 Interview data (DRBC-2 2003). See also, Albert (1987). 16 Pamphlet Produced for the Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia District Office, is available at https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 126 (accessed 10 December 2020). 17 That collective comprised three of New Jersey’s largest power companies: Public Service Electric and Gas, Jersey Central Power and Light Company, and the New Jersey Power and Light Company (Pocono Record 1956: 1). 18 For hikers of the Appalachian Trail, Sunfish Pond is often noted as one of the loveliest spots, with the most scenic overlooks, between Georgia and Maine. 19 The second pamphlet produced for the Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia District Office, is available at https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 127 (accessed 10 December 2020). 20 Former governor from New Jersey, Robert Meyner, and Pennsylvania State senator Warren Dumont Jr. clashed as Dumont alleged that the sale of Sunfish was highly secretive and suspect and state officials had been too cooperative with the power companies, while Meyner took exception to the allegations, and spit a few others back at Dumont. See Albert (1987). 21 Photo of Commune in the DRB from the Sunday Magazine of the New York Times, October 1971 is available at https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 195 (accessed 10 December 2020). 22 Photo of evicted squatters as the struggle in the DRB became a regional news item— again (Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, October 1973) is available at https://etda. libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/2132; p. 200 (accessed 10 December 2020).

References Albert, R.C. 1987. Damming the Delaware: The Rise and Fall of Tocks Island. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Albert, R.C. 1988. The Historical Context of Water Quality Management for the Delaware Estuary. Estuaries, 11(2): 99–107. Albert, R.C. 2002. ‘In-Tocks-Icated: The Tocks Island Dam Project’, Cultural Resource Management, 25(3): 5–7. Bensinger, C.R. 1964. Remarks, Public Information Hearing. Bushkill, PA.: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Blomley, N. 2001. The Legal Geographic Reader: Law, Power and Space. Malden: Blackwell. Cech, T.V. 2010. Principles of Water Resources: History, Development, Management, Policy. 3rd ed. New York: Wiley & Sons.

Tocks Island and the end  115

Cech,T.V. 2003. Principles of Water Resources: History, Development, Management, Policy New York: John Wiley & Sons. DRBC. 1968. Resolution No. 68-12, Trenton: Delaware River Basin Commission. DRBC-2. 2003. Delaware River Basin Commission [Interview] (22 and 29 June 2003). Dressler, Frank. 1964. ‘Remarks’. Bushkill, PA: Public Information Hearing, p. 4. Drachler, Steve. 1973. ‘Gov’t Plans for Squatter Removal Not Final’, Pocono Record Newspaper, p. 11. DWGNRA. 1965. Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, HR 89, PL 89–158. Haefele, Mina (ed.). 1980. Richard C. Albert ‘Haefele Correspondence’. Trenton: Unpublished Notes from Dick Albert’s File Box. Espeland, W.N. 1998. The Struggle for Water: Politics, Rationality and Identity in the American Southwest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Feiveson, H. 1974. Politics and Analysis in the Tocks Island Dam Controversy. Arlington: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers National Archives Series II 64-C-1. Feiveson, H.E.A., Frank W. Sinden and Robert H. Socolow (eds). 1976. Boundaries of Analysis: An Inquiry into the Tocks Island Dam Controversy. Cambridge: Ballinger. Jackson, K.T. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier:The Suburbanization of the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lindstrom, M.J. 2003. Suburban Sprawl: Culture, Theory, and Politics. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Miller, M.C. 1993. Flooding the Courtrooms: Law and Water in the Far West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Morgan, A.E. 1971. Dams and Other Disasters: A Century of the Army Corps of Engineers in Civil Works. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. New York Times. 1968. ‘Opinion’, Editorial. New York Times, 24 May. Nye, D. 1998. Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energy. Cambridge: MIT Press. Palmer, T. 1986. Endangered Rivers and the Conservation Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pocono Reader. 1956. ‘Consortium of Power Companies Support Tocks Island’. Pocono Record, 21 April. Reich, Michael. 1976. ‘Historical Currents’ in H.E.A. Feiveson, Frank W. Sinden and Robert Harry Socolow (eds), Boundaries of Analysis: An Inquiry into the Tocks Island Dam Controversy. Cambridge: Ballinger. Reisner, M. 1986. Cadillac Desert:The American West and its Disappearing Waters. New York:Viking. Rivers and Harbors Act. 1899. 33 U.S.C. 401,Vol. 401. Rome, A. 2001. The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sax, J. 1972. Water Law Planning and Policy. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. Shallat, T. 1994. Structures in the Stream: Water Science and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Austin: University of Texas Press. Stine, J.K. 1993. Mixing the Waters: Environment, Politics and the Building of the TennesseeTombigbee Waterway. Akron: University of Akron Press. TIRAC (Tocks Island Regional Advisory Council). 1966. Memo No. 3, The Corps Land Acquisition Procedures, p. 1. Philadelphia. USACE 2003. The History of the Army Corps of Engineers. Office of History, USACE: University Press of the Pacific. USACE 1960. Report on the Comprehensive Study on the Water Resources of the Delaware River Basin, p. 6. (House Document 522). Washington, DC: United States Army Corps of Engineers.

116  Gina Bloodworth

USACE 1957. Delaware River Basin Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Wolf, D.E. 1996. Dams and Other Big Dreams: The Six Companies Story. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. WRA/DRB. 1959. Water for Recreation: Today and Tomorrow. Trenton: Delaware River Basin Commission. Yaffee, S.L. 1994. The Wisdom of the Spotted Owl: Policy Lessons for a New Century. Washington, DC: Island Press.

5 WHEN OIL MEETS WATER Debating the hydraulic fracturing energy–water nexus in Colorado Adrianne Kroepsch

Introduction In 2011, Time magazine named hydraulic fracturing ‘the biggest environmental issue of the year’ in the United States—more concerning than even climate change (Walsh 2011). Time, which is published in New York City and has the highest circulation of any weekly newsmagazine in the world,1 went on to describe why the extractive technique deserved such national notoriety. Water pollution, the magazine argued, was one of the practice’s most serious potential externalities. Time’s mention of hydraulic fracturing as a potential threat to water supplies was one of many made in the U.S. media that year, spurred in part by the rousing documentary Gasland, which focused Americans’ attention on the oil and gas energy–water nexus like never before (Vasi et al. 2015). Known as ‘fracking’ for short, hydraulic fracturing involves injecting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the depths of an oil or gas well in order to crack open low-permeability rocks that would not otherwise surrender their hydrocarbons. In recent years, hydraulic fracturing— paired with horizontal drilling—has contributed to an unprecedented energy boom in hydrocarbon-rich regions such as the U.S. state of Colorado, where this research is focused. It has also generated intense public concern over the possibility of water pollution by industrial error or oversight—via surface spills of hydraulic fracturing fluid, leaky well construction or the improper disposal of wastewater. Indeed, in 2011, hydraulic fracturing could have been called the biggest environmental issue of the year in Colorado as well, with water pollution as its most contested potential flaw. Media attention to hydraulic fracturing and related water quality concerns spiked in major Colorado newspapers in 2011 (Figure 5.1), reflecting both a very real extractive surge underway in the state and the fact that this boom was national in scope and attention. Colorado has seen many oil and gas surges over the decades, each with its own environmental implications (Ladd 2005).

118  Adrianne Kroepsch

But those booms did not gain the sustained scrutiny of local, state and national news outlets and policymakers. By 2011, however, this most recent extractive boom had a high-profile media following and was the subject of daily media debate. Geography served as its most effective publicist: drilling rigs had drawn nearly as close to New York City, the nerve centre for the U.S.’s national news organisations, as they had to Denver—making this boom as newsworthy to Time and other members of the U.S. prestige press as it was for the Rocky Mountain news dailies. New York City’s influence on the media agenda could be felt correspondingly, as could Eastern states’ hydrologic presumptions. Because extractive activities were encroaching upon New York City’s watershed, where rain is plentiful and water quality concerns rank higher on the policy agenda than water quantity concerns, the topic of water pollution dominated the fracking debate nationwide (Vasi et al. 2015). But water quality is not the only important hydrologic uncertainty associated with the practice of hydraulic fracturing. As drought conditions set in across several Western states in 2012, the hydraulic fracturing debate took on the water quantity anxieties of the U.S.’s arid half and, with them, new narrative dimensions that are the subject of this study. ‘Forget the histrionics over water quality’, a Colorado resident wrote to the Boulder Daily Camera in 2012, as the state swung from one of its wettest years on record to one of its driest. ‘Just where are all these millions of gallons of water needed to frack gas wells coming from? … This is the arid West, also in a drought, not Pennsylvania where it rains twice a week.’The letter was one of many inspired by the convergence in time of two factors: a very bad drought year and a rise in hydraulic fracturing on the semi-arid grasslands outside of Denver in response to $100 per barrel oil prices. In 2011, the two largest companies drilling in northeastern Colorado announced plans to drill and hydraulically fracture 300–500 wells per year for the foreseeable future (Proctor 2011). They would require water to do it—water from Colorado’s hardest working river system, the South Platte. By 2012, however, several South Platte River Basin cities faced watering restrictions and some farmers were watching their crops die (Lynn 2012). Questions began to arise. Just how much water would the oil and gas companies need to achieve their ambitious plans? Where would they get it? And what would that mean for other water users? The case study presented here takes up these questions as it investigates the water policy narratives generated by the growing water demands of a powerful industry— the oil and gas industry—in a river basin known for being semi-arid, hydrologically unpredictable, and crowded with water users. Political ecologists define environmental narratives ‘as convenient yet simplistic beliefs about the nature, causes, and impacts of environmental problems’ (Forsyth 2008: 758).This analysis launches from Hajer’s (1995) definition of environmental policy narratives in particular, which he defines as political devices that seek to achieve discursive closure on a policy problem, and which may include metaphor, analogy, clichés, appeals to collective fears or senses of guilt, and/or the assigning of blame and responsibility. Discursive data are drawn from local media coverage, participant observation, and interviews with energy and water stakeholders.

When oil meets water  119

Colorado’s hydraulic fracturing debate is important because it illustrates the symbolic power of water in controversies over other resources, such as energy. Policymakers and the public are beginning to appreciate the many ways that energy and water resources are intertwined. As awareness of the so-called energy–water nexus grows with climate change-related hydrologic unpredictability and water scarcity, many expect that energy policy decisions will be increasingly fought via their consequences for water (Averyt et al. 2013; Freyman and Salmon 2013; Kenney and Wilkinson 2011). Colorado’s debate is also instructive for what it reveals about the role of narrative at the energy–water nexus. Specifically, this debate is being propelled by two questions: (1) how much water is the oil and gas industry using, and (2) at whose gain and whose loss? As water and energy stakeholders have debated these questions in the media via differing volumetric and competition framings, they have also attempted to frame hydraulic fracturing water demands as harmful or benign. A close analysis of these narrations suggests, however, that they are characterised by significant uncertainties, and that these uncertainties risk exacerbating conflicts over both sets of resources during drier future times. The remainder of this chapter explores these narrations. It first provides necessary background information on the energy–water nexus, the South Platte River Basin, plus study methodology, and then it delves into an analysis of the two major framings at play in the media debate.

The energy–water nexus Energy development has long been tied to water resources, but widespread recognition of energy systems’ reliance upon water is a relatively new thing. In the U.S., as in many countries, energy and water resources have historically been planned and managed separately in resource-specific policy silos, as well as within different levels of government. Energy and water policy are typically disconnected as a result, unequipped to consider the many interdependencies that exist between energy and water resources and infrastructures. Awareness of energy systems’ hydrologic vulnerabilities has been on the rise in recent years, however, spurred by water-related energy crises such as the 2011 drought in Texas, which hamstrung water-cooled power plants and hydraulic fracturing activities alike (Meldrum et al. 2013). The energy–water nexus has become the focus of a fast-growing body of academic and policy literature in the U.S. On the water-for-energy side of the nexus, studies estimate the water needs of various electricity pathways and scenarios in order to identify hydrologic vulnerabilities and opportunities for achieving sustainability goals (see for example Averyt et al. 2013; Macknick et al. 2012). In broad lifecycle terms, electricity generated from hydraulic fracturing-produced natural gas ranks lower on water consumption than electricity generated from coal, nuclear, biofuels, and even concentrated solar power (e.g.