Reconceptualising water quality governance to incorporate knowledge and values: Case studies from Australian and Brazilian Indigenous communities
This paper examines the significance of knowledge and values for water quality and its governance. Modernist approaches to the governance of water quality in rivers and lakes need to be reconceptualised and overhauled. The problems include: perceiving water only as a physical and chemical liquid,...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Water Alternatives Association
2018-02-01
|
| Series: | Water Alternatives |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol11/v11issue1/408-a11-1-3/file |
| Summary: | This paper examines the significance of knowledge and values for water quality and its governance.
Modernist approaches to the governance of water quality in rivers and lakes need to be reconceptualised and
overhauled. The problems include: perceiving water only as a physical and chemical liquid, defining quality in
narrow terms, rendering water knowledge as invisible, boiling down water values to uses of presumed economic
importance and limiting how and by whom objectives are set or actions taken. In addressing the need to reframe
water quality governance, and as a counter to the objectification of water quality, we propose a framework that
explicitly recognises the significance of knowledge and values relating to water. While our framework could apply
to other contexts under the influence of modernist water-management regimes, here we pay particular attention
to the relevance of the water knowledge, values and governance of water quality by Indigenous people. In the
second half of the paper we address issues related to Indigenous water-quality governance in two countries, Brazil
and Australia, showing some of the ways in which, despite enormous obstacles, Indigenous communities re-work
governance structures through their engagements with water quality and pay attention to water knowledge and
values. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1965-0175 1965-0175 |