SDGs Collaborative Research Unit Rural-urban water reallocation, inequity and vulnerability of rural populations: causal mechanisms in Asia and Africa

With increasing urbanization and climate change, competition over freshwater between cities and rural areas is expected to grow. In meeting the needs of cities, water reallocation from rural areas through various ways (building dams; land use change, shifting water from agriculture to urban use etc.) has become common.

Policy discussions about water governance take a management approach, treating it as a natural resource, and overlooking its relationship with communities and local politics. Political ecology scholarship challenges this framing. It highlights the political nature of decisions–where water flows or whose needs are prioritized are questions of power and politics. This scholarship highlights deepening inequities and vulnerabilities as the water needs of cities often take precedence over rural areas.

While conceptualizing water from being a natural to a hydro-social resource is ground-breaking, if governance related to rural-urban water reallocations is contributing to deep inequities and vulnerabilities, what are the mechanisms and pathways that lead to these political outcomes? Moreover, how may we define these political outcomes? Addressing these questions necessitates closer attention to governance related to water claims in different contexts.

This project explores these questions in the urban-rural water reallocation contexts in Asia and Africa.

※This research project is supported by the JSPS Scientific-Aid-in-Research Grant B.