Hegemony and Colonialization in the Water Management Sector: Issues and Lessons for IWRM

Water resources management and the broad concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) attract varied perspectives about their effectiveness and equity as they address diverse needs across sectors and contextual situations. Managers in the water sector generally support their current governance models, while anti-poverty advocates seek more equity in the distribution of resources. Another group of stakeholders claims a lack of inclusivity in decision-making, leading to inequitable outcomes due to hegemony and colonialization of the water management domain by sector experts, officials, and other actors. IWRM focuses on reforms in water governance to achieve greater participation and sharing of power by all sectors of society in decision-making. It can facilitate the involvement of all groups of stakeholders, including those who may in some cases need to engage in social action to address water issues. This paper reviews the claims about the validity of IWRM and analyzes them according to management scenarios where water is a connector among sector issues. The scenarios show that participation in utility and local government decisions is the main pathway for urban water, wastewater, and stormwater management, while the same pathway is more difficult to organize in dispersed situations for domestic supply and irrigation in rural areas, some cases of aquifer management, and management of sprawling flood risk zones. The body of knowledge about participation in water resources management is robust, but organizational and financial capacities among existing entities pose barriers. Water resources management and IWRM do involve hegemony, and the field of practice has been colonialized, but the existential issues and complexity of the decisions and systems involved challenge society to manage successfully while assuring equity and participation through governance reform. The debates over hegemony and colonialization in water management provide an opportunity to continue improving the norms of practice and water resources education.