دانلود رایگان مقاله پایگاه ارزش حکمرانی آب

Abstract

Some scholars promote water governance as a normative concept to improve water resources management globally, while others conceive of it as an analytical term to describe the processes, systems and institutions around the management of water resources and water supply. Critics often highlight how specific water governance scenarios fail to deliver socially desirable outcomes, such as social justice or environmental sustainability. While water governance is often perceived as a technical matter, its conceptual and practical components are in fact based on multiple values that, nonetheless, often remain implicit. The present paper seeks to uncover this value base and discusses existing research on values from multiple perspectives, using material from economics, philosophy, psychology, and other social sciences. In different disciplines, values can be understood as fundamental guiding principles, governance-related values or as values assigned to water resources. Together, they shape complex relationships with water governance, which from an analytical perspective is understood as a combination of policy, politics, and polity. Introducing a new conceptual framework, this study seeks to provide a theoretical foundation for empirical research on water governance processes and conflicts.

5. Conclusion

This paper outlines the complex relationships between values and water governance, and proposes a novel conceptual framework that integrates insights from various disciplines, including psychology, economics, philosophy, and geography. The conceptual framework considers different value categories in a possible hierarchical relationship. Fundamental values represent abstract goals that people wish to realise across different situations, such as hedonism or security. Governancerelated values describe perceived ideal characteristics of water governance, such as transparency, participation or sustainability. These values are taken from normative work on water governance. Assigned values, or water values (with regard to water governance), are located in water resources. Assigned values are often categorised in ecosystem services-based frameworks and as such could serve as an entry point that connects research in ecological economics with further value dimensions as outlined in the conceptual framework. All three value categories influence water governance in one way or another, and abstract and universal fundamental values may influence the formation of governance-related and assigned values. Equally, concrete water governance situations may also affect people's values, for example where a recent flooding incident activates people's desire for security. Water governance is understood to comprise the entirety of water policy, politics, and polity.