Doctoral Dissertation Research: Risk, Vulnerability, and Management: Translating Integrated Water Resource Management into Action on the Paraquay River

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the World Bank and other multilateral development agencies that promote sustainable development" have recognized the importance of managing natural resources, especially water. These agencies have begun to require that borrower countries reform existing laws that govern water, forests, and soil use according to the principles of "integrated" resource management. In Paraguay, experts from the World Bank's Global Environmental Facility and the Paraguayan government are working together with non-governmental organizations, scientists, and civil society groups to reform Paraguay's water law according to the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). At the level of multilateral environmental agreements and development agencies, IWRM is recognized as the best management framework for coordinating the water requirements of humans and non-humans, including, fishermen, farmers, owners of industry, terrestrial and aquatic wildlife, and riparian vegetation. Little is known, however, about how the introduction of IWRM systems, which require the cooperation of water users, planners, managers, and policy makers who are spread over large geographic areas and whose water needs are different and sometimes contradictory, affect existing resource management agencies and resource users in developing countries. By gathering data on how different water managers, including water users in Paraguay's portion of the Pantanal wetlands, perceive and act upon Paraguay's new IWRM-based water law and the risks associated with water management and use, this research project seeks to understand how IWRM is translated into action in the Pantanal and what its concrete effects are. This study uses multiple methods are for data collection and data analysis, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, timelines, and Q-method, in order to address three research questions: (1) How does IWRM affect the ability of the Paraguayan state to set water management priorities? (2) How will water resource managers in Paraguay translate new "integrated" water management laws into regulatory action at state, regional, and community scales along the Paraguay River? (3) To what extent will implementation of IWRM make households more vulnerable? The results of this study will make theoretical contributions to geographic research on the changing practices of the state (and other actors) in exercising power over the environments of developing countries. By extending the focus of these debates to include a consideration of the translation practices of state and non-state managers, this study seeks to understand how risk perception, expertise, and local conditions influence how managers at different scales translate the substance of laws into actions that fit their personal and managerial needs. At the same time, by investigating whether practical use of new, IWRM-based laws affects the abilities of different households to "compete for access to rights, resources, and assets," this research attempts to link empirically driven models of the geographies of risk and vulnerability, in which the nation-state plays a key role in shaping the "specific conditions" of vulnerability, to theoretically driven debates about the effects of the decentralized exercise of power in the governance and production of particular forms of spatial organization. Further, this investigation adds the Paraguayan Pantanal, a region relatively unstudied in Latin American Geography, to these debates. This study will also generate new basic data on the nature of World Bank-sponsored resource management and improvement systems and how they affect livelihoods and land- and waterscapes in the Paraguayan Pantanal in an accessible format that will be immediately useful in academic and policy circles in Paraguay and beyond. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.