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The concept of a river basin as a management or planning unit has gone through several stages and is in a state of flux. From its western ''discovery? in the 18th century to its advent as the overriding concept behind European water policy, the river basin has been conjured up and mobilized in evolving contexts with varying intentions. Associated with utopian ideas of the late 19th century, it supported ideas of full control of the hydrologic regime and multipurpose dam construction in the 1930-1960 period, then partly faded and was revived to address water-quality problems, before reemerging in the 1990s as the cornerstone of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), enriched and blended with watershed- and ecosystem-management approaches. This article recounts the evolution of the concept of a river basin and how it has been associated with various strands of thinking and sometimes co-opted or mobilized by particular social groups or organizations to strengthen the legitimacy of their agendas. Beyond its relevance as a geographical unit for water resources development and management purposes, the river basin is also a political and ideological construct, with its discursive representations and justifications, closely linked with shifting scalar configurations, both ecological and in terms of regulatory regime or governance. How interconnected and nested waterscapes can be managed by discontinuous nested political/administrative and social levels remains a fundamental question fuelling an endless search for elusive governance systems that would unite nature and society.

Interventions on hydro/ecological systems by different categories of stakeholders characterised by different political, decision-making and discursive power, and varied access to resources, tend to generate costs, benefits and risks that are distributed unevenly across spatial and temporal scales and across social groups. This is due to the interconnectedness of users through the hydrologic cycle entailed by their dependence upon the same resource. As pressure over resources increases and basins 'close', this interdependence becomes more critical, increasing the frequency and seriousness of water shortages and conflicts. A political ecology approach seeks to identify and understand the mechanisms that underpin the transformations of aquatic socioenvironmental systems. Basin interconnectedness, with its hydrological, ecological and social dimensions, and three instances of the concept of scale are shown to be relevant to the understanding of these transformations. The paper analyses the case of the Chao Phraya river basin, in Thailand, and shows how land and water resources have been appropriated and identifies the different interest groups and their related discourses and power; it examines how they have adapted to socio- environmental changes, and highlights how risks, costs and benefits have been distributed.

Paper presented at the 4th Conference of the International Water History Association, Paris, December 2005

Paper presented at the International Conference on Spatial Justice, University of Paris, X-Nanterre, France, 2-14 March 2007

Paper presented at the 13th World Water Congress, Special Session - Challenge Programme for Water and Food, 1-4 September 2008, Montpellier, France

Water Demand management has received much emphasis from development agencies in the last decade. The concept stemmed from a growing awareness of the externalities of large scale water resources development and of an assumed state of wastage in the use of water by many sectors, notably agriculture. The paper examines critically the scope of the three main water demand management objectives: saving water in water short basins; reducing irrigation demand through pricing; and reallocating water to higher value uses. It argues that the gains that can be achieved through demand management are often overestimated. Because of the closing/closed nature of water short basins, most water-saving interventions result in spatial shifts of water use rather than savings. Water pricing is often proposed as a way to curb water use but its introduction in irrigated agriculture is shown to be problematic. The economic argument for re-allocation to higher value uses is also critically reviewed. Despite the limitations faced by water demand management policies (and the importance of being aware of them), these policies must be pursued -with a full understanding of their implications and limitations- because they are both needed and, sometimes, the only options at hand.

Water management is commonly assumed to be a mere technical matter where experts and managers endeavour to match supply and demand by using technology, through rational problem-solving and by engaging stakeholders. This article, in contrast, emphasizes that river basin development and management is about the shifting patterns of access to a contested and scarce resource and is inherently a political process. An investigation of the physical and social characteristics and constraints of river basins must be conducted in parallel with an analysis of the convergent interests manifest in capital intensive water investments, and an attention to how discursive power is used in the justification of large-scale investments. Thus, repoliticizing river basin management offers a different and complementary perspective that allows a better understanding of society/environment relationships.

Faced with severe groundwater depletion, many governments have opted to increase the power of the state. Despite calls for more inclusive governance and a role for groundwater users, modes of governance have tended to continue to rely on a diversity of policy tools and state-run strategies in the attempt to control groundwater (over)abstraction. Yet, around the world, the performance of state-centered governance has remained dismal. Beyond common difficulties in terms of data and financial or human resources, this article analyzes in greater depth the limited effectiveness of state groundwater policies that has been observed, emphasizing its political ramifications. The various aspects of weak monitoring and enforcement, as well as of the infamous "lack of political will," are considered from the perspective of the political economy of groundwater economies. Cases of relative success are then used to identify favorable drivers and contexts for effective state-centered groundwater governance.

This paper assesses a case of co-management of groundwater between the state of Texas, pushing for the rationalisation of groundwater management, and local (mainly farming) communities organised in Groundwater Conservation Districts (GCDs), which are protective of their private groundwater rights. We first describe the main legal and policy steps that have shaped this relationship. The article focuses on the Texan portion of the Ogallala Aquifer in the High Plains aquifer system – an almost non-renewable system covering 90,000 km2 and providing 95% of the irrigation needs in northern Texas. With this example, we further highlight the strategies of both parties, the different political, administrative, legal and regulatory complexities of the struggle around the definition of GCD-level aquifer management rules (the so-called 'Desired Future Conditions'). We end by reflecting on the power balance that has resulted from successive adjustments to a co-management form of governance, the advantages and disadvantages of a multi-layered state water governance system, and whether the de facto 'managed depletion' of the Ogallala Aquifer in Texas should be seen as an achievement or a failure.

Irrigated agriculture in Jordan's highlands relies on overexploited groundwater. Drops in water tables and water quality, but also tougher policy measures by the government, threaten the sustainability of this activity which has long thrived on lax law enforcement and cheap desert land. This paper is based on field work in two locations of Azraq groundwater basin [around the Azraq oasis and in the northern part (Mafraq)], and first presents farm typologies which show the variability of farm gross margins and the contrast between the two zones. While Mafraq stands for capital-intensive fruit-tree cultivation on legal land/wells, Azraq's agriculture is largely based on olive cultivation and wells that are either illegal or granted permits with higher block tariffs, and has a return that is only one tenth of Mafraq's. The paper reviews the constraints and changes in land, energy, water, labor and input costs and reflects on their bearing on current dynamics and future prospects. While Mafraq is found to be largely immune to policy changes and resilient to foreseeable changes in factor prices or markets, Azraq's future is threatened by various vulnerabilities, including salinization of groundwater, rising energy and labor costs that, in the long run, are likely to be overcome only by farmers emulating the Mafraq intensification model, or accepting temporary losses in the hope of a future legalization of land and wells. Solar energy now emerges as a trump card, in particular for illegal farms which, on the other hand, are challenged by recent tough water pricing regulations that are shown to make them unprofitable. The government's resolve in enforcing these regulation is put to test and will largely decide the future of Azraq's agriculture.

Aquatic socio-ecological systems show pervasive cross-scale interactions and problems of fit between ecosystems and institutions. Nested bio-hydrological processes within river basins are prone to thirdparty impacts, and equitable/sustainable management of water resources requires adequate governance patterns that both cover relevant scalar levels and handle cross-scale interactions. This paper provides the example of the Zayandeh Rud basin, in central Iran, and describes the historical evolution of water use at three different nested scales. It shows how the gradual overallocation of water resources (basin closure) and the manipulation of the hydrological cycle by the state and other actors have resulted in a constant spatial and social redistribution of water use and associated benefits and costs. State-centered modes of governance characterized by the priority to large-scale infrastructure, vested political and financial interests, lack of attention to local processes and hydrological interconnectedness, and the neglect of environmental degradation, must give way to forms of comanagement that better articulate the different levels of control and governance.

Aquatic socio-ecological systems show pervasive cross-scale interactions and problems of fit between ecosystems and institutions. Nested bio-hydrological processes within river basins are prone to third-party impacts, and equitable/sustainable management of water resources requires adequate governance patterns that both cover relevant scalar levels and handle cross-scale interactions. This paper provides the example of the Zayandeh Rud basin, in central Iran, and describes the historical evolution of water use at three different nested scales. It shows how the gradual overallocation of water resources (basin closure) and the manipulation of the hydrological cycle by the state and other actors have resulted in a constant spatial and social redistribution of water use and associated benefits and costs. State-centered modes of governance characterized by the priority to large-scale infrastructure, vested political and financial interests, lack of attention to local processes and hydrological interconnectedness, and the neglect of environmental degradation, must give way to forms of comanagement that better articulate the different levels of control and governance.

Water demand management, or making better use of the water we have - as opposed to augmenting supply - is increasingly proposed as a way of mitigating water-scarcity problems. Moving water away from agriculture to uses with higher economic value is one of the main measures widely seen as desirable. Sectoral "allocation stress? is seen as resulting from the disproportionate share, and inefficient use of water in the agricultural sector. This apparent misallocation is often attributed to the failure of government to allocate water rationally. This paper revisits this commonly-accepted wisdom and examines the nature of urban water scarcity, showing the importance of economic and political factors, shaped by incentives to decision-makers, and sometimes compounded by climatic conditions. It shows that cities' growth is not generally constrained by competition with agriculture. In general, rather than using a narrow financial criterion, cities select options that go along the "path of least resistance,? whereby economic, social and political costs are considered in conjunction. The question of allocation stress is thus reframed into an inquiry of how transfers effectively occur and can be made more effective.

Irrigation development in northeast Thailand has witnessed an eventful last century. The 'dry' and 'marginal' lands of northeast Thailand have been continuously reshaped, in an attempt to both balance the seasonality of rainfall and to counter the in-season variations that constrains rainfed cultivation. Apart from that, the Thai government's support for irrigation development has served many additional goals: food security and self-sufficiency, the creation of rural employment opportunities along with the support of agribusiness development, a counterstrategy against migration to the rural and national economic centers, and the fight against insurgency and the spread of communism. Throughout this period, attempts to render nature fit for human use has been both a state and a local process. Years before the height of the hydraulic mission in Thailand, farmers and communities have diverted surface waters with earthen bunds, constructed water wheels, and scooped water from channels and ponds to supplement water for agricultural production. While mostly local in the early years of the 20th century, it was only in the 1950s, both with the advent of the states increasing attempts to draw the peripheries of Thailand closer to the central state of (then) Siam, and with international aid flowing in for water resources development, that state sponsored irrigation development started to shape the waterscape of the region. First small in scale, these developments soon turned to large and multipurpose projects, and to a regionalization of water planning and development, which (at least on paper) interconnected the river basins of northeast Thailand. Interbasin-diversion (mostly from the Mekong main stem and more recently from Laos) to supplement the regions low runoff and limited available storage sites have rationalized the expansion of irrigated areas and have triggered dreams of a "Green Northeast?, an area where most agricultural land would be served by irrigation infrastructure. We will here, revisit irrigation developments in Northeast Thailand in an attempt to periodize changes in the major schools of thought and the dominant ideologies pushing for changing water resources development options, the major impacts of these developments which in turn influenced the considered options, and the economics of irrigation development at large. Furthermore, we will propose a trajectory of irrigation development in the Chi-Mun river basin, which, linking with the proposed storyline, will quantify the developments in the last century. Through this exercise we will highlight changes in land and water use, and trace major paradigms of water resources development back to their roots.

The Uda Walawe Irrigation and Resettlement Project (UWIRP) located in the Southern dry zone of Sri Lanka was initiated in the early 1950s. The original plan for the UWIRP was a highly ambitious social, economic and physical engineering project aimed at creating a modern, profitable agriculture sector. This report examines the history of water resources development and investment decisions for the UWIRP over a period of 50 years and uncovers underlying processes that shaped the evolution of the project and highlights the limitation of viewing development as a mere set of technical and social engineering endeavors.