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Lookup NU author(s): Emeritus Professor Esteban CastroORCiD
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by CRC Press/Balkema, 2010.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
It is widely ackowledged that the world water crisis is mainly a crisis of governance. However, there is no shared understanding of what “governance” means, how it works, who are its actors. The prevailing conceptions of governance in mainstream water policy documents tend to be instrumental and idealistic. Perhaps the most important consequence of instrumental and idealistic understandings of governance is the rhetorical depoliticization of what is, paradoxically, a political process. The main mechanism of this “depoliticization” of govern-ance” is the exclusion of the ends and values informing water policy from the debate. Instru-mental and idealistic understandings of governance constitute a major obstacle for the scientific understanding of the process and for achieving success in policy interventions directed at tack-ling the water crisis. The paper argues for the development of a balance between the techno-scientific, socio-economic, political, and cultural aspects of water management activities, which may help in superseding the artificial separation of water research and practice in disciplinary and corporatist feuds.
Author(s): Castro JE
Editor(s): E. Cabrera and F. Arregui
Publication type: Book Chapter
Publication status: Published
Book Title: Water Engineering and Management through Time – Learning from History
Year: 2010
Pages: 259-276
Print publication date: 06/08/2010
Publisher: CRC Press/Balkema
Place Published: Leiden
URL: https://www.crcpress.com/Water-Engineering-and-Management-through-Time-Learning-from-History/Cabrera/p/book/9780415480024
Notes: E-book ISBN: 9780203836736
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9780415480024
