New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 1 - Fall 2014 | Page 14

New Water Policy and Practice

quality standards or simply as a member of
a group of farmers who share access to a canal. Large urban areas often obtain their water supplies from beyond the basin in which
they lie and power for many purposes may
be generated from dams on rivers that lie in
other countries. So the adoption of the river
basin as a geographical scale of management
is not an obvious approach, although not all
commentators would be as blunt as Graefe
(2011) who concludes that

grant, strategy or policy of such institution to support the construction of
any large hydroelectric dam.” (Section
7060(c)(7)(D).) (USA 2014)

Senator Leahy is well known as a
supporter of environmental organizations
which, in turn, provide him with an important supportive constituency. There is no evidence that he has considered the merits of
the case or how he proposes to account to
those citizens of other countries whose decisions he is so gratuitously usurping. This
example highlights the role of international
environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the extent to which they
act in alliance with rich world governments.

So there is indeed reason for concern when academic writers suggest that

“The river basin fetishism, the domination of the IWRM and governance concepts can be taken as a symptom of the
depolitization of water management. It
has to be understood as an effort to create new environmental regions voided
of political interests, political representations and overall of politics.”

“….. fresh water, its availability and use
should now be recognized as ‘a common concern of humankind’, much
as climate change was recognized as a
‘common concern of humankind’ in
the 1992 United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC 1992) and conservation of
biodiversity was recognized as a ‘common concern of humankind’ in the
1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).” (Weiss 2012)

Some of the mechanisms by which
particular approaches are promoted in poor
countries are self-evident. The ability of donor countries to use the hegemony afforded
them as major financial supporters of many
African governments to promote policy positions has been systematically exploited by
environmental activists. A particularly egregious recent example of this is afforded by
the introduction in the U.S.’s budget law of
a provision in relation to the financing of
dams by international development banks.
Senator Leahy from Vermont, a state whose
residents depend on hydropower but have
little connection with the third world, introduced an amendment into the 2014 U.S.
budget, now passed into law, which stipulated that:

But there are also more subtle forms
of hegemony, not least the funding and dissemination of research. An example is the
evolution and theorization of transboundary environmental governance in the water
space as a focus for global environmental organizations. Unpacked, this is an attempt to
“The Secretary of the Treasury shall specify transboundary rivers as sites that reinstruct the United States executive quire common management structures and
director of each international finan- to remove their oversight from the purview
cial institution that it is the policy of of national governments. Academic engagethe United States to oppose any loan, ment is one channel through which this ap12