Conca: Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building

Presenting a sociological approach to the discussion of organizational regimes, policies, and governance of water, rivers, and watersheds, Conca scanned a global landscape. According to Conca, "regimes typically involve stages of cooperative multilateral bargaining, framework agreements that are given greater depth
of meaning and specificity over time, and international secretariats to encourage implementation and compliance" (p. 6). Emanating from "international law, modern science, and bureaucratic administration" (p. 7), constituencies base on regimes overlook local water conflicts caused by contentions over authority, territory, or knowledge. Regimes work when issues transcend national boundaries and capabilities, Conca acknowledged, as demonstrated by the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Territory, authority, and knowledge, Conca (2006) considered the fundamental reasons for local conflicts. Such intractable issues as forests, soils, freshwater ecosystems, and coral reefs demonstrate the shortcomings of governmental regimes to solve multinational environmental problems. Specifically, limits of the regime approach emanates from the focus of regimes on "the national character of certain political systems, but not the transnational character of economic, social, and political institutions" (p. 21). Restrictions on authority stem from the statist view of regimes. Authority includes not only decision making legitimacy but also "role definitions in the process of governance" (p. 21). The system excludes valid stakeholders from the decision-making process. Finally, regimes require consensus and shared knowledge. Conca observed, "one of the biggest challenges facing regime builders is to create a foundation of officially sanctioned knowledge" (p.22).

Within this sociological framework, Conca examined attempts at "institution building around international commons and transboundary environmental problems" (p. 67). He scrutinized institutions active in freshwater ecosystems, damming, diverting, and draining of rivers, multinational river agreements, standards of integrated water resource management, and proponents and resisters of dam development. Conca addressed the contention between institutions that viewed water as a human right and those that argued for privatization and for "creating the economic and policy infrastructure for treating water as a marketed commodity" (p. 215). Within this context, Conca presented two national case studies, Brazil and South Africa. He concluded by affirming the incipient growth of international governance of water resources.

Conca, K. (2006). Governing Water: Contentious transnational politics and global institution building. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.