Commitment from NEWAVE Early Stage Researchers on Overcoming Obstacles for Reflexive Research Practices in Water Governance - to the UN Water Conference 2023

1. Address the limitations of academic institutions within which research in ‘remote laboratories’ is upheld as more ‘objective’ than action-research and co-creation approaches. These limitations are particularly problematic when academics from the ‘Global North’ conduct research in the ‘Global South’ as it replicates a colonial and extractive approach to knowledge accumulation - about which many critical researchers are sounding alarm bells. How can researchers build ethical and sustained partnerships (with institutional support) with local actors/ institutions?

2. It is important to acknowledge and question biases of what research is considered useful, neutral, or legitimate. In the water field, more ‘objective’ and positivist modes of research are often considered to have higher eligibility for grants, permits, requests for information, and access to participants. In some sectors (i.e. development organizations), there might also be implicit or explicit pressure to emphasize ‘successful’ interventions, rather than admitting challenges.

3. Critically engage with information collection practices. Collected water data is often based on limited parameters and intended to meet specific purposes. Data are frequently not made available to stakeholders, the broader public, or research communities. An immense amount of knowledge is kept within the walls of financial, governmental, and private institutions. How do dominant paradigms determine what data is collected and for what purpose?

4. Acknowledge the connections of water and land. Most research on water governance treats water as H2O or, in recent systems approaches, as a component of the water-energy-food nexus. The connection between the socio-ecological and political links of land and water often remain under-researched, which de-politicizes historical-material processes and invisibilizes/ justifies practices such as land grabbing. Re-politicizing water and land entanglements can shed light on a blind spot of water governance research.

5. Critically reflect on the limitations of institutions. Water challenges are becoming increasingly complex with the impacts of climate change placing stress on existing institutions. Existing legal frameworks– from access rights to environmental migration policies– must be re-imagined and re-crafted to meet the challenges of today. As researchers on water governance, how can we shed light on such limitations of institutions? How can we better visualize locally-situated experiments that are challenging/ overcoming barriers of legal frameworks and institutions?

6. Complexify and challenge binaries in water governance research. Common binaries include formal-informal; control-chaos; technical-political; public-private or the public-commons; science-policy; science-activism, and human-non-human among others. More fluid research that challenges these binaries and boundaries is needed. For instance, informality often remains negatively depicted or invisibilized, but how might it help overcome service gaps and limitations in legal rights that leave behind certain groups?

7. Reflect on how metrics are designed and leveraged to promote certain policies or paradigms. Metrics, used to measure the impact/ outcomes of developmental interventions, infrastructure projects, policy or legislation, are not neutral but inherently political and driven by particular paradigms. Can we measure what it means for water governance approaches to be more ‘just’ and ‘equitable’ and if so, how? How can we simultaneously embrace plurality and resist the pressures to generalize or scale up?