Water Futures for Sustainable Cities

Theme 7: Urban Water Governance

Position Paper
Draft 3 February 2012

Theme 7: Urban Water Governance Position Paper

Introduction
Almost one fifth of the world's population lives in areas where potable water is physically scarce [1]. Scarcity low available water per capita is forecast to worsen in many countries near East and North Africa as well as Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, and large parts of China and India which already suffer from acute water scarcity [2, 3]. Water scarcity includes not only the physical scarcity of water but also the lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation [4]. Some of the reasons commonly cited as contributing to water scarcity include population growth, rising demand brought by increasing incomes, the rapid pace and scale of urbanization, the large share of water used in agriculture, depletion of aquifers, climate change, wasteful use of underpriced resources, pollution from agriculture, industry and human waste, and poor governance of natural resource management [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. However, there is much debate over the relative importance of these reasons, and much debate about the most appropriate instruments and scale of solutions. In relation to developing countries, the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations include access to safe and affordable water for populations in all urban and rural areas. In addressing the above issues, there is a widespread recognition of the need for integrated approaches to water governance. In the water sector, governance is a broad term that includes institutions, organizations, policies and practices which shape and manage water resources, including the delivery of water services for diverse populations and industries. Given the breadth of the challenges and the inherent role of many organizations and stakeholders, modes of cooperation and coordination have been widely identified in the research literature as being essential for improvement of outcomes. In particular, the effectiveness of alignment and co-ordination between government agencies, the corporate sector and civil society, and the role of leadership in enhancing collaboration across these sectors, has been emphasized in many research studies. Nevertheless, in complex urban systems in both the developing and developed worlds, some of the challenges facing urban water governance include the range of competing interests among different sectors/stakeholders, cooperation across organizations and experts, different interpretations of integrated water management, power dynamics, and lack of capacity building among stakeholders. Therefore the challenges of water governance are enormous when it comes to bureaucratic implementation of water planning and investment, effective involvement of citizens and stakeholders, conflict resolution and power imbalances, sustainable management of water resources, and the efficient and accessible provision of water services. In Europe, North America and
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Australasia, policy frameworks for water sustainability and planning have emerged in recent years, including the European Water Framework Directive that requires each country to develop an integrated approach to sustainable water planning in accordance with some key principles.

Water crises: how are they framed and understood?

Water crises have emerged in different forms and contexts in many nations around the world. The nature and significance of these problems have different meanings for different people and sectors of the society. Crises can provide triggers for re-thinking the nature of the problems and how to tackle them. Sometimes the key issue is the sufficiency of supply, e.g. for a large and diverse population, but the form in which this problem is presented will be different for rich and poor, industry and household sectors, and for those in the central city, the urban/rural fringe, and the water catchment areas. The various forms of water crisis give rise to a variety of decision responses, or could sometimes end in non-decisions because the problems are too difficult or too expensive to resolve. Solutions in one country might be found to be successful in some aspects that are attractive for decision-makers or key stakeholders in other countries. A process of policy convergence may occur over time as a new paradigm is adopted and adapted in other countries. Small-scale pilot studies and experiments may be scaled up in response to larger crises. But the transferability and scalability of solutions is not selfevident, and policy advice requires practical and comparative experience about how different contexts have major impacts on how such ideas are implemented.

Cross-cutting themes
The attempts to address water governance challenges in urban areas have too often been based either on technological and natural-scientific understandings of water issues (e.g. hydrology, engineering, chemistry) or based on social understandings of the underlying driving forces behind human activities and their impacts on water resources and services (sociology, economics, law, politics and ecology). It is increasingly apparent that effective and sustainable water governance requires both natural and social science understandings of water problems whether these be water scarcity, water quality, public health and sanitation, food production, flood mitigation, the dynamics of rapid urban population growth, urban inequalities, multiple uses of catchments and reservoirs, and so on.

Theme 7: Urban Water Governance Position Paper

In the first workshop there were detailed discussions of a large number of issues that could be seen as relevant to water governance and whose future course would benefit from improved water governance. As the result of these discussions, the following themes emerged as potential bases for further developing a robust research agenda about urban water governance. Analytical frameworks and methodological approaches might be fostered in ways that facilitate engagement with several case examples rather than encourage a series of isolated or fragmented case studies. The overarching objective is to develop a coherent approach that facilitates an integrated understanding of how new and improved modes of urban water governance can contribute to better outcomes. The cross-cutting themes below are intended to encourage comparative analyses on substantial issues around policy settings and choices, regulatory frameworks, planning regimes, knowledge/ science/ expertise, stakeholder involvement, and impacts upon citizens and stakeholders.

1. Problem framing
There is much debate about the nature of the problems and the interests at stake. Social and political research has long recognized that policy settings become institutionalized around entrenched ideas about the nature of the problem or challenge. In other words, problems are framed as having certain features that can be appropriately addressed through certain corresponding solutions. Problem framing is a political process, in which the dynamics of power and persuasion are evident, even when decision-makers pretend that the dominant approach is just common sense [9,10]. Different experts and stakeholders may see different parts of the jigsaw, some emphasizing such aspects as equity, affordability, reliability, quality, environmental impact, food security, etc. Particular engineering solutions (e.g. large dams where feasible; desalination plants as an alternative option; inter-regional pipelines) are sometimes portrayed as the answer to a specific definition of the problem (e.g. insufficient capture of stream run-off to supply rapidly growing populations).

2. Use of science/evidence
There is an unpredictable and non-linear relationship between scientific evidence and decision-making. The social and natural sciences do not drive decisionmakers in a simple or linear fashion. Rather, decisions are made in response to a host of interests, ideas and values, and decisions made under crisis conditions are often sub-optimal [11]. Scientific advice, even when cohesive and convincing, is often overlooked because other economic or political factors are (or are seen to be) more pressing. Nevertheless, evidence-informed policy processes are vital. Further effort and investment is needed for research on key socio-economic
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and ecological drivers of sustainability. In some cases, scientific and technological research will take up parts of the picture (e.g. technical specifications for new equipment, or performance standards for water quality), leaving large gaps concerning how the ecological, economic and social aspects fit together. Therefore, one of the challenges for social science, and for the quality of the policy process, is to overcome the silos of specialized expert knowledge. A related challenge is to learn about better communication channels and processes for influencing decision-makers and the general public.

3. Scales and levels

Urban water issues are not generic but have specific relevance to geographical and geo-political scales: e.g. small towns, vast metropolitan sprawl, river basins, regional water resources, national and international scales across various boundaries. Moreover, within a particular country there is likely to be more than one level of government or public authority that is involved in water planning, management and delivery (e.g. local/ municipal government, state/ provincial agencies, national agencies, international agreements). These factors give rise to governance challenges concerning stakeholder involvement, effective flows of information, effective policy and delivery capacity at each level, and effective coordination in a system of multi-level governance.

4. Justice and fairness

About 48% of the worlds population lives in towns and cities. This figure is expected to rise to 60% by 2030. While in many cases, the central areas of big cities have access to water and sanitation, the urban poor usually lack such access. Water supply and sanitation services in poor urban areas face major constraints, such as limited financial resources, inadequate operation and maintenance capacity, etc. This calls for strategic water provision to sustain a healthy environment in cities, particularly in disadvantaged areas, and to meet basic human needs and rights by addressing the issues of water scarcity, water accessibility, affordability and quality [8]. The voices of poor or vulnerable groups need to be adequately represented and articulated.

5. Institutional arrangements
Existing patterns of policies and programs for urban water management, with their diverse pathways, need to be mapped and understood. How did thse arrangements develop in particular ways? How did they identify and respond to key issues, and did such challenges give rise to institutional change or were earlier patterns consolidated? How can the understanding of failures and risks help us better appreciate the nature of successful shifts in water paradigms? [13] The institutional arrangements depend on certain structures of authority,
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incentives, and rewards whether political or economic or cultural. Institutional arrangements also reflect relationships among stakeholders, and their relative influence. Innovative options require regulatory support, but more research on approaches to balancing risk and innovation are needed. Organizational change has occurred in many countries, sometimes encouraged by international bodies, e.g. to establish corporatized or privatized water utilities, but not always with a solid mandate to pursue broad sustainability goals. The capacity of the water system managers and stakeholders to engage in meaningful collaboration, networking and learning is often difficult to document and difficult to encourage.

6. Policy choices
The directions for policies and programs in urban water management are strongly debated, with strong advocacy for various solutions [12]. At one end of the solution spectrum, there are expensively engineered infrastructure options, serving large populations through centralized systems (large technical organizations that operate dams, trunk pipelines, irrigation networks, desalination plants, etc). At the other end of the spectrum there are low-cost decentralized solutions designed to meet local needs both for safe drinking water and for lowwater-use sanitation, including a range of water harvesting and re-use schemes, and dry-sanitation options where water is scarce. In addition to this basic polarization of centralized and localized approaches to water security, innovative recent work has sought more integrated approaches to water-sensitive urban design and integrated assessment of the cost-effectiveness of energy and water options (including greenhouse gas emission implications) across a range of scales and technologies.

Case examples
A diverse array of empirical cases was tabled at the 2011 workshop, representing some of the research examples currently under scrutiny by members of the network. Clearly there are many others that could be added, in order to capture the wide range of challenges in urban water governance. Taking account of the above cross-cutting themes, these case examples could be reconsidered in terms of two basic research questions: (1) How did each of these cases evolve, and what are their similarities/ differences? (2) What are the processes/ pressures that tend to maintain the underlying problems, hindering rather than facilitating constructive change? The research cases so far identified include:

Theme 7: Urban Water Governance Position Paper

1. Water service delivery (Hyderabad) 2. Governability of water and sanitation (Dar es Salaam) 3. BIG solutions for large cities (Shanghai, and Ankara) 4. Supply oriented approaches to urban water (Dublin) 5. Advanced water planning regimes (Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia) 6. Impediments to alignment between policy > implementation > outcomes (various) These and other examples are listed in the Appendices below.

An invitation for collaboration

The research activities under this theme call for finding new ways of thinking to foster creative integration between disciplines, between critical-analysis and problem-solving research traditions, and between the natural and social aspects of water sustainability. In doing so, this position paper calls for collaboration among researchers within the U21 network to incorporate their ideas and experiences in approaching the complexity of urban water governance systems. This research network could become an arena to exchange findings and learning across a wide range of current and future research studies, in relation to urban water governance practices and models in different countries. It could also become a forum for developing exciting new collaborative projects among U21 researchers, to develop comparative and conceptual approaches in greater depth.

Development of this Position Paper:

This is a draft document for ongoing commentary, extension and improvement. The first draft was compiled by Brian Head (University of Queensland), Olle Frodin (Lund University) and Maryam Nastar (Lund University) on the basis of group discussions at the University of Lund on 29-30 August 2011. It has been revised twice following feedback from several members of the network including Michael Webber, Denis Smith, Lennart Olsson, Mary Kelly-Quinn, Leila Harris, Gunilla Oberg, Vikram Bhatt, Karen Bakker, and others. Thanks also to Graham Steed for coordination.

Theme 7: Urban Water Governance Position Paper

References
WHO. (2009). 10 facts about water scarcity. World Health Organization. Retrieved from: http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/water/en/index.html 2. World Water Assessment Programme. (2009). The United Nations World Water Development Report 3: Water in a Changing World. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, and London: Earthscan. Retrieved from: http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr/wwdr3/pdf/WWDR3_Water_in_a_Changing_W orld.pdf 3. UN-Water. (2007) Coping with water scarcity challenge of the twenty-first century. World Water Day 2007. Retrieved from: http://www.unwater.org/wwd07/downloads/documents/escarcity.pdf 4. Rijsberman, F.R. (2006). Water scarcity: Fact or fiction? Agricultural Water Management, 80(1-3), 5-22. 5. Falkenmark, M., Molden, D. (2008). Wake up to realities of river basin closure. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 24(2), 201-215. 6. Molle, F., Wester, P., Hirsch, P., Jensen, J.R., Murray-Rust, H., Paranjpye, V., Pollard, S., van der Zaag, P. (2007). River basin development and management. In Molden, D. (Ed.). Water for food, water for life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. London, UK: Earthscan, 585-625 7. Merrey, D. J., Meinzen-Dick, R., Mollinga, P. P., Karar, E., Huppert, W., Rees, J., Vera, J., Wegerich, K., van der Zaag, P. (2007). Policy and institutional reform: The art of the possible. In Molden, D. (Ed.). Water for food, water for life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. London, UK: Earthscan, 193-231. 8. UNICEF and WHO (2011). Drinking Water: Equity, Safety and Sustainability. Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation, Thematic Report on Drinking Water. Retrieved from: http://www.wssinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/resources/report_wash_low.pdf 9. Cook, C., Bakker, K. (2012 forthcoming) Water Security: debating an emerging paradigm. Global Environmental Change. 10. Feldman, D., Ingram. H. (2009). Making Science Useful to Decision-makers, Weather, Climate & Society, 1 (1): 9-21. 11. Head, B.W. (2010). Water Policy: evidence, learning and the governance of uncertainty. Policy and Society, 29 (2): 171-180. 12. Huitema, D, Lebel, L., Meijerink, S. (2011) The strategies of policy entrepreneurs in water transitions. Water Policy 13 (5): 717-733. 13. Pahl-Wostl, C., Sendzimir, J., Jeffrey, P., Aerts, J., Berkamp, G., Cross, K. (2007). Managing change toward adaptive water management through social learning. Ecology and Society 12(2): 30. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol12/iss2/art30/
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Appendices
Case-studies provided by network members.

Maryam Nastar LUCSUS, Lund University

A critical examination of water governance practices in Hyderabad, India Although Hyderabad has been supplied with a number of natural and artificial lakes and tanks, the demand for urban water in the city surpassed the available supply sources in the Musi catchment. A significant feature is that despite 90% coverage of the city of Hyderabad with water supply lines, access is compromised by intermittent supply so that some low priority areas receive water for a few hours on alternate days. In addressing the issues of access to water services and sanitation, the state government of Andhra Pradesh has been among the advocates of governance reforms, particularly decentralization through the 74th Constitution Amendment Act. Considered as a way of reducing the role of the state in general, one of the rationales behind decentralization is to make government more responsive and efficient in providing public services (i.e. electricity and water supply) by fragmenting the responsibility to lower levels of government and in smaller market areas. In addition, decentralization is viewed as a way of ensuring local cultural and political autonomy by diffusing social and political tensions at different scales and levels of government. Focusing on the process of decentralization, the objective of this research study is to investigate the issues associated with decentralized mode of governance. Taking the issue of urban inequality and the complexity of interaction among actors at different levels into account, this research interrogates the core ideas behind the current contemporary approaches. The outcome of this qualitative research study is used to explore the water governance system and the potential entering points for societal changes towards sustainable transition pathways, and in this case, sustainable water provision for the citizens of Hyderabad.

Mine Islar LUCSUS, Lund University

Water scarcity for whom? : Transferring water for Ankara The capital of Turkey, Ankara has been dealing with a water crisis for a decade and controversial solutions have been proposed to alleviate the water scarcity. Among those solutions, proposal to transfer water from distant Kizilirmak River dominate media and public discourse despite its high environmental and economic costs. In the dominant discourse, water scarcity is framed as an outcome of a natural

Theme 7: Urban Water Governance Position Paper

condition which is fostered by climate change. Thus, it is argued that a big solution like inter-basin transfer is inevitable and it is just part of the common sense to alleviate the water scarcity in Ankara. However, many argue that water is not scarce but managed poorly. According to the NGO reports, the cost of treatment of the Kizilirmak water for drinking water is higher than the cost of repairing the leaking pipes and thus, scarcity is actually framed to express the needs of industry and growing urbanization. In this context this study argues that by the framing of water scarcity as a collective, natural problem, scarcity galvanizes support for those in power and depoliticizes choice (Otero et.al 2011: 1298) and questions why has this particular solution been developed and promoted although it is environmentally and economically costly? How did policy makers and different institutions identify water scarcity in Ankara? Moreover, study further discusses the implications of the inter-basin transfer on the justice and fairness issues by looking at the urban and rural linkages.

Mary Kelly-Quinn University College Dublin

Dublin City a city addressing an emerging challenge in efficient water supply Background: The population of Dublin city and its suburbs currents stands at 1.8million persons which represents just over 39% of Irelands population. It is estimated that the population will reach 2.1 million by 2021, and 2.4 million by 2026. Somewhere in the region of 110 million gallons of drinking water are currently consumed on a daily basis and it is estimated that this will increase to 350 million litres per day by 2040. Water is currently delivered from two reservoirs located outside of the city and transported in over 7,000 km of watermains, many of which were laid down over 100 years ago and are a source of considerable water loss. There is pressure on the existing water supply to meet an ever-increasing demand with little or no spare capacity. Consequently water shortages are not uncommon in the city during periods of low rainfall or freeze-up. In terms of water governance the focus is mainly supply orientated with efforts concentrated on securing the long-term water supply needs of the city up to 2014 and beyond. Dublin City Council was recently appointed by central Government to lead a project on behalf of seven local authorities to identify new water sources for the greater Dublin area. Ten potential supply options have been examined within the legislative framework of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), which came into effect in 2006. The option finally adopted involves the abstraction of raw water from Lough Derg (River Shannon) in the midlands and pumping it through a new pipeline to a cut-away bog which will act as a storage reservoir covering approximately 567 hectares. In addition to serving as a reservoir, this waterbody is to form part of a proposed midlands water based eco-park. The water will be treated to drinking water standards at this location and piped to the Dublin Region Water Supply Area. Science and evidence play a critical role in the approval of any plan such as this one, and stakeholders in this SEA process have expressed concerns about the risk of adverse impacts from the abstraction on fisheries and various other aspects of the lake ecology, many of which support a variety of recreational

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and commercial water uses. Abstractions are to be linked to inflows to the lake specifically targeting periods of high flow, and these abstractions and their potential impacts will be evaluated in the Environmental Impact Assessment stage of the plans implementation. Further scientific evaluations of potential impacts on the lake ecosystem and implications for water quality with respect to Water Framework Directive (WFD) requirements are also to be addressed. However, still in question is whether this full suite of environmental, economic and cultural impacts will be accounted for in a comprehensive socio-economic analysis. Issues of justice and fairness are obviously additional considerations for central Government, Dublin City, and the local communities in the catchment of the proposed water source. Inevitably, this physical redistribution of water will come with a redistribution of costs and benefits amongst the relevant water users of the source site, the new reservoir and Dublin City. Important is the fact that normative issues of justice and fairness cannot be addressed in any meaningful manner without an objective assessment of these costs and benefits and their redistributions. Apparently funding options are an issue for central government, as they were not addressed in the various reports. Many of the stakeholders consulted in the SEA process expressed concern about inefficient management of water on the demand side. . In particular, there are no economic incentives to encourage conservation of water by domestic users as their supply is not currently metered (albeit this is to change in the near future). In the same context of water conservation, successful efforts to minimise losses through leakage have been limited. The new Dublin Region Water Conservation Project proposes to reduce leakage to below 20%. It has been noted in the past that the financial costs of addressing leakages greatly exceeds the financial costs of sourcing, transporting and treating new supplies. However, under the WFD, Ireland is required to do full cost accounting on its water resources and water services. This means that costs beyond simple financial costs must be considered when developing a water resources pricing system. So for example Dublin City might well be able to demonstrate that the engineering, capital and operation and maintenance costs of an inter-basin transfer from the Shannon are lower than the remediation costs of reducing leakage, but in so demonstrating this, Dublin City would not have fully complied with the WFD, because this is not full cost accounting. A proper and WFD-compliant cost analysis would consider the opportunity cost (i.e., economic value of foregone benefits) associated with taking the water from the Shannon community water users (e.g., lower property prices associated with compromised view sheds and navigation, less tourism revenues associated with impaired recreational fishing opportunities, etc.). In summary the main governance weaknesses illustrated in the case of the greater Dublin area water supply plan to tap into this new source in the Shannon River Basin District include: A seemingly pre-determined emphasis on increasing supply rather than a more balanced consideration of options on both the supply and demand sides; The absence of full cost accounting as required under the WFD, which would take into account the broader environmental, economic and social implications; The absence of economic/policy incentives to use water more efficiently;

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Competing institutional incentives for government bodies to present biased cost-benefit analyses when promoting their policies or advancing their proposed projects; and Fragmented structures and sometimes conflicting authorities for the management of water. Finally, of very important note is the fact that Ireland is planning to form a new national Water Authority, and among its stated objectives will be an improved integration of water resources management and governance, The evolution of this new authority will add a further element of interest to this case study.

Leila M Harris University of British Columbia

Research Objectives 1) To analyze the patterns and impacts of neoliberal water governance shifts among potentially vulnerable populations in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa 2) To analyze the relationship between water use, governance, and citizenship practices 3) To develop new approaches for narrative based methodologies and analysis particularly for political ecology, and nature society approaches 4) To contribute to policy debates regarding possibilities for extending water access and promoting participatory governance, particularly in underserved areas. Context: Across the Global South, there has been rapid movement towards privatized, marketized, and participatory water governanceall characteristics of neoliberal water governance. Further, the international water policy community has repeatedly highlighted the need to extend water access and sanitation to underserved areas. However, several key questions remain: How are impoverished and potentially vulnerable communities affected by ongoing water governance shifts? What meanings do they attach to changes or to variable access to water? How might these issues impinge on the feasibility of extending water access or of engendering meaningful participatory governance? This research contributes to these debates through comparative assessment of two African contexts, Accra and Cape Town. Both urban areas are experiencing ongoing implementation of neoliberal water governance shifts; albeit with distinct policy, institutional and contextual factors that impinge on the patterns and experiences of water use and access. The comparative framework will draw out similarities and differences across the sites, providing enriched understandings of the diverse effects and meanings of these shifts in broad senses, as well as contributing to water governance and policy debates in each site. Theoretical Framework: This work engages a political ecology approach to contribute to a) studies of neoliberal natures; b) environmental citizenship debates; and c) interest in narrative to understand how communities negotiate, respond to, and assign meaning to water governance shifts and challenges. Across these domains, the proposed work will constitute original insights to advance knowledge through: 1) focus on lived experiences and everyday dimensions of natures neoliberalization and shifting water governance, including issues of subjectivity and identity, as well as theorizing neoliberalisms in connection; 2) conceptualization of connections between water use, access, and other dimensions of

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social experience (i.e. identity or citizenship), particularly in ways that highlight social difference and power dynamics to enrich theories of environmental citizenship; 3) methodological advances to narrative analysis, particularly for political ecology studies, as well as 4) contributing to policy debates based on the comparative study of policy instruments, contextual factors, and other issues critical for water governance and access in both sites. Methodology: This work will proceed in three phases, involving policy evaluation, document review, and narrative analysis drawing from interviews with key government officials, NGOs, and international lenders, as well as interviews and focus groups with underserved communities in Accra and Cape Town. Student training and international partnerships will be key to the research process (including the Institute for Water Studies at the University of the Western Cape, and the University of Ghana, and CHF-Ghana in Accra). Knowledge Mobilization: Products will include peer-reviewed journal articles (e.g. Development and Change), conference presentations (including African venues), and a book project for academic and policy readerships. UBCs Program on Water Governance has an established track record on dissemination of results, and will work together with our NGO and academic partners to produce newsletters, web-briefs, and policy circulars.

Michael Webber University of Melbourne

(with Jon Barnett, Chen Zhongyuan, Brian Finlayson, Mark Wang) Shanghai, with more than 23 million people, is one of the world's largest cities. It is located on the estuary of the Yangzi River, which has the fourth largest discharge in the world. Shanghai increasingly draws on the Yangzi for its water supply. Despite its population, Shanghai's demand for water is only a trivial proportion of the total flow of the Yangzi: in 2009, Shanghais total water use was 12.52 x 10 9 m3 or 396.73 m3/s; by contrast, at the lowest gauging station, the Yangzi discharges on average 28 467 m 3/s a year (more than 40 000 m3/s in June September but only 16 000 m3/s from December to March). Yet, under credible scenarios, Shanghai faces the prospect of shortages of potable water. Given the size of Shanghai's demand in relation to the supply in the Yangzi, the threat to Shanghai's water supply derives from places outside the municipality. The origins of the problem are: 1 the fact that pollution levels in sources of supply outside the Yangzi (the Huang Pu and Tai Hu) force Shanghai to draw its water from the Yangzi; 2 the fact that, when the discharge from the Yangzi is low, salt water intrudes up the estuary, far beyond the municipalitys water intake points; 3 the fact that discharge (level and seasonality) of the Yangzi will be significantly affected by: climatic change;

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construction of dams, principally for hydro-electricity; off-takes by other cities, for industrial and agricultural uses and for the South-North transfer (principally to Beijing and Tianjin). Dams and off-takes represent big engineering (supply side) responses to mismatches of demand for and supply of water, even though there does exist scope for demand management (especially on the part of industrial users). The demand for water in other cities and northern China is exacerbated by rapidly increasing levels of economic development (and so rising industrial and household demand for water), the shift of agricultural production from the south to north China (that is, from wetter to drier regions), and by the difficulties in raising the efficiency with which farmers in China use water for irrigation. The whole is embedded in a complex and conflicting mix of institutional arrangements. This description makes clear that the problem of water supply in Shanghai is related to China's entire system of water management. The management of this system is framed in the following terms: 1 China is short of water, compared to many other countries; 2 it is farmers' fault that they use water inefficiently (a view popular among the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other economists); 3 dams are required to produce electricity (reducing the CO 2 and other pollution loads of coal-fired power stations and encouraging development in western China); 4 economic development requires increasing quantities of water for urban and industrial uses. Above all, the framing reflects China's 2500-year history of water management through big engineering. (Of course, the definition of big has changed through the years.) All of these frames, except possibly the third, are debatable. Despite the fact that the threats to Shanghai's water supply derive from China's system of managing its entire water supply, the problem for Shanghai municipality is posed simply as: how to store sufficient water to alleviate the threat of salt water intrusions into the Yangzi estuary and to avoid the necessity of purifying low quality water. This is an isolated, technical response to a problem that is institutional and national: typified by the ability of the central government to control construction of megaprojects (such as large dams and the South-North transfer) and its inability to manage agricultural water use efficiently or to force provincial-level governments to cooperate over withdrawals from the Yangzi. Our task in this research project is to understand (and quantify) the nature of the threats to Shanghai's water supply; to predict probable levels of demand for water in Shanghai; to describe how the threats derive from China's system of water management; to document how Shanghai's institutions of water governance understand their problem and propose to resolve it, within their institutional and other constraints; and then to understand (and quantify) the impacts of the proposed resolutions on people living within Shanghai.

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Theme 7: Urban Water Governance Position Paper Brian Head University of Queensland
Governance of Urban Water Planning in Southeast Queensland, Australia Southeast Queensland is a temperate coastal region, about the size of Denmark. It contains 3 million people, centred on the city of Brisbane. The cycle of drought and flood is endemic but has become more intense and variable. In 2001-08 a drought pattern threatened a crisis in urban water supplies, requiring a reconsideration of both supply-side provision options and demand-management options. The State government became increasingly alarmed by the deteriorating water-supply outlook, and undertook a number of policy changes including substantial re-structuring of urban water governance. The traditional engineering paradigm, focused on the construction of storage infrastructure to ensure water security, was not abandoned but extended with new options (recycled potable water plant, desalination plant). Demand management was also extended, beyond the usual water restrictions, to include water-use reduction targets for households and businesses and water efficiency initiatives. The region survived the drought, and more normal rainfall resumed in 2009, at which point the political leaders quickly abandoned the water-recycling initiatives. The region then encountered a major flood scenario in early 2011, raising yet another set of issues about capacities and responsibilities for disaster response, as well as planning and financing measures required for sustainable water usage and management. Strategic regional frameworks have been developed that place economic growth and ecological sustainability jointly at the centre of policy governance, but the tensions are not resolved. The case study raises many issues about the knowledge base for decision-making, the capacity for policy learning, and the policy governance of complex issues emerging under conditions of uncertainty and crisis.

Denis Fischbacher-Smith University of Glasgow

(and colleagues) Critical urban infrastructure, health risk and crisis management The attacks on Tokyo, Madrid, and Londons transport infrastructures illustrated the vulnerability of urban areas to terrorist attack and highlighted the problems associated with the public management of critical infrastructures. In many countries, privatizations in the 1980s and 1990s transferred key elements of the critical infrastructure to private companies. Because these infrastructures are of major significance to our societies and economies, they must be protected against prolonged periods of breakdown. The new terrorism has the potential to do just that. The management of this new threat is a complex task, which invariably will be undertaken by both public and private actors. They must deal with the core challenges of the prevention of attacks, effective communication of information across organizational boundaries and the ownership of crisis decision-making. Some of these threats are to public health, including the need for communicating risk-related and public health information to those who might be affected by the attack. Cities are double-edged entitiesthey are providers of health, shelter, and wellbeing, and yet crucibles within which destruction can be

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generated. Their interconnected nature and their underpinning critical infrastructures are a source of strength and protection and the means by which public health agencies and first responders can intervene in the event of an attack. Attacking infrastructures allows terrorists to achieve a double hit, causing damage and mass casualties and harming the mechanisms that underpin any contingency response. This raises some important issues for public health around the redundancy of support systems for first responders, how risk is communicated before, during, and after any attack, and when to assetharden elements of the public health system and critical infrastructures. There are many, including public health professionals, who may not consider terrorism to be an issue for public health but rather a political problem. However, several elements of terrorist attacks clearly fall within the remit of public health medicine, including mass casualties requiring treatment, information regarding hazard exposure, maintenance of medical supplies to deal with damaging agents, and the raising of awareness in the event of attack. The use of chemical and biological agents, and radiological/dirty weapons has obvious implications for public health. Even more conventional forms of explosive have considerable public health implications, especially when combined with suicide terrorism, and in some countries they are already seen as a significant public health issue.

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