Global Water and Its (Anti)Political Consequences

This paper draws from the history and geography of science and from political ecology to trace the history of the idea that water can be conceived of, and quantified as, a global resource. We argue that this approach has contributed to the depoliticising of water-related problems by favouring technocratic and managerial responses. A method for calculating water balances was developed in Russia in the late 19th century and came to maturity in the Soviet Union in the 20th century. We begin by describing how this method was first adapted to calculating global-scale water balances in the 1960s. We then investigate how, in the 1990s, the quantification of what we call 'global water' came to be translated into popular international discourse and how this contributed to the construction of a 'global water crisis' in that decade. We also look at how it gave rise more recently to what is known as the 'planetary boundaries' approach. A particular research agenda and set of policy prescriptions follow from this way of conceiving of, and quantifying, water. They are oriented towards governance mechanisms that depoliticise water-related issues by defining and structuring water problems as essentially hydrological in nature. The recommended solutions are thus predisposed towards the technical optimisation of water use; they typically seek out demand-side management tools, and instruments that will ascribe greater economic value to water. Drawing from 'post-political' and 'anti-politics' theories, we argue that the political consequences of global water follow mainly from the way the matter-of-factness of such an approach authorises technocratic-managerial solutions. Discourses that define water problems in terms of quantity put the main focus on water per se, rather than on the social relations and realities that underlie such problems.