The danger of naturalizing water policy concepts: Water productivity and efficiency discourses from field irrigation to virtual water trade

Abstract

Naturalization and universal application of concepts such as ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity’ by policy makers and water experts in the water sector leads water managers and water users to internalize these norms. As we show in this exploratory paper, the effects could be threefold: first, evidence suggests that ‘efficiency’ discourses may justify policies and projects that deprive smallholders of water use rights; second, expert-driven water policy and project notions of efficiency tend to interfere with existing local water management practices and may harm livelihood and production strategies, and third, water users may come to blame themselves for underachieving according to the norms that are established in the dominant power-knowledge structures. This article deals with three mutually connected water policy arenas where maximization of water productivity and efficiency is fiercely promoted: technical water use efficiency (the engineer's realm), allocation efficiency (the economist's realm) at national levels, and the arena of international trade, where allocation efficiency is sought through virtual water flows embedded in agricultural commodities trade.

Introduction

“There are many unused resources that are not traded, that receive no investments and generate no employment. This is because of the taboo of long-obsolete ideologies, out of idleness, out of indolence and because of the syndrome of the dog in the manger saying: “If I cannot eat, nobody will.” (…) we have fallen in the trap of giving small lots of land to poor families with no money to invest, thus they come to the State to ask for fertilizer, seed, irrigation and protected prices. This smallholder mode of production without technology is a vicious circle of miserable poverty.” Alan García (El Comercio, 28 October 2007, p. a4).

According to Alan García, President of Peru, peasant and indigenous communities hold back Peru's progress because they are inefficient and unproductive due to their lack of financial capital and technology to bring their natural resources (land, water, sea and minerals) into full productivity.² The Peruvian Government has promoted the privatization of peasant and indigenous communities’ natural resources to foster efficiency and productivity. An example is the new Peruvian water law passed in 2009. It gives much importance to ‘efficiency’ and the National Water Authority is charged with issuing ‘efficiency certificates’ to efficient users and operators. These certificates will give priority for obtaining new water rights. Since the official government discourse tends to praise the presumably highly efficient agribusiness companies, commercial plantations and mining enterprises, while Andean communities and other economically less powerful groups have less access to ‘modern’ technology or work with their own irrigation systems, the outcome of these new allocation rules can be predicted. New, capital-intensive projects have been set up already, neatly and explicitly targeting large-scale agribusiness enterprises whereby – to make room for these endeavors – in many cases poor farmers and peasant communities are deprived of their livelihoods.³ As Alan García puts it, their lands are unproductive and inefficiently used and he complains that communities refuse to sell their fallow land and water (“idle property, useless”). “If that same land were sold, assembled into large plantations, this would draw technology”. Modern businesses and foreign investors “would make them productive with heavy investment and knowledge input from new buyers”. As he argues, Peruvian people have to follow “the experience of successful peoples”, which is “the only way in which we can progress” (Alan García, El Comercio, 28 October 2007, p. a4). Peasant organizations and indigenous people in Peru have protested against these policies but success has been motley.⁴

Not only in Peru does the government use ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity’ discourse to transform the water sector. In many national and international water policy documents, these concepts are presented as unambiguously calling for broad support. Policy documents often relate the need for water efficiency to the necessity to produce more food for the growing population.⁵ The argument is often used that irrigation provides an important share of global food while water is increasingly becoming a scarce resource. Thus, this requires the production of ‘more crops per drop’. However, the actual effect of efficiency and productivity discourses and related policies has hardly been examined.

These concepts are not neutral and policies based on these notions might affect poor people negatively, thus creating more poverty instead of less.

The objectification and naturalization of notions such as efficiency and productivity – providing them with an objective appearance, as if they are a natural given – is powerful as a discursive tool, but dangerous. Mainstream concepts and norms (consciously or unconsciously) influence external and internal judgments regarding local water management systems and practices. Use of certain terms provides legitimacy to judgments: they imply certain parameters, norms and indicators for evaluation. As Trottier (2008, p. 206) states: “(…) insisting on efficiency within the dominant discourse on water management prevents us from understanding how water uses and technologies are embedded within social processes that keep evolving”. In the case of water management this evaluation is often based on one-dimensional criteria such as water beneficially consumed for crop growth divided by total diverted water, whereas reality is far more complex. The seemingly unambiguous definition of ‘beneficial use’ and ‘costs’ contrasts with the fact that different actors in water control and governance have different interests, differing power to materialize these interests, and different normative and cultural frameworks related to the costs and benefits of water. The subsequent implementation of water policies based on ‘optimizing efficiency’ may severely affect vulnerable groups in water society.

In this exploratory paper we will look at three (interconnected) water policy arenas:

Technical water use efficiencies.

Economic water allocation efficiency (or water productivity) in national water policies.

Economic water allocation efficiency at global level through international food trade (expressed in international virtual water flows).

The first arena involves maximizing technical water use efficiency in irrigation systems – from an engineer's perspective. Universalistic definitions and objectives of water use efficiency maximization tend to significantly threaten a variety of local notions of efficiency. Local actors tend to have ways to evaluate their irrigation systems’ functioning that differ substantially from engineers’ notions. As we will argue, both within irrigation systems and at the watershed level these engineers’ notions may cause serious livelihood and sustainability problems for local water user collectives.

The second arena focuses on increasing water productivity by introducing water pricing and marketing, aiming to maximize water allocation efficiency from a neo-classical economists’ perspective. Policies based on such notions generally foresee a full cost pricing of water to encourage water saving and re-allocate water to the ‘most efficient’ user (from an economic returns perspective). Also here, we show how normative frameworks of different stakeholders are likely to hold different notions of values, costs and benefits. Re-allocation of water (rights) to gain ‘productive efficiency’ may imply that some groups win and others lose access to water, in particular the more vulnerable users (e.g., Swyngedouw, 2004, Castro, 2006, Achterhuis et al., 2010).

The third arena deals with efficient water allocation at the international level by trading agricultural commodities. Agricultural products contain embedded (virtual) water used to produce these goods. On a global scale, virtual water trade is regarded as a means to increase global food production efficiency (Allan, 1998, Hoekstra and Chapagain, 2008). In theory, food produced in water-abundant areas shipped to water-deficit areas would be a policy tool to reduce water scarcity in those water-scarce countries (Allan, 2001). Again, mainstream discourse tends to sideline the experiences, aspirations and normative understandings of the less influential water user groups, while their ‘truths’ are often not based on in-the field evidence. We will show that virtual water flows, commonly, do not save ‘real’ water as their efficiency and productivity claims sustain, while international food trade can seriously affect the poor as they become dependent upon cheap imported food and poor producers cannot compete with the imported (and subsidized) food.

Before looking at these three different arenas, we will first elaborate on some theoretical aspects related to discursive power, the naturalization of concepts and the actual effects of water policy concepts.