Value base of water governance in the Upper Paraguay River basin, Mato Grosso, Brazil
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Date
30/11/2017Author
Schulz, Paul Christopher
Metadata
Abstract
Values have been identified as important factors that guide decision-making and
influence preferences in water governance. Comparing the values reflected in
water governance decisions with the values held by stakeholders and the general
public may inform the debate on the political legitimacy of water governance. The
research presented in this PhD thesis draws on multiple research traditions on
values, ranging from ecological economics and political ecology to social and
environmental psychology, to investigate the value base of water governance in
the Upper Paraguay River Basin, in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. It first
introduces a novel conceptual framework that integrates these various research
traditions and suggests that water governance is closely related to the fundamental
values, governance-related values, and assigned values of stakeholders and actors
in water governance more generally. These different types of values vary in their
level of abstractness, as well as in their ‘locus’, i.e. where the valuing person locates
them, and are hypothesised to be closely interrelated in a hierarchical structure,
with fundamental values being the most abstract type of values. Water governance,
in turn, is defined as the synthesis of water policy (the ‘content’ of decisionmaking),
water politics (the ‘power play’ between actors) and water polity (the
institutional framework). The thesis then proceeds to apply this novel conceptual
framework in a case study on stakeholders’ values in the Upper Paraguay River
Basin, and investigates the relationship of their values with their preferences
regarding the construction of the Paraguay-Paraná Waterway through the
Pantanal wetland, in the south of Mato Grosso. This water infrastructure project
has a long history of conflict attached to it, as it might impact the hydrology and
ecology of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical freshwater wetland and
UNESCO biosphere reserve, while at the same time benefitting Mato Grosso’s
rapidly growing agribusiness sector by lowering the cost of soybean exports. Based on 24 semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders, it was found that
supporters and opponents possess different, clashing ‘value landscapes’ (i.e.
groups of related values), which may explain the protracted nature of the conflict
around the construction of the waterway, while at the same time highlighting
political legitimacy deficits of the project. This research was followed up by a
quantitative study with members of the general public (n=1067), which sought to
measure and test the assumption that we can empirically identify such clashing
value landscapes, and their relationship with preferences for or against the
Paraguay-Paraná Waterway. Using structural equation modelling (SEM),
statistically significant links between people’s values and their preferences in water
governance could indeed be found, as well as between different types of values,
which formed two contrasting value landscapes. This suggests that water
governance conflicts may in part be explained by the presence of different value
landscapes among involved actors, which may include even the most abstract level
of fundamental values. The research presented in this thesis thus contributes to
interdisciplinary debates on the role of values for water governance from multiple
conceptual, as well as methodological perspectives. Additionally, through its
application to a concrete case study, it highlights the policy relevance of such
research, as addressing conflicts in water governance and examining alternative
policy options may require a more explicit consideration of the values of the
actors involved.