Main themes
Water
Sustainable Cities
Governance
Climate Change
Capacity Development

Title
Water configurations in metropolitan territories and cities under climate change scenarios

Focus
The lecture aims to introduce the audience into the role of knowledge building in configuring metropolitan water governance and helps to identify key actor´s networks and discourses, how coalitions develop power plays within (or not) inclusionary (concertation) political processes. Processes which may influence decision making, policy development and implementation for short and long term actions.

Issues which the lecture addresses
The lecture uses the Metropolitan Lima case to showcase the role of civic society (CS) activism, organizations and mobilization in promoting a democratic decision making processes when using transparent, concertative and inclusionary strategies. It will be shown using the water related climate change scenario building and planning, particularly with an overview of the present and potential future impacts on the urban, rural and natural territories. A final remark will be done in how the sustainable development goal 11th may be achieved by applying such strategies, enabling an integrative approach and enphasizing on its descentralized and localized implementation on metropolitan territories.

Short analysis of the above issues
The lecture analyzes how complex water governance networks and their dynamics in Lima are configured, and their implications for the provision and distribution of water across different territories in and around Lima. It focuses on water governance in the wider sense, including people’s water-related vulnerabilities, and how challenges thrown up by climate change scenarios are included in discussions of such vulnerabilities. Such actor networks use their powers to influence decisions in their cities and territories, using their capacities to shift existing situations. The multi-level, multi-scalar and multi-actor character of governance is particularly important to water governance, as cities depend on water sources well beyond their mandated territories.

Propositions for addressing the issue
1. How water governance networks operate within a multi-scalar territory:
– The whole trajectory of water flows (connecting traditionally divided urban-rural water (provision) and natural water systems)
– a multi-scalar territorial perspective
2. Water governance configurations:
– distinct discourses
– multi-actor coalitions
– power relations
– policy knowledge building processes
– territorialities and
– outcomes
3. Implications for sustainability in the longer term
– SDG 11th

Additional Reading Materials

Heynen, N., Kaika, M., and Swyngedouw, E. (2006). In the Nature of Cities, Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism. 271 pp. Routledge, London

Miranda Sara, L. and Baud, I.S.A. (2014). Knowledge-building in adaptation management: concertación processes in transforming Lima water and climate change governance. Environment and Urbanization 26 (2), 505-524.

Miranda Sara, L., Pfeffer, K., & Baud, I. S. A. (forthcoming 2016). Unfolding urban geographies of water-related vulnerability and inequalities; recognizing risks in knowledge building in Lima, Peru. In A. Allen, S. Bell, P. Hofman, & T. The (Eds.), Urban water trajectories. Springer
Torfing, J. et al. (2012). Interactive Governance. Advancing the Paradigm. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

www.ciudad.org.pe