Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building (review)

International regimes are neither the only nor the most effective way to address many global environmental problems. Ken Conca develops an impressive critique of the view that international regimes provide an appropriate institutional form for addressing all environmental problems, focusing in particular on their shortcomings in addressing the "physically local but globally cumulative socioecological controversies" (p. 387) involved in damming, diverting, and draining the world's rivers.

Central to Conca's argument are four key claims. First, the population of global environmental problems consists not only of transboundary pollution problems and global commons problems but also problems related to the globally ubiquitous environmental abuse of local ecosystems such as "forests, soils, grasslands, wetlands, tundras, deserts, rivers, lakes, and coastlines" (p. 6). Second, forms of governance institutions other than international regimes, specifically, expert networks, transnational political struggles, and transnational marketization can be—and are being—used to address such problems. Third, these institutions vary most fundamentally in their treatment of three crucial elements: territoriality, authority, and knowledge. Fourth, the effectiveness of institutions in governing water and similar problems depends in no small part on their ability to recognize, engage, and constructively address the socioecological conflicts that are fundamental to those problems.

Conca starts by arguing convincingly that, although international regimes dominate the institutional landscape of global environmental protection as well as scholarship on that landscape, they are poorly suited to protecting the planet's places (p. 25). Regimes take for granted that nature can be territorialized, that national governments are the most appropriate and effective means for influencing human behavior, and that knowledge about environmental problems can be stabilized. The second chapter develops the argument that global environmental governance can be improved by acknowledging the existence of and evaluating alternative institutional forms that problematize these "metanormative orientations" by deterritorializing nature, hybridizing authority, and destabilizing knowledge. A third chapter provides the background on the global water problem of damming, diverting, and draining the world's rivers. The next four chapters analyze, in turn, the efforts and effects of international regimes (such as the 1997 Watercourses Convention as well as numerous other treaties), of international networks of water experts (and their development of integrated water resource management or IWRM), of transnational activists (particularly those working against dams and for watershed democracy), and of the struggle over the marketization of water (between those seeking to marketize water and those resisting it). Case studies of how these alternative institutions have played out in Brazil and South Africa provide valuable analytic insight into commonalities and differences in how these global pressures play out in response to local contingencies. The conclusion reviews the book's findings and identifies lessons for practitioners of global environmental politics and scholars of international relations.

One major strength, among many, of Conca's book is the sophistication and clarity with which it critiques the dominant and too-often-unquestioned view in global environmental politics that "regimes are the answer." Although parts of that critique have been argued by many authors, Conca brings them together and develops them into an assessment that demands critical engagement by those committed to the regime research program. Conca's critique stands out for providing both a coherent and comprehensive theoretical framework and empirical evidence of the analytic value of that framework in showing us where—and why—we should look for institutional alternatives to international regimes. Another major strength lies in his clear statement of the claim that conflict and contention should not be seen as problems that institutions must resolve. Rather, Conca argues, global environmental governance is likely to be improved by "the frank acknowledgement of conflict and the development of process-oriented channels for dispute resolution" (p. 385). In many areas of global environmental politics, problems are multi-faceted and poorly understood, with the very definition of the "problem" simultaneously open for political debate and central to determining the "best" way to resolve it. In such cases, resolution requires ongoing multi-stakeholder dialogue among all those affected by the socioecological processes...