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Paper short abstract

In Lusatia’s post-mining landscape future water scarcity is often framed as a hydrological problem. We show how water governance becomes a contested site of knowledge production, where four narratives—technisation, prioritisation, justice, and localisation—shape visions of regional transformation.

Paper long abstract

Lusatia, a lignite mining region in eastern Germany, is profoundly shaped by decades of mine dewatering and hydrological engineering. Large-scale open-pit mining has transformed the region’s ecosystems and livelihoods through lowered groundwater tables and the relocation or creation of surface water bodies. Amid climate change and the national coal-phase out, however, projections of increasing water scarcity are often framed as primarily hydrological challenges. Yet decisions about which risks become visible and which management options are considered viable are not determined by hydrological conditions and knowledge alone. Rather, they emerge from broader political narratives that articulate societal norms, priorities, and regional futures (Bilalova et al., 2025; Whaley, 2022).

In this paper, we conceptualize water governance as a contested site of knowledge formation in which pathways for regional transformation are co-produced through the everyday making of scenarios and management strategies. As both a material substance and a political object, water mediates relations among (more-than) human actors, institutions, and infrastructures in the region (Barnes and Alatout 2012). We argue that water governance is shaped by different value-laden storylines that mobilize techno-infrastructural, politico-administrative, scalar, and justice-related visions of the future. Empirically, the paper draws on interdisciplinary research combining hydrological modelling with discursive analysis and narrative-led dialogue formats on future water management (including interviews, co-design workshops, and participant observation). By bringing technical planning into dialogue with narrative-informed analysis, our research responds to recent calls to make hydrological research more reflexive, inclusive, and attentive to socio-ecological complexity and existing power relations (Rusca et al. 2026).