Format/Structure

The panel will feature 4-5 papers. Authors have 15 minutes to present, followed by a moderated discussion. The papers can be works in progress.

Long Abstract

Complex water challenges have led to calls for novel approaches to address, govern and manage water for decades. Often, however, proposed solutions reinforce existing power relations that separate surface and groundwater flows, rather than opening towards just futures. Recognising that waters flow in multiple ways above and below ground, between the visible and the invisible, critical water scholars are increasingly calling for work that challenges their separation through technical, institutional and regulatory frameworks.

Practices of groundwater knowledge production are closely coupled with contestations and plural representations of the subterranean. Distinctions of above/below, terra/subterranean sought in modern, techno-managerial approaches to water governance shape social relations, and are often embedded in broader discursive framings ‘separating’ aquifers and watersheds, defining ‘user communities’ in relation to surface or groundwater but not both, and advancing these prescriptions through programmes and policies. Troubling the radical separations of surface and groundwater is key to achieving justice and equity in water distribution and access, across the different epistemic practices through which waters are known and related to.

The panel seeks papers that critically engage with the practices of groundwater knowledge production and associated techno-politics of groundwater governance strategies. We are interested in cases spanning agrarian and urban contexts, from arid and alpine contexts to temperate and tropical environments, and across diverse infrastructures affecting surface and groundwater flows. We recognise water challenges are configured in multiple ways, through considerations of power, property, ecosystem management, offset markets, critical minerals, and land management (among others). As such, we invite papers that speculate on how water/ground differences can be used to challenge power relations and political ecologies of extraction. Drawing together interdisciplinary contributions to analyse and unpack the politics of groundwater governance, this panel attempts to show ways to recognize diverse origins for just and equitable multiple futures.

This Panel has 10 pending paper proposals.
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