Presentation short abstract

Community-led springshed restoration in the Indian Himalayas reveals water as an active socio-ecological force. Building on Indigenous, traditional knowledge, hydrogeology, and lived experiences, this presentation reframes water’s materiality through majority-world practice.

Presentation long abstract

Springs in the Indian Himalayas offer a compelling scope to (re)materialize the political ecology of water from a majority-world standpoint. Far from being passive “sources,” Himalayan springs shape social organization, ecological resilience and governance practices through their dynamic materiality. Drawing on practitioner experience from a large-scale Springshed Management initiative, this presentation foregrounds how water’s behavior—its seasonality, recharge sensitivity, and embodied flows—actively structures community decisions, efforts, and collective environmental action.

The work integrates hydrogeological mapping with the traditional knowledge, emphasizing how local customs & philosophies perceive springs as living entities that reciprocally sustain forests, livelihoods and social relations. This cosmovision places water not merely within the realm of scarcity or resource management but within a relational ethics that guides restoration practices. Community-led interventions, including forest regeneration and aquifer recharge, reveal how water’s material agency becomes legible through lived experience and situated knowledges, challenging dominant minority-world theoretical frames.

The initiative’s outcomes—enhanced spring discharge, livelihood benefits and new village-level institutions—show how water’s materiality participates in remaking socio-ecological futures. By placing practitioners insights at the core, majority-world conceptual frameworks and the entanglement of water, landscape and community, the presentation argues for a political ecology attentive to relational materiality and grounded praxis. It invites methodological and conceptual rethinking by allowing water to “speak” through the multiple worlds it inhabits.