Welcome to the SOAS/KCL Water Issues Group
The group brings together expertise in King's College London and SOAS. KCL and SOAS are institutions of the University of London. Staff and graduate researchers of these institutions are widely networked and contribute actively to the international debates on water resources. On how they are perceived, on how they are valued, and on how they are used and abused.The purpose of the group is to engage in interdisciplinary research on water resources and especially on policy-relevant issues. The group aims to develop concepts that will enable water users, water professionals and water scientists to communicate more effectively with each other. They are especially concerned about communication with the diverse community of professionals and officials in sectors where water plays an economic and social role mediated by political processes. The improved communication aims to increase the awareness of water relevant economic and environmental principles. Since the mid-1970s it has become increasingly clear that the technically driven water managing approaches of the hydraulic mission were neither economically appropriate nor sufficiently considerate of the environmental services of water resources.
The main focus of the group is on the political processes which determine how water resources are allocated and managed. Water scarcity has become evident in places where the demands of growing populations exceed locally accessible water resources. The knowledge that informs political processes determines who get what, when and where in water as in all resource allocation. The politics of water access is shaped by a society's historical experience, its belief systems, and its expectations of what society's entitlements should be and whether these entitlements should be public goods. Knowledge 'constructed' on the basis of such experience determines policy and practice because it is normally associated with power. Ideas associated with power always prevail over knowledge based on observed science. Water science generated in research bodies is sound. But if such science cannot be delivered in a language register that impacts the policy process then it has no significance for society beyond the enhancement of researchers' reputations.
Some key ideas developed by the group:
Knowledge and managing knowledge
Constructed knowledge is more powerful than science based knowledge in the water sector.
A bad idea aligned with power will prevail over a sound idea not power aligned.
Gaining access to the policy-making process is more like magic then logic. [after Teller]
Invisible and silent processes are especially significant in ameliorating the effects of water scarcity.
Hydro-centricity - 'looking down the hole' and related hydrological modelling, to the exclusion of the consideration of political determinants - is dangerous. Being hydrology-blind is equally dysfunctional.
There are five water management paradigms. They can be understood according to a range of social and cultural theory.
Economics and valuing water
Poverty determines water poverty; water poverty does not determine poverty.
Water users value delivered domestic water according to a strange calculus - two cigarettes, a cup of bottled water, an orange, a poor quality banana or a small bread loaf are more valued than a cubic metre of safe domestic water.
The watershed is often not the best basis for analysing the water problems of a riparian or an economy. Access to virtual water may be the only solution for an economy short of water for food production. The problemshed provides a better analytical framework.
The virtual water is economically invisible and politically silent and spectacularly effective in enabling water scarce economies to access water indirectly and avoid the economic and political stress of mobilising water locally.
Invisible and silent international processes - for example the food trade - enable comfortable but non-viable local water managing practices to be kept in place long after they should be abandoned.
The water services of water resources
Sustainability is politically mediated. It is different in 1975, 2000 and in 2025. The voices of society, the economy and the environment discursively shape co-evolving definitions of sustainability. The non-negotiable red line is not a helpful concept in the discursive politics of evolving sustainability.
Soil water, that is water in soil profiles is the major water resource available to farmers. It is also invisible and silent
Security and conflict
How international competition for water is expressed is determined by power relations. Conflict over water is plural. It ranges from non-politicised, through politicised and securitised to violent. [Copenhagen School ideas]. The hegemon of the hydrological domain determines the water using options of the hegemonised riparian(s). Water security is generally achieved via trade and the socio-economic development that enables trade.
