Summary of the Sixth International Workshop on Hydro-Hegemony

The Sixth International Workshop on Hydro-Hegemony took place 12-13 January 2013, at UEA London. Over 100 researchers, practitioners and activists explored its theme: Transboundary Water Justice.

With discussions enduring 10 hours each day – and then well into the night – we think a small step has been made towards investigating the merit of ‘justice' to serve transboundary water interaction, in both theory and practice.

While no agreement was reached (or expected), the healthy vigorous and respectful debate that was generated certainly pushed the limits of our collective knowledge. A number of novel ideas were explored – like ‘water sovereignty' (D'Souza) and ‘do I have the right to eat other people's [virtual] water' (Greco) – while the favouring of efficiency over equitability in most political economies tested. While not everyone agreed what ‘justice' is or even that there is room for it in transboundary water interaction practice or analysis, there was consensus that transboundary water injustices are easy enough to spot – and all were motivated to act to address this.

There were dozens more moments of insight and brilliant deployment of theory and evidence, captured in the Executive Summary and Proceedings found here. We encourage all to look through these, the videos below and the readings beside. Do be in touch with us if you would like to discuss more!

Mark Zeitoun, Naho Mirumachi, Nathanial Matthews, Karis McLaughlin – HH6 organisers

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Summary documents of the proceedings as well as a full report, prepared by Rebecca Farnum (University of East Anglia), are available to download (pdfs):

Proceedings

Brief Summary

Executive Summary

Posters of Critical Analysis of Transboundary Water Interaction: hydro-hegemony; TWINS, etc 

HH6 Programme