Cities are organic, highly divided (socially, economically, politically) social spaces. These divisions manifest spatially, and ensuring the ‘right to the city’ is a difficult task. Evidence suggests that macro-approaches such as Integrated Water Resources Management or Integrated Urban Water Management are difficult to implement. Yet, opportunities for positive social change often arise. How to ensure that these opportunities result in collective social good? In this seminar, Corrine Cash, Mount Allison University, and Larry Swatuk, University of Waterloo, critically reflect on the appropriate entry points for urban water security. Their findings show that change requires organization, persistence, and innovation, that positive outcomes may be fungible, and that negative outcomes are opportunities for reflection and reorganization. Their research highlights factors that are necessary for equitable, sustainable and affordable outcomes: collective, cross-sectoral and participatory decision-making; actions that are framed in a deliberately non-political way and projects that are underpinned by influential third-party involvement.

Whether some or all of these are necessary, however, is not clear. Drawing on evidence from a series of case studies, the speakers point to the necessary conditions to ensure that effective efforts in support of urban water security are fungible and scalable within and across cities.

Programme

Welcome note

• Annabelle Houdret, Speaker, Bonn Water Network, and senior researcher at the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE).

Moderator

• Lars Wirkus, Senior Management \ Head of Research Infrastructure and Data at Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC).

The Political Economy of Urban Water Security under Climate Change: Politics of water for cities

• Larry Swatuk, Faculty Member of the Water Institute, University of Waterloo, Canada, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Associate Editor of the open-access journal Water Alternatives , and Research Associate of BICC (Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies), co-editor of the book of Towards the Blue-Green City: Building Urban Water Resilience.

The importance of governance arrangements for improved climate resilience: A case study from Manila

• Corrine Cash, Department of Geography and Environment at Mount Allison University, Canada, author of the paper Creating the Conditions for Climate Resilience: A Community-Based Approach in Canumay East, Philippines.

Input by discussant

• Diego Jara, Legal Officer, IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature) Environmental Law Centre

Closing Remarks

• Annabelle Houdret, DIE

The Bonn Water Network consists of eleven renowned institutions with longstanding experience on water and related issues: the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC); Bonn University with its Institute of Geography (GIUB) holding the UNESCO Chair in Human Water Systems, the Center for Development Research (ZEF) and the Institute for Hygiene and Public Health (IHPH); the German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE);the IUCN Environmental Law Centre; and three Bonn-based UN institutions: the United Nations Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Global Water Operators Partnerships Alliance (UN-Habitat/GWOPA). In addition, Berlin based Water Integrity Network (WIN) and the International Centre for Water Resources and Global Change (ICGWRC) based in Koblenz are partners of the BWN.