Water Governance and Water Institutional Reform - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 6

Figure 1: International discourse on water management
Source: own compilation based on Allan 2003.
As shown in Figure 1 , the paradigms do not supersede each other but exist in parallel. The
three last paradigms (2 4) complement each other and are summarized by Allan as sub types
of the paradigm of “reflexive modernity”. It is therefore questionable whether 'paradigm' is the
right term for these approaches. In a Kuhnian understanding, different paradigms cannot exist
simultaneously in one scientific community (Kuhn 1976). I will therefore use the terms schools
or approaches.
Probably the best known approach is that of industrial modernity the so called „hydrau
lic mission“ (Allan 2003: 10). For a long time, it dominated in Western and Communist socie
ties as well as in states of the so called Third World. It evolved with the development of mea
surement methodologies and hydrology as scientific discipline and came along with the percep
tion of water as a resource. Water demand was expected to increase due to population growth
and economic development. Solutions for future water demand were seen solely in technical
terms and on the supply side. Huge infrastructure projects like dams, reservoirs and irrigation
systems relying on the belief in the technical possibility of completely controlling nature are the
hallmarks of this approach (Allan 2003; Gleick 2000; Linton 2006).
With rising environmental awareness in the 1960s, the request arose to include ecological
needs in water management policies. Environmental and social consequences of huge dams
were criticized, such as population replacements and the loss of bio diversity. At the same
time, technical progress in industrialized countries led to new water saving technologies and
revealed that economic progress and demographic growth does not necessarily lead to more
water consumption (as was the assumption of the “hydraulic mission”). However, it was only
in the 1980s when these insights resulted in changes of policies and usage patterns (Allan 2001;
Allan 2003; Gleick 2000).
In the beginning of the 1990s, the criticism was complemented by the notion of water as
an economic good, a position especially promoted by international financial and developmental
organizations. It was acknowledged on international level in the Dublin Principles. 5 The under
lying idea in short is that water has an economic value and therefore should have a price. While
the technocratic strategies are primarily supply driven, this approach is demand oriented. Lack
5 The Dublin Principles were developed in 1992 at one of the preparing conferences to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio
de Janeiro. Principle 4 states that “water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as
an economic good”.