Simon Ryfisch: Charting Waters in the Anthropocene: Contributions of Qualitative Water Policy Analyses to Navigating Contemporary Socio-Hydrological Challenges

Abstract

In the Anthropocene, water-related ecological integrity and human well-being are increasingly threatened, with risks being unevenly distributed. In this context, this thesis has a dual purpose. First, it synthesises empirical and conceptual contributions of four qualitative policy analyses to debates on policy concepts and principles advanced to capture and/or address contemporary water challenges. Paper I assesses opportunities and limitations contained in European Union (EU) policies for implementing Nature-Based Solutions (NBS). It shows how explicit implementation opportunities converge around protected or strongly regulated ecosystems, while the use of other ecosystems as NBS depends to a large degree on decisions by lower-level authorities. Paper II extends this through an analysis of pond landscapes in eight countries, identifying recurring barriers and enabling factors for NBS implementation specific to that ecosystem and showing that these factors do not operate in isolation, but interact in intricate ways. Paper III, meanwhile, in the context of a low-carbon transition involving water in Germany, illuminates justice as an inherently spatially dependent concept interlinked with actors’ scalar conceptualisations of water. Building on this conceptualisation, the paper yields new insights into the nature of justice. Paper IV examines how policy coherence is produced across Uruguay’s agricultural, environmental, and water policies, showing how dominant actors use discourses of sustainable agricultural growth, vague policy objectives, and weakly implemented environmental policy instrument to sustain intensive agricultural practices. Second, building on the papers’ different philosophical underpinnings – positivism, interpretivism, and critical realism – the thesis develops a meta-discussion of the papers, in dialogue with pertinent literature, on qualitative water policy analysis in the Anthropocene. This discussion is organised around three knowledge demands linked to socio-hydrological systems: addressing complexity and uncertainty; addressing political contestations and equity concerns; and generating insights that can inform policy action and/or further inquiry beyond individual contexts. Across these reflections, the thesis signposts how qualitative water policy analyses grounded in different philosophical approaches may contribute to accounting for and/or responding to these demands. More broadly, the thesis thereby indicates how qualitative policy analyses can help orient socio-political efforts to address the deterioration of water-related ecological integrity and human well-being.