The present paper builds on previous research on water values and water governance in the Upper Paraguay River Basin, Mato Grosso, Brazil, which was presented at the 22nd ISDRS conference in Lisbon, Portugal. It falls into the... [ view full abstract ]
The present paper builds on previous research on water values and water governance in the Upper Paraguay River Basin, Mato Grosso, Brazil, which was presented at the 22nd ISDRS conference in Lisbon, Portugal. It falls into the category of research that aims at investigating links between water values and valuation on the one hand, and water governance processes on the other hand, from an interdisciplinary perspective that is best placed at the interface of political ecology and ecological economics. Specifically, it focuses on the planned construction of the Paraguay-Paraná Waterway through the Pantanal wetland, a controversial infrastructure project that would facilitate agricultural exports from the state’s booming soybean sector, but may equally impact one of the world’s best conserved wetland ecosystems. From a theoretical point of view, it can be hypothesised that supporters and opponents of the project hold different values, and assign different values to the river and water in question. The research to be presented at the conference reports the results of a quantitative study with a representative sample of members of the general public in the Upper Paraguay River Basin (n = 1067) which tested this hypothesis. In line with a conceptual framework recently proposed by Schulz et al. (2017), it looked specifically at assigned values of water (such as economic, ecological, or cultural values), governance-related values (such as sustainability, economic efficiency or social justice), fundamental or psychological values (such as universalism, security, power, self-direction), and their relationship with survey respondents’ support of or opposition to the planned waterway. While the analysis of the data collected is still to be concluded at the time of writing this abstract, early findings indicate that indeed we can identify two different clusters of values, or ‘value landscapes’, which tend to correlate more with one of the two positions on the waterway. Especially people who score highly on self-transcendent values (i.e. those related to helping and caring about others) are more likely to reject the governments’ plans to build a waterway, which is often characterised as an elitist project with little benefit for the local population. While more detailed results will be presented at the conference, the present paper should be seen as an invitation to conduct further research on the linkages between water values and water governance.
