Doctoral Dissertation Research: Risk, Vulnerability, and Management: Translating Integrated Water Resource Management into Action on the Paraquay River

在过去的二十年里，世界银行和其他促进可持续发展的多边发展机构“已经认识到管理自然资源，特别是水的重要性。这些机构已经开始要求借款国按照“综合”资源管理的原则，改革现有的管理水、森林和土壤使用的法律。在巴拉圭，世界银行全球环境基金和巴拉圭政府的专家正在与非政府组织、科学家和民间社会团体合作，根据水资源综合管理(IWRM)的原则改革巴拉圭的水法。在多边环境协定和发展机构一级，水资源综合管理被认为是协调人类和非人类的用水需求的最佳管理框架，包括渔民、农民、工业所有者、陆地和水生野生动物以及河岸植被。然而，关于水资源综合管理系统的引入如何影响发展中国家现有的资源管理机构和资源使用者，人们知之甚少。水资源综合管理系统需要广大地理区域的用水者、规划者、管理者和政策制定者的合作，他们的用水需求不同，有时甚至相互矛盾。通过收集不同的水资源管理者，包括巴拉圭潘塔纳尔湿地部分的用水者，如何看待巴拉圭基于水资源综合管理的新水法以及与水资源管理和使用相关的风险并采取行动的数据，本研究项目试图了解水资源综合管理如何在潘塔纳尔转化为行动，以及其具体影响是什么。本研究使用多种方法进行数据收集和数据分析，包括半结构化访谈、参与者观察、时间表和Q法，以解决三个研究问题：(1)水资源综合管理如何影响巴拉圭国家设定水资源管理优先事项的能力？(2)巴拉圭水资源管理者将如何将新的“综合”水资源管理法律转化为州、地区、(3)水资源综合管理的实施将在多大程度上使家庭更加脆弱？这项研究的结果将为地理研究国家(和其他行为者)在对发展中国家环境行使权力方面不断变化的做法做出理论贡献。通过将这些辩论的焦点扩展到考虑国家和非国家管理者的翻译实践，本研究试图了解风险认知、专业知识和当地条件如何影响不同规模的管理者如何将法律实质转化为适合他们个人和管理需要的行动。同时，通过调查新的、以水资源综合管理为基础的法律的实际使用是否会影响不同家庭“竞争获得权利、资源和资产”的能力，这项研究试图将经验驱动的风险和脆弱性地理模型与理论上关于权力分散行使在治理和生产特定形式的空间组织中的影响的辩论联系起来，在这些模型中，民族国家在塑造脆弱性的“具体条件”中发挥关键作用。此外，这项调查还增加了巴拉圭的潘塔纳尔地区，这是一个在拉丁美洲地理学中相对较少研究的地区，也加入了这些争论。这项研究还将生成新的基本数据，说明世界银行赞助的资源管理和改进系统的性质，以及这些系统如何影响巴拉圭潘塔纳尔地区的生计和土地--以及水景，这些数据将以可获得的格式在巴拉圭和其他地方的学术界和政策界立即有用。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。

Over the past two decades, the World Bank and other multilateral development agencies that promote sustainable development" have recognized the importance of managing natural resources, especially water. These agencies have begun to require that borrower countries reform existing laws that govern water, forests, and soil use according to the principles of "integrated" resource management. In Paraguay, experts from the World Bank's Global Environmental Facility and the Paraguayan government are working together with non-governmental organizations, scientists, and civil society groups to reform Paraguay's water law according to the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). At the level of multilateral environmental agreements and development agencies, IWRM is recognized as the best management framework for coordinating the water requirements of humans and non-humans, including, fishermen, farmers, owners of industry, terrestrial and aquatic wildlife, and riparian vegetation. Little is known, however, about how the introduction of IWRM systems, which require the cooperation of water users, planners, managers, and policy makers who are spread over large geographic areas and whose water needs are different and sometimes contradictory, affect existing resource management agencies and resource users in developing countries. By gathering data on how different water managers, including water users in Paraguay's portion of the Pantanal wetlands, perceive and act upon Paraguay's new IWRM-based water law and the risks associated with water management and use, this research project seeks to understand how IWRM is translated into action in the Pantanal and what its concrete effects are. This study uses multiple methods are for data collection and data analysis, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, timelines, and Q-method, in order to address three research questions: (1) How does IWRM affect the ability of the Paraguayan state to set water management priorities? (2) How will water resource managers in Paraguay translate new "integrated" water management laws into regulatory action at state, regional, and community scales along the Paraguay River? (3) To what extent will implementation of IWRM make households more vulnerable?The results of this study will make theoretical contributions to geographic research on the changing practices of the state (and other actors) in exercising power over the environments of developing countries. By extending the focus of these debates to include a consideration of the translation practices of state and non-state managers, this study seeks to understand how risk perception, expertise, and local conditions influence how managers at different scales translate the substance of laws into actions that fit their personal and managerial needs. At the same time, by investigating whether practical use of new, IWRM-based laws affects the abilities of different households to "compete for access to rights, resources, and assets," this research attempts to link empirically driven models of the geographies of risk and vulnerability, in which the nation-state plays a key role in shaping the "specific conditions" of vulnerability, to theoretically driven debates about the effects of the decentralized exercise of power in the governance and production of particular forms of spatial organization. Further, this investigation adds the Paraguayan Pantanal, a region relatively unstudied in Latin American Geography, to these debates. This study will also generate new basic data on the nature of World Bank-sponsored resource management and improvement systems and how they affect livelihoods and land- and waterscapes in the Paraguayan Pantanal in an accessible format that will be immediately useful in academic and policy circles in Paraguay and beyond. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.