Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ecologies of Water Governance

水资源短缺与政治和经济不稳定密切相关。随着新的取水、输水和管理方法的探索和实施，评估水治理结构的功效和有效性对于防止水资源压力变得至关重要。该项目培训研究生如何进行严格的、以科学为基础的实地考察，探讨在资源日益稀缺和人口规模不断增长的条件下，水治理如何通过正式和非正式手段在实地展开。这项研究所产生的经验教训对于加深对类似情况的理解具有价值，特别是在农业依赖灌溉的经济体中，以及在大量城市人口的需求和广泛依赖灌溉的农业部门的需求之间强调水资源获取的经济体中。Maira Hayat在芝加哥大学的William Mazzarella博士的监督下，将探讨水资源管理，重点放在两个地方：城市环境中的饮用水市场，以及农村环境中的公共运河灌溉网络。这项研究将在巴基斯坦进行，巴基斯坦拥有世界上最大的由印度河及其支流灌溉的连续灌溉网络。这个网络集中在旁遮普省，根源于19世纪世纪的殖民政策，目的是增加农业生产的税收，并通过将主要是游牧的当地人转变为定居的农业家来“定居”该地区。 这项研究将加深对法律与政治经济学之间关系的理解;官僚机构，市场和知识与价值体系的交叉点;以及全球资源治理。它将有助于通过绘制经济与主权之间的关系以及当代水治理来分析法律和经济生活。这项研究将进一步了解公共灌溉的成功和失败，使决策者能够设计更明智的政策，并有助于在许多水资源紧张的情况下进行广泛的水资源部门改革时减少自上而下的政策。本研究结合田野调查、访谈、焦点小组、档案研究、口述历史搜集、法律的文本分析。

Water scarcity has been widely linked to political and economic instability. As new methods for water extraction, delivery, and management are explored and implemented, evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of water governance structures becomes critical to preventing water stress. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, empirically-grounded scientific fieldwork, explores how water governance unfolds on the ground, through formal and informal means, under conditions of increasing resource scarcity and growing population sizes. The lessons this research produces can be of value in deepening understanding of similar situations, especially in economies where agriculture is irrigation-dependent and where water access is stressed between the demands of a large urban population and the demands of an extensive irrigation-dependent agricultural sector.Maira Hayat, under the supervision of Dr. William Mazzarella of the University of Chicago, will explore water governance focusing on two locales: the drinking water market in an urban setting, and the public canal irrigation network in a village context. The research will take place in Pakistan, home to the world's largest contiguous irrigation network fed by the river Indus and its tributaries. Concentrated in the Punjab province, this network has roots in 19th century colonial policies aiming, in parallel, at increasing tax revenue from agricultural production, and 'settling' the region by converting the predominantly nomadic locals to sedentary agriculturalists. This research will deepen understanding of the relation between law and political economy; bureaucracies, markets and the intersection of knowledge and value regimes; and resource governance worldwide. It will contribute to analyses of law and economic life through charting the relation between economy and sovereignty, and contemporary water governance. This research will further understanding of the successes and failures of public irrigation, and enable policymakers to design better-informed policy, and help make policy less top-down at a time of extensive water-sector reform in many water-stressed contexts. This research combines fieldwork, interviews, focus groups, archival research, collection of oral histories, and legal textual analysis.