Vendredi 13 janvier 2023 à 11h00, Sijia Du a présenté ses travaux intitulés Waterscape, scarcity and efficiency: coproducing the evolution of water governance - The Three Gorges Project and Water Governance in China

Résumé :

Discourses of scarcity and efficiency play an incredibly vital role in stabilizing water conservancy projects and water governance. My research asks the following question to investigate them in political and social context: how do discursive imaginaries interact with waterscape in Chinese history by analyzing the transformative role that water scarcity and efficiency discourses play in the coproduction of Chinese water governance through the TGP? The research produces three main results. First, the TGP and the changes in water governance are coproduced in relation to hydro-social dynamics, shaped by histories, cultures, norms, technologies, institutions, practices, discourses, and identity within the power relations. Second, actors participate in China’s water governance over various scalar levels, including international organizations, foreign investors like American banks and companies, and non-governmental organizations. Last and most importantly, the discursive imaginaries of water scarcity and efficiency play different roles throughout China’s water governance history. They formed the necessity and inevitability of more water conservancy construction and the most stringent water policy. More recently, the definitions of scarcity and efficiency were expanded and connected to the water-energy nexus in climate change and energy transition, coproducing a new focus on China’s water governance. Moreover, academic research that focuses on analytical models of environmental impacts is essential in the coproduction and depoliticization of political decisions in the name of science and technology.