Institutions, infrastructures and the construction of water demand

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Institutions, infrastructures and the
construction of water demand

• Heather Chappells

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Overview

1. Identify different modes of water organisation
   and underlying assumptions about demand
2. Show how these modes and underpinning logics
   relate to decisions and actions of water managers
   today
3. Consider alternative modes of provision emerging
   at margins of networks and what these imply for
   conceptualisation and management of demand

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SIMPLE Demand defined by locally available
resources Fixed ceilings to meet limited local
needs Consumers closely coupled to local
providers
UNIVERSAL Demand as a need that must be met at
all costs Mass ceilings and spare capacity to
meet demand Consumers as passive recipients
served by provider
MARKETISED Demand as highly differentiated and
negotiable Multiple ceilings defined in line
with different needs Consumers as co-managers
of demand
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Water managers responses to the 1995-96 drought

1. Reinforce supply infrastructure
2. Enrol consumers as demand managers
3. Redefine operational ceilings

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Dominant logics implications

• Efforts to enrol consumers as co-managers of
  demand failed to elicit desired response
• More durable solutions involve reinforcing
  infrastructure increasing capacity
• Systems are both durable and flexible at the same
  time
• Overall ethos is one of meeting non-negotiable
  needs

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New modes of water provision Allerton park

• Three households in Leeds disconnected from main
  network
• Drinking water and grey-water supply from
  stand-alone system
• Highly localised arrangements with close coupling
  of demand supply
• Households reschedule redefine practices to
  meet temporary shortages

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New modes of provision and notions of demand

• Demand as something to be negotiated and managed
  by rescheduling activities to cope with
  intermittency
• Infrastructures can be reconfigured to challenge
  the dominant mind-set that water has to be
  available around-the-clock
• Intensity and scope of demand management is
  variable and relates to socio-technical
  arrangements and renegotiation of service
  expectations

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The multi-layered structuring coordination of
water demand
Production
Limits on expansion abstraction
Respecifying institutional ceilings
Demand redefined through entire system of
provision
Reinforcing technical capacity
Redefining service expectations
Consumption
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Multiple intersecting scales the renegotiation
of demand
Production
Collective redefinition of demand at multiple
interlocking scales
Consumption
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Reinvigorating debate about demand

• How far will developing sustainable water
  networks depend on the renegotiation of
  institutional and infrastructural, as well as
  individual, expectations?
• How durable are existing configurations of
  sociotechnical systems and might more sustainable
  operating principles be overlain on more obdurate
  structures?
• How might new and old modes of provision
  intersect at different scales to generate
  multiple concepts of service provision that are
  collectively more sustainable?