Articles | Volume 78, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-397-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-397-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Adaptive governance as bricolage
Fanny Frick-Trzebitzky
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research, Frankfurt, Germany
Rossella Alba
Department of Geography, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Kristiane Fehrs
Institute of Sociology, Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany
Related authors
Fanny Frick-Trzebitzky, Robert Luetkemeier, Iordanka Guenova Dountcheva-Robles, David Sanz, Dženeta Hodžić, David Kuhn, Amit Kumar Srivastwa, Christina Walter, Linda Söller, and Jakob Kramer
Geogr. Helv., 80, 135–144, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-135-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-135-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Groundwater is key to the survival of people and ecosystems. Due to global change impacts, conflicts around groundwater thrive and knowledge gaps exist. In the assessment of five case studies we find that groundwater research is in tension between the rapid production of knowledge to solve existential crises and the slow production of knowledge to challenge injustices. Geographic research that combines different perspectives can play an important role in addressing this tension.
Fanny Frick-Trzebitzky, Robert Luetkemeier, Iordanka Guenova Dountcheva-Robles, David Sanz, Dženeta Hodžić, David Kuhn, Amit Kumar Srivastwa, Christina Walter, Linda Söller, and Jakob Kramer
Geogr. Helv., 80, 135–144, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-135-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-135-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Groundwater is key to the survival of people and ecosystems. Due to global change impacts, conflicts around groundwater thrive and knowledge gaps exist. In the assessment of five case studies we find that groundwater research is in tension between the rapid production of knowledge to solve existential crises and the slow production of knowledge to challenge injustices. Geographic research that combines different perspectives can play an important role in addressing this tension.
Rozemarijn ter Horst, Rossella Alba, Jeroen Vos, Maria Rusca, Jonatan Godinez-Madrigal, Lucie V. Babel, Gert Jan Veldwisch, Jean-Philippe Venot, Bruno Bonté, David W. Walker, and Tobias Krueger
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 4157–4186, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4157-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4157-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The exact power of models often remains hidden, especially when neutrality is claimed. Our review of 61 scientific articles shows that in the scientific literature little attention is given to the power of water models to influence development processes and outcomes. However, there is a lot to learn from those who are openly reflexive. Based on lessons from the review, we call for power-sensitive modelling, which means that people are critical about how models are made and with what effects.
Cited articles
Adger, N. W., Arnell, N. W., and Tompkins, E. L.: Successful adaptation to
climate change across scales, Global Environ. Change, 15, 77–86,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2004.12.005, 2005.
Akubia, J. E. K. and Bruns, A.: Unravelling the Frontiers of Urban Growth:
Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Land-Use Change and Urban Expansion in Greater
Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana, Land, 8, 1–23, https://doi.org/10.3390/land8090131, 2019.
Alba, R.: Tracking trucks: a situated analysis of Accra's uneven water
distributions, PhD thesis, Trier University, Trier, https://tricat.uni-trier.de/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=TRI_ALEPH002593844&vid=TRI_UB_I&lang=de_DE&context=L (last access: 18 August 2023), 2021.
Alba, R. and Bruns, A.: First-class but not for long: Heterogeneous infrastructure and water bricolage in Accra's kiosk compounds, Urban Forum, 2, 129–151, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-021-09435-7, 2022.
Alba, R., Bruns, A., Bartels, L., and Kooy, M.: Water Brokers: Exploring Urban Water Governance through the Practices of Tanker Water Supply in Accra, Water, 11, 1919, https://doi.org/10.3390/w11091919, 2019.
Alba, R., Kooy, M., and Bruns, A.: Conflicts, cooperation and experimentation: Analysing the politics of urban water through Accra's
heterogeneous water supply infrastructure, Enviro. Plan. E, 5, 250–271, https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848620975342, 2022.
Bai, X., van der Leeuw, S., O'Brien, K., Berkhout, F., Biermann, F., Brondizio, E. S., Cudennec, C., Dearing, J., Duraiappah, A., Glaser, M.,
Revkin, A., Steffen, W., and Syvitski, J.: Plausible and desirable futures
in the Anthropocene: A new research agenda, Global Environ. Change, 39,
351–362, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.09.017, 2016.
Ballestero, A.: The Anthropology of Water, Annu. Rev. Anthropol., 48, 405–421, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011428, 2019.
Benouniche, M., Zwarteveen, M., and Kuper, M.: Bricolage as innovation: Opening the black box of drip irrigation systems, Irrig. Drain., 63, 651–658, https://doi.org/10.1002/ird.1854, 2014.
Bourguignon, N., Leonardelli, I., Still, E., Nelson, I. L., and Nightingale, A. J.: More-Than-Human Co-becomings: The Interdependencies of Water, Embodied Subjectivities and Ethics, in: Contours of Feminist Political Ecology, edited by: Harcourt, W., Agostino, A., Elmhirst, R., Gómez, M., and Kotsila, P., Springer International Publishing, Cham, 129–153, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20928-4_6, 2023.
Bremer, S., Wardekker, A., Dessai, S., Sobolowski, S., Slaattelid, R., and
van der Sluijs, J.: Toward a multi-faceted conception of co-production of climate services, Clim. Serv., 13, 42–50, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cliser.2019.01.003, 2019.
Chaffin, B. C., Gosnell, H., and Cosens, B. A.: A decade of adaptive
governance scholarship: synthesis and future directions, Ecol. Soc., 19, 56,
https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06824-190356, 2014.
Chitata, T., Kemerink-Seyoum, J., and Cleaver, F.: Engaging and Learning
with Water Infrastructure: Rufaro Irrigation Scheme, Zimbabwe, Water Altern., 14, 690–716, 2021.
Cleaver, F.: Reinventing Institutions: Bricolage and the Social Embeddedness
of Natural Resource Management, Eur. J. Dev. Res., 14, 11–30,
https://doi.org/10.1080/714000425, 2002.
Cleaver, F.: Development Through Bricolage: Rethinking Institutions for Natural Resource Management, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY, 240 pp., ISBN 9781844078691, 2012.
Cleaver, F. and Whaley, L.: Understanding process, power, and meaning in
adaptive governance: a critical institutional reading, Ecol. Soc., 23, 49,
https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10212-230249, 2018.
Dodman, D. and Mitlin, D.: Challenges for community-based adaptation:
discovering the potential for transformation, J. Int. Dev., 25, 640–659,
https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.1772, 2011.
Döll, P., Jiménez-Cisneros, B., Oki, T., Arnell, N. W., Benito, G.,
Cogley, J. G., Jiang, T., Kundzewicz, Z. W., Mwakalila, S., and Nishijima, A.: Integrating risks of climate change into water management, Hydrolog. Sci. J., 60, 4–13, https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2014.967250, 2015.
Dörries, J.: Trinkwasser: Uran im Glas, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung,
5 July 2012, https://www.mz.de/mitteldeutschland/trinkwasser-uran-im-glas-2315737 (last access: 22 March 2023), 2012.
Etzold, B., Jülich, S., Keck, M., Sakdapolrak, P., Schmitt, T., and Zimmer, A.: Doing institutions. A dialectic reading of institutions and
social practices and its relevance for development geography, Erdkunde, 66,
185–195, https://doi.org/10.3112/erdkunde.2012.03.01, 2012.
Falkenmark, M., Wang-Erlandsson, L., and Rockström, J.: Understanding of
water resilience in the Anthropocene, J. Hydrol. X, 2, 100009,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hydroa.2018.100009, 2019.
Fehrs, K.: Kein Tag ohne Wasser. Eine ethnografische Untersuchung der `Politics and Poetics' einer Trinkwasserinfrastruktur im Süden Sachsen-Anhalts, Groundwater Dimensions, Institut für sozial-ökologische Forschung (ISOE) GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, forthcoming.
Folke, C., Hahn, T., Olsson, P., and Norberg, J.: Adaptive Governance of
Social-Ecological Systems, Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour., 30, 441–473,
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.energy.30.050504.144511, 2005.
foodwatch: Trinkwasser mit Uran belastet – 8.200 Messwerte
veröffentlicht, https://www.foodwatch.org/de/aktuelle-nachrichten/2008/trinkwasser-mit-uran-belastet-8200-messwerte-veroeffentlicht/
(last access: 28 March 2023), 2008.
Frick-Trzebitzky, F.: Crafting adaptive capacity: institutional bricolage in
adaptation to urban flooding in Greater Accra, Water Altern., 10, 625–647, 2017.
Frick-Trzebitzky, F.: Groundwater in distal relations: visible and invisible
in multiple ways, in: Yearbook 2022/23, European Water Association, Hennef, Sieg, 47–50, https://www.ewa-online.eu/tl_files/_media/content/documents_pdf/Publications/Yearbooks/Ewa_Yearbook_2022_Online.pdf (last access: 17 August 2023), 2022.
Frick-Trzebitzky, F., Baghel, R., and Bruns, A.: Institutional bricolage and
the production of vulnerability to floods in an urbanising delta in Accra, Int. J. Disast. Risk Reduct., 26, 57–68, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2017.09.030, 2017.
Fünfgeld, H. and Schmid, B.: Justice in climate change adaptation planning: conceptual perspectives on emergent praxis, Geogr. Helv., 75,
437–449, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-75-437-2020, 2020.
Furlong, K.: STS beyond the “modern infrastructure ideal”: Extending theory by engaging with infrastructure challenges in the South, Technol. Soc., 38, 139–147, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2014.04.001, 2014.
Graham, S. and Marvin, S.: Splintering urbanism at 20 and the “Infrastructural Turn”, J. Urban Technol., 29, 169–175, 2022.
Grant, R.: Globalizing City: The Urban and Economic Transformation of Accra,
Ghana, Syracruse University Press, 39 pp., ISBN 9780815631729, 2009.
Hart, J.: Kwasi Konadu. Our Own Way in This Part of the World: Biography of
an African Community, Culture, and Nation, Am. Hist. Rev., 126, 1348–1349,
https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhab474, 2021.
Hassenforder, E. and Barone, S.: Institutional arrangements for water
governance, Int. J. Water Resour. D, 35, 783–807, https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2018.1431526, 2019.
Hattermann, F. F., Weiland, M., Huang, S., Krysanova, V., and Kundzewicz, Z.
W.: Model-Supported Impact Assessment for the Water Sector in Central Germany Under Climate Change – A Case Study, Water Resour. Manage., 25, 3113–3134, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-011-9848-4, 2011.
Huitema, D., Mostert, E., Egas, W., Möllenkamp, S., Pahl-Wostl, C., and
Yalcin, R.: Adaptive Water Governance: Assessing the Institutional Prescriptions of Adaptive (Co-)Management from a Governance Perspective and
Defining a Research Agenda, Ecology and Society,
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss1/art26/ (last access: 28 March 2023), 2009.
Jaglin, S.: Regulating Service Delivery in Southern Cities: Rethinking urban
heterogeneity, in: The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South,
edited by: Parnell, S. and Oldfield, S., Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, London, New York, 434–447, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203387832, 2014.
Kaika, M.: City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City, Routledge, New
York, 216 pp., ISBN 9780415947169, 2005.
Kemerink-Seyoum, J. S., Chitata, T., Domínguez Guzmán, C.,
Novoa-Sanchez, L. M., and Zwarteveen, M. Z.: Attention to Sociotechnical
Tinkering with Irrigation Infrastructure as a Way to Rethink Water Governance, Water, 11, 1670, https://doi.org/10.3390/w11081670, 2019.
Kirschke, S., Häger, A., Kirschke, D., and Völker, J.: Agricultural
Nitrogen Pollution of Freshwater in Germany. The Governance of Sustaining a
Complex Problem, Water, 11, 2450, https://doi.org/10.3390/w11122450, 2019.
Klepp, S. and Chavez-Rodriguez, L.: Governing climate change: The power of
adaptation discourses, policies, and practices, in: A Critical Approach to
Climate Change Adaptation: Discourses, Policies, and Practices, edited by:
Klepp, S. and Chavez-Rodriguez, L., Routledge, London, 3–34,
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315165448-1, 2018.
Knox, H.: Affective Infrastructures and the Political Imagination, Public
Cult., 29, 363–384, https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-3749105, 2017.
Kuper, M., Benouniche, M., Naouri, M., and Zwarteveen, M.: Bricolage as an everyday practice of contestation of smallholders engaging with drip irrigation, in: Drip irrigation for agriculture: Untold stories of efficiency, innovation and development, edited by: Venot, J.-P., Kuper, M., and Zwarteveen, M., Routledge, 266–283, ISBN 9781315537146, 2017.
Larkin, B.: The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure, Annu. Rev. Anthropol., 42, 327–343, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522, 2013.
Lawhon, M., Nilsson, D., Silver, J., Ernstson, H., and Lwasa, S.: Thinking
through heterogeneous infrastructure configurations, Urban Stud., 55, 720–732, https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098017720149, 2018.
Lawhon, M., Nsangi Nakyagaba, G., and Karpouzoglou, T.: Towards a modest
imaginary? Sanitation in Kampala beyond the modern infrastructure ideal, Urban Stud., 60, 146–165, https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211064519, 2023.
Luetkemeier, R., Frick-Trzebitzky, F., Hodžić, D., Jäger, A.,
Kuhn, D., and Söller, L.: Telecoupled Groundwaters: New Ways to Investigate Increasingly De-Localized Resources, Water, 13, 2906,
https://doi.org/10.3390/w13202906, 2021.
Mahanty, S., Milne, S., Barney, K., Dressler, W., Hirsch, P., and To, P. X.: Rupture: Towards a critical, emplaced, and experiential view of nature-society crisis, Dialog. Hum. Geogr., https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206221138057, in press, 2023.
Mehta, L., Adam, H. N., and Srivastava, S.: Unpacking uncertainty and climate change from `above' and `below', Reg. Environ. Change, 19, 1529–1532, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-019-01539-y, 2019.
Mirhanoğlu, A., Özerol, G., Hoogesteger, J., van den Broeck, P., and
Loopmans, M.: Socio-Material Bricolage: (Co)Shaping of Irrigation Institutions and Infrastructures, Int. J. Commons, 17, 69–86,
https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1188, 2023.
Nunan, F., Hara, M., and Onyango, P.: Institutions and Co-Management in East African Inland and Malawi Fisheries. A Critical Perspective, World Dev., 70, 203–214, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.01.009, 2015.
Oteng-Ababio, M., Smout, I., and Yankson, P. W. K.: Poverty Politics and
Governance of Potable Water Services: the Core–Periphery Syntax in Metropolitan Accra, Ghana, Urban Forum, 28, 185–203,
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-017-9301-8, 2017.
Pahl-Wostl, C.: A conceptual framework for analysing adaptive capacity and
multi-level learning processes in resource governance regimes, Global Environ. Change, 19, 354–365, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.06.001, 2009.
Pahl-Wostl, C.: The role of governance modes and meta-governance in the
transformation towards sustainable water governance, Environ. Sci. Policy,
91, 6–16, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.10.008, 2019.
Patterson, J., Schulz, K., Vervoort, J., van der Hel, S., Widerberg, O.,
Adler, C., Hurlbert, M., Anderton, K., Sethi, M., and Barau, A.: Exploring
the governance and politics of transformations towards sustainability,
Environ. Innov. Societ. Trans., 24, 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2016.09.001, 2017.
Rusca, M. and Cleaver, F.: Unpacking everyday urbanism: Practices and the making of (un)even urban waterscapes, WIREs Water, 9, e1581, https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1581, 2022.
Schultz, L., Folke, C., Österblom, H., and Olsson, P.: Adaptive governance, ecosystem management, and natural capital, P. Natl. Acad. Sci
USA, 112, 7369–7374, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1406493112, 2015.
Schulz, C., Rapp, T., Conrad, A., Hünken, A., Seiffert, I., Becker, K., Seiwert, M., and Kolossa-Gehring, M.: Kinder-Umwelt-Survey 2003/06 – KUS – Trinkwasser: Elementgehalte im häuslichen Trinkwasser aus Haushalten mit Kindern in Deutschland, Umweltbundesamt, https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/publikation/long/3433.pdf (last access: 17 August 2023), 2008.
Seawright, J. and Gerring, J.: Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options, Polit. Res. Quart., 61, 294–308, https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912907313077, 2008.
Silver, J.: Incremental infrastructures: material improvisation and social
collaboration across post-colonial Accra, Urban Geogr., 35, 788–804,
https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2014.933605, 2014.
Srivastava, S., Mehta, L., and Naess, L. O.: Increased attention to water is key to adaptation, Nat. Clim. Change, 12, 113–114, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01277-w, 2022.
Sultana, F.: Climate change, COVID-19, and the co-production of injustices: a feminist reading of overlapping crises, Social Cult. Geogr., 22, 447–460, https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2021.1910994, 2021.
The Transformative Water Pact: https://transformativewaterpact.org/ (last access: 28 March 2023), 2023.
TrinkwV – Trinkwasserverordnung: BGBl. 2023 I No. 159, 2023.
Universität Trier: WaterPower Project,
https://www.uni-trier.de/universitaet/fachbereiche-faecher/fachbereich-vi/faecher/nachhaltige-raeumliche-entwicklung-governance/waterpower-project/about-waterpower
(last access: 28 February 2023), 2023.
Vogel, C. and O'Brien, K.: Getting to the heart of transformation, Sustain.
Sci., 17, 653–659, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-01016-8, 2022.
Vogel, C., Moser, S. C., Kasperson, R. E., and Dabelko, G. D.: Linking
vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience science to practice: Pathways, players, and partnerships, Global Environ. Change, 17, 349–364,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2007.05.002, 2007.
Wasserverband Südharz: Der Trinkwasserzweckverband “Südharz”
informiert, Sangerhausen, 1 July 2009,
https://www.wasser-suedharz.de/news/1/81312/nachrichten/81312.html (last access: 22 March 2023), 2009.
Whaley, L.: Water Governance Research in a Messy World: A Review, Water
Altern., 15, 218–250, 2022.
Zwarteveen, M., Kemerink-Seyoum, J. S., Kooy, M., Evers, J., Guerrero, T.
A., Batubara, B., Biza, A., Boakye-Ansah, A., Faber, S., Cabrera Flamini,
A., Cuadrado-Quesada, G., Fantini, E., Gupta, J., Hasan, S., ter Horst, R.,
Jamali, H., Jaspers, F., Obani, P., Schwartz, K., Shubber, Z., Smit, H., Torio, P., Tutusaus, M., and Wesselink, A.: Engaging with the politics of
water governance, WIREs Water, 4, e1245, https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1245, 2017.
Short summary
Institutional bricolage and socio-technical tinkering are lenses that expose everyday entanglements, arrangements and processuality in governance. We combine both lenses to analyse adaptive water governance in Accra, Ghana, and Mansfeld-Südharz, Germany. We conclude that the bricolage perspective contributes to bringing multiple forms of being and knowing into engagement when envisioning adaptive water governance in the Anthropocene.
Institutional bricolage and socio-technical tinkering are lenses that expose everyday...