Guaranteeing Good Drinking Water: Governing Transboundary Risks in Swedish Municipalities

Drinking water is necessary for the existence of human life. In some parts of the world it is a scarcity, while in other parts readily available in abundance. Even in the latter case, clean drinking water is not to be taken for granted due to the threat of several possible risks. Responsible actors must carefully manage risks such as climate change, polluting or sabotage. If risk management fails, the consequences could be severe. For citizens, it is certainly important to be able to trust that drinking water is managed in such a way that it is safe to use. The aim of this paper is to explore the interaction between risk management in a complex environment and the conditions for good governance in terms of transparency and accountability. Transparency and accountability is often pointed out as crucial in order for citizens to trust the government. When it comes to drinking water, those criteria are not easily met since governing and management of risks is highly complicated. Risk management is in this case not bound to a particular jurisdiction or geographical unit. The consequences of climate change know few boundaries, and also contamination of a particular part of a source for drinking water may travel across municipal boundaries. In other words, the governing of drinking water risks is transboundary. Management of transboundary risk demands co-operations and interactions between a multitude of actors and therefore constitutes a growing challenge for policy makers. This paper focuses on how risks are perceived and managed in a paradigmatic case of transboundary risk, the case of drinking water in the Göta River area of Sweden. The provision of drinking water and control of its quality is a responsibility of local municipal authorities. We will use an extensive and unique material, consisting of interviews with local politicians and civil servants in the seven local municipalities surrounding the Göta River. Göta River serves as drinking water supply for 700.000 people. Increased water flows, landslides and floods increase the risks of contamination of drinking water due to toxic substances, and infectious biological agents. A first question to be addressed in the paper is how politicians and public administrators in the seven local municipalities perceive risks and how they should be managed. The presence of risks is not guaranteed to generate public interest in drinking water management; rather clean drinking water may sometimes be seen as self-evident. At the same time, risk management demands certain political priorities, costly investments and an efficient public administration, which necessitates trust and support from the public. A hypothesis pointed out in previous research (see Hood et al 2001) is that public opinion matters for how risk is managed, since decision makers ideally should respond to opinion by adjusting policy. A second question is if the public is perceived to take an interest in drinking water issues and how risks are managed? How important is transparency and accountability in this case?