(De)Politicizing Water: Justice in Times of Water Crisis

The 21st century is challenged by a variety of environmental threats: Next to climate and biodiversity crisis, water crises are on the rise globally. Water is a "critical resource" since it is neither substitutable nor infinite. Due to competing demands for water, social and political conflicts over water arise in many places. This fosters contestation about the very role of water in social and political life, i.e., who is a legitimate recipient of fresh water, what is the prioritized use of water and how should water be made accessible. Regarding the multiple water issues around the world, urgent attention has to be paid on the processes that produce water realities. While water under the neoliberal discourse gets an economic value, is commodified and tends to be privatized, the poor and powerless do not get much access. Because the access to water highly depends on infrastructure, it is a matter of political strategies and environmental planning. However, current water governance considers the demand rather than the supply logic. The depoliticization of water through the limitation of possibilities for action to a purely individual level, emphasises private household savings while favouring water transfers to corporate uses and users. This paper outlines the potential of environmental justice and ‘post-politics’ research for the contexts of water crises and their de- and re-politicization. Research questions of the paper are: What are dynamics of de-politicization of water? What are notions of justice in the context of water crises? How are environmental justice movements re-politicizing water crises? After conceptually approaching these questions, we will illustrate environmental justice and the depoliticization of water with two cases: STMicroelectronics in France and Tesla in Germany, where droughts, groundwater shrinking and water pollution are already on the agenda. Nevertheless, water consumption increases due to expansion goals with the support of (local) politics, while the supply of drinking water is troubled accompanied by citizen’s protest. We will conclude with a discussion of the challenges and potentials of environmental justice frameworks and ‘post-politics’ scholarship for understanding the current phenome-non of evolving water crises.