Challenges posed by interdisciplinary approach among Law, Sociology, Bio-ecology and Anthropology about water management

CAPALDO, GRISELDA D.

Porto Aelgre

Simposio; Science & Method: Paradigms and Perspectives; 2014

Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung y Cancillería Alemana

Lessons learnt in this decade upon Water Management are moving towards the sustainable multi-sectoral governance (Dellapenna-Gupta, 2009; Wiesenfeld, 2003). These dimensions (governance, sustainable development, multisectoral management) are still pending in Latin America, as it was verified in our previous UBACYT projects. Some factors that affect them are: 1) ineffectiveness of environmental law; 2) insufficient multidisciplinary knowledge of water in the Delta - Parana River; 3) poor traceability of social representations of water; 4) adverse effects of armed conflict on the environment; 5) institutional deficits to implement the human right (HR) to drinking water; 6) weak knowledge of forest ecosystem services in watersheds; 7) barriers to both the control of and citizen participation in water governance; 8) poor development of green economy in the WTO; 9) weak conservation of coastal systems which affect the "land-sea-aquifer" interaction. This lecture addresses the lessons learnt along six-year research period upon Water Management from an interdisciplinary approach, involving social and natural sciences (among social sciences: legal, sociological and anthropological visions are involved; among natural sciences, biology and ecology are also part of the project), and I will also speak about the first step given towards transdisciplinarity. The project I lead is carry out at the UBA and consists of six lines of search, but today I will only briefly describe three of them, namely, the legal, sociological and bio-ecological branches. Legal aspects are focused on the (in) effectiveness of environmental law. Our approach is based on two premises: (a) That ineffectiveness of environmental law is one of the reasons why water in Paraná River (the main course of La Plata Basin) has been mismanaged. (b) The anomic behavior of most Argentina inhabitants lies behind the ineffectiveness of law. We call "effectiveness of law" at the full enforcement or compliance of rights and obligations enshrined in every rule. This obviously includes environmental regulations (i.e., every treaty, statute, ordinance, resolution, or disposition) issued by legislators (federal, provincial and municipal) and by administrative bodies (again, federal, provincial and municipal). Last but not least, since 2002 the UNEP has been warning about the "weak enforcement" of environmental law in Latin America and Caribbean countries.