Jeroen Warner

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Wageningen University & Research

Communities of Practice (CoPs) have become a new water resource management paradigm. CoPs are highly regarded for promoting peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and collaboration, leading to better water management decisions and actions. Yet, the mechanisms through which CoPs operate, including what kind of learning is being pursued, for what, how, and b...

Community perception of climate events as a security issue: the case of Hatiya Island, Bangladesh This study delves into the multifaceted dynamics linking climate change and conflict on Hatiya Island, Bangladesh. Examining perceptions and responses to climate-induced stress, insecurity and potential conflicts, our research draws insights from liter...

This policy brief argued for the urgent need to rethink governance responses to climate mobility in Africa’s vulnerable settings, emphasizing the importance of incorporating local perspectives into climate change adaptation policies. It critiqued the ineffectiveness of the top-down policy approach, which often fails to reflect the social realities...

This paper contributes to the critical hydropolitics literature by introducing the power-interests-identity nexus framework and addresses how it shapes decisions and (re)actions to transform or maintain water conflicts. The framework is investigated using the Helmand/Hirmand river basin, shared by Afghanistan and Iran. It elucidates which factors l...

Bangladesh is customarily presented as a poster child for climate change and conflict given its dense population and susceptibility to climate variability. This vulnerability exacerbates existing challenges such as food insecurity and conflict potential. Crises like pandemics and conflicts are external drivers stressing already compromised domestic...

The article identifies an empirical blind spot in the literature on hydro-hegemony, with a scant analysis of power relations and resource control between states in transboundary water relations in a Latin American context. This article aims to fill this gap by examining Brazilian hydro-hegemony in the case of the Brazilian–Paraguayan Itaipu hydroel...

Popular climate change narratives often identify climate change as the prime trigger of all environmental hazards. Consistent and harmonised framing of this relationship by public media, epistemic communities and established institutions continually shapes and reinforces such narratives. These dominant narratives may present an image of an apocalyp...

Floods, droughts, cyclones - these days, every time we experience a disaster, it is framed as a climate event, and climate labelling dominates coverage in all knowledge communication portals. Large swathes of state water managers and popular media have developed a dominant discourse of blaming climate change for everything, which Hulme (2011) defin...

(Resumen en Español) Frente a los extremos climáticos, como inundaciones, terremotos y sequías, Ecuador ha logrado avances significativos en la estructuración de organizaciones gubernamentales para alertas y gestión de riesgos. Sin embargo, debido a la falta de una ley de reducción del riesgo de desastres y a la debilidad de las estrategias institu...

In this introductory paper we discuss the emergence of the ‘event’ as a critical point of interrogation of contemporary understandings of disaster. While the practicalities of DRR are underpinned by an applied vision of disaster studies largely built around hazards scholarship, developments within a number of theoretical perspectives increasingly d...

On February 27, 2010, Greater Concepción (GC), Chile, was hit by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake that triggered a tsunami. This article presents the findings in a qualitative and exploratory study format that used the disaster subculture framework as a lens to learn more about the vulnerability, specifically capacity of response, that people in GC exper...

In the absence of a transboundary water agreement between riparian states of Harirud River Basin, downstream states-Iran and Turkmenistan-have adopted a resource-capturing policy through the construction of Doosti Dam in the lower Harirud River Basin when the upstream state-Afghanistan-was engaged in social unrest during 1980s to the early 2000s. W...

Despite suffering significantly from the adverse impacts of climate change and human-induced hazards, many people at risk deliberately choose not to migrate from hazard-prone areas in coastal Bangladesh. As many of them encounter significant challenges in maintaining their livelihoods, ascertaining how and under what circumstances voluntary non-mig...

With the planning and the implementation of mega-infrastructure projects (MIPs)—such as large-scale agro-industrial plantations, large-scale road, rail, port, and energy networks (pipelines and dams), and green energy projects (large reforestation, solar, and wind)—people in drylands are promised sustainable development by governments and companies...

This edited volume examines the changes that arise from the entanglement of global interests and narratives with the local struggles that have always existed in the drylands of Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia/Inner Asia. Changes in drylands are happening in an overwhelming manner. Climate change, growing political instability, and increas...

Change is of all times, but it would appear that in the drylands of Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia/Inner Asia it is happening in an overwhelming manner. Climate change, growing political instability, and increasing enclosures of large expanses of land are some of the changes with far-reaching consequences for those who make their living...

We trace the development of a theory and analytical frames within international political economy that originated from Tony Allan’s mainstreaming of power as a determining factor in the control of transboundary flows. These include the Framework of Hydro-Hegemony, coexisting conflict and cooperation and Transboundary Water Interaction Analysis, cou...

Immobility in the context of climate change and environmental risks is understudied, particularly its relation to gender. In this article, we further understanding of immobility to include the gendered influences on potential of people to decide non-movement, decipher meanings that are attached with it and explore how it relates to mobility. We ana...

Bangladesh, a low-lying deltaic country, experiences recurrent floods. To reduce the subsequent losses and damages, self-preparedness measures are imperative. In that context, the present study attempted to assess the flood protection motivation status of local flood-prone households through the evaluation of threat and coping capacities, as well a...

Reports predict frighteningly serious escalations of the controversy between Afghanistan and its neighbours over transboundary waters. However, a postulated future is not empirical evidence. This paper focuses on Afghanistan’s relations with Iran. It aims to examine the evolution of the hydropolitical relations between Afghanistan and Iran over the...

The discussion on the relation between human mobility and climate change has moved beyond linear and exceptional terms. Building on these debates, this article, and the Special Issue on Climate Mobilities: Migration, im/mobilities and mobilities regimes in a changing climate that it introduces, conceptualises this relation in terms of climate mobil...

While the literature takes a neutral to optimistic view of cooperation between the riparian countries Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece on Flood Risk Management (FRM), floods in the Maritsa Basin have been increasing over the last decade. Considering the inherently political nature of transboundary rivers, this article investigates the role of power in F...

Bangladesh, a flat densely populated country in a dynamic delta, is vulnerable to recurring flood disasters. Various types of structural and non-structural flood risk reduction interventions have been implemented over the years to safeguard the people and assets. In that context, the present study assesses the community perception about the implica...

We proudly relaunch the International Journal of Water Governance. Free to read, free to publish in and peer reviewed as ever, it is now also open to practitioner contributions and commentaries. We (non-exhaustively) lay out some of our key water governance concerns and interests in the interrelationships between nature, society and technology that...

Frequent cases of water scarcity in Brazil reveal a water governance and administration crisis. During the water crisis (2013-2016), the São Paulo Metropolitan Region experienced a disaster scenario. This article analyses how it was constituted as a socially constructed disaster episode. A case study was carried out in the Novo Recreio neighbourhoo...

This opinion piece outlines the phenomenon of climate porn and the rise of the water wars debate.

This opinion piece outlines the phenomenon of climate porn and the rise of the water wars debate.

This opinion piece outlines the phenomenon of climate porn and the rise of the water wars debate.

Climate buffer infrastructure is on the rise as a promising ‘green’ climate adaptation strategy. More often than not, such infrastructure building is legitimized as an urgent technical intervention—while less attention is paid to the distribution of costs and benefits among the affected population. However, as this article shows, adaptation interve...

Day Zero was a purposefully designed narrative in political communication to change middle-class water consumption behaviour in a highly visible metropolitan context of persistent drought. As an “affective fact”, however it didn't so much elicit panic, but elicited a sense of fun and social solidarity in many. The unfeasibly precise prediction of w...

This newspaper article chronocles the history of dam resistance in the Kunene River between the early 2000s until now.

Why do communities prefer to stay in place despite potentially dangerous changes in their environment, even when governmental support for outmigration or resettlement is provided? That is the key question this paper seeks to answer. Voluntary immobility is a burgeoning research topic in environmental change-related migration studies, although the r...

In the past two decades, ‘Room for the River’ policies that give back space to rivers and compensate for ‘lost nature’ by letting water flow rather than confining it between dikes have become popular in the Netherlands. Although the Netherlands has a long history of localised participatory water governance in so-called water boards, this system had...

p>What role can non-diplomats play in managing and altering power relations in transboundary river basins? We answer this by investigating the lobbying eff orts of indigenous peoples to stop the construction of the planned Orokawe (Baynes) dam on the Kunene River. The Kunene River forms part of the border between Angola and Namibia with several con...

The article claims that to those affected, disaster is an existential experience. For them, it is an unexpected existential ‘event’ clearly separating a ‘before’ from an ‘after’. In the academic disaster domain however the ‘disaster as event’ is being eroded both by complexity approaches and critical approaches, which both, if for different reasons...

The South Asia region is one of the most unstable in the world, having experienced multiple wars. In recent years, water disputes have intensified between this region’s countries, including Pakistan and India, as water is intertwined with their security and has been securitized. Indeed, securitization is one of the strategies that has the power of...

This paper brings work on mobility and ‘staying’ together with theoretical ideas of resilience to consider responses to climate change. To date, the majority of work that has explored the impacts of climate change on human populations has taken a migration-centred perspective, with an emphasis on mobility as a key response in crises, including extr...

Managing transboundary river basins proves a challenge for China when encountering disagreements with its neighbors that experience different political and social conditions. This paper analyses what happens when China characterizes water as a security issue. Unlike past studies that mostly understand China’s water security practices through the pr...

This synthesis paper explores the reasons hindering water cooperation between India and Pakistan on the Indus River Basin. It argues that both domestic and international-level elements narrow the size of the ‘win-sets’ which make water cooperation between the two states highly challenging. Not only state actors but also the domestic actors in both...

The present contribution argues for taking power in hydrodiplomacy seriously and claims that the hydro-diplomacy literature is too focused on the 'puzzling' of diplomacy at the expense of the 'powering'. Legitimate rule needs a combination of hard (coercion) and soft power (consent). We posit that different styles can be distinguished in negotiatio...

In this article, we critically review the developmental claims made for the construction of the Rampal power plant in southwestern Bangladesh, in the light of evidence about transformations of land control related to this construction project. Land has become a heavily contested resource in the salinity-intruded southwestern coastal area of Banglad...

In Bangladesh, participation discourse has officially become part of the objectives of the government and international agencies for water management projects since the mid-1990s. At the same historical timeframe, originating from indigenous knowledges Tidal River Management (TRM) has been formalized as a less structural and more natural management...

Misleading claims about mass migration induced by climate change continue to surface in both academia and policy. This requires a new research agenda on ‘climate mobilities’ that moves beyond simplistic assumptions and more accurately advances knowledge of the nexus between human mobility and climate change.

Misleading claims about mass migration induced by climate change continue to surface in both academia and policy. This requires a new research agenda on ‘climate mobilities’ that moves beyond simplistic assumptions and more accurately advances knowledge of the nexus between human mobility and climate change.

Since the early work on defining and analyzing resilience in domains such as engineering, ecology and psychology, the concept has gained significant traction in many fields of research and practice. It has also become a very powerful justification for various policy goals in the water sector, evident in terms like flood resilience, river resilience...

Academic, political, and policy debates about the connection between environmental change and human migration have long focused on migration drivers and outcomes, resulting in a limited discussion between the discourses of “desolate climate refugees” and “environmental migrants as agents of adaptation.” These perspectives remain dominant, particula...

This article proposes and fleshes out an analytical method designed to support efforts to transform inequitable and unsustainable transboundary water arrangements. Such ‘transformative analysis’ leverages socio-ecological thinking to critically evaluate the processes that have established and maintain an arrangement, including hydro-diplomacy itsel...

Historically, flood resilience in large river deltas has been strongly tied to institutional and infrastructural interventions to manage flood risk (such as building of embankments and drainage structures). However, the introduction of infrastructural works has inevitably brought unforeseen, major consequences, such as biodiversity and accelerated...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a qualitative and exploratory study aimed at learning more about the local forms of resilience that emerged in two localities (one rural and one urban locality) in Talcahuano, Chile, in response to the major earthquake and devastating tsunami that hit them on February 27, 2010. Design...

In national and international arenas, climate change and its impact are often framed as a grave global security threat, causing chaos, conflict and destabilising countries. This framing has, however, not resulted in exceptional measures to tame the purported threat. This article examines the workings of such attempts at climate securitization and i...

The Congo River is the deepest in the world and second-longest in Africa. Harnessing its full hydropower potential has been an ongoing development dream of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and its more powerful regional allies. If completed, the Grand Inga complex near Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, will be the largest dam project in the w...

This article shows how Bangladesh and India intentionally maintain the status quo for the Brahmaputra River at the transboundary level, using material and ideational resources. Results show that India wants to reduce its hegemonic vulnerabilities and Bangladesh aims to maintain its control over the Brahmaputra river, simultaneously building its tec...

This article discusses points related to “disaster culture” and “safety culture” in Brazil, and debates how societal-structural factors influence the management of low incidence and high consequence disasters, such as dam breaks, which appear to provide limited evidence for preventive decision making. Discussion of the occurrence of disasters consi...

This chapter examines the emergence and problems of current dominant policy narratives which naturalize 'climate migration'. By this we mean the portrayal of migration from (largely) rural to urban areas as a direct effect of increased flood risk induced by climate change. Instead, we argue that migration is one of the possible-potentially positive...

This paper explores the geopolitical overlay that is shaping dynamic hydropolitical interactions of the Harirud River Basin, which is a basin that spans Afghanistan, Iran and Turkmenistan. This paper argues that the control and capture of water resources are not solely for economic development but rather for geopolitical reasons that serve the secu...

Envisioning the future city as the outcome of planned development, several master and strategic plans for Dhaka were prepared. However, these plans, do not adequately address the well-known and combined effects of climate change and unplanned urbanization on urban flooding. Additionally, the spatial planning component is missing in adaptation plann...

The article analyzes Tidal River Management in Bangladesh from a social learning perspective. Four cases were investigated using participatory assessment. Knowledge acquisition through transformations in the Tidal River Management process was explored as an intended learning outcome. The study finds that social learning occurred more prominently at...

The present work was carried out in order to discover the possibilities over the increment of new approaches concerning water resources management based on the social and institutional actors participation. To do so, the River Basin Watershed Committee (CBHRV, in Portuguese), located in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, was used as a case study. T...

This paper applies an Adaptation Tipping Point (ATP) approach for the assessment of vulnerability to flooding in the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh. A series of rigorous modelling exercises for fluvial and pluvial flooding was conducted to identify the critical ATPs of the physical system, under both existing and proposed flood risk management strategie...

Climate change adaptation creates significant challenges for decision makers in the flood risk-management policy domain. Given the complex characteristics of climate change, adaptive approaches (which can be adjusted as circumstances evolve) are deemed necessary to deal with a range of uncertainties around flood hazard and its impacts and associate...

The impact of water-related disasters has become more acute in cities of the Amazon Basin. Socio-economic impact assessments have a key role in improving sustainable mitigation projects in order to increase resilience and reduce societal vulnerability. This paper reviews the current state of loss assessments and then explores how to improve estimat...

On the occasion of world water day, this opinion piece critically reflects on the recent resurgence of the "water wars" narrative in policy and media circles and questions its timing, purpose and the evidence on which it is based.

Renewed attention for ecosystem dynamics when considering flood related interventions has been instrumental in shaping initiatives to ‘de-polder' lands, i.e. returning previously reclaimed land to the waters. This is a substantial paradigm shift in land and water management, as poldering has been crucial to the development of both the Dutch and Ban...

This article explores the ideational power of indigenous people's in the lower Kunene River basin regarding the planned Orokawe dam.

While excited about the ground‐breaking work coming out of the epistemic community promoting adaptive (climate) management (AM), we worry about its tendency to ignore normative implications originating in the implicit worldviews underlying AM literature. Generally, AM has a “green” ideology and focuses on the bioregion as the only sensible level fo...

This article places the theorization and analysis of hydro‐hegemony in the context of the scholarship on transboundary water conflict and cooperation. We discuss critiques, developments, and debates in this domain over the past 10 years, focusing particularly on the contributions of the London Water Research Group, showing how thinking on the theor...

The present contribution focuses on the ‘selling’ of the ‘climate crisis’ to intended key audiences, both in the international domain and at home. We look into the mechanics of crisis framing, the audience, and the resonance that the frame had, as well as development over time in two cases: the UK addressing the UN Security Council and the State Ad...

Recently the Vietnamese government has endorsed a long-term policy plan in which it is proposed to restore controlled seasonal flooding in the upper regions of the Vietnamese part of the Mekong delta. Restoring controlled flooding would contrast a period of several decades characterized by a dominant flood prevention approach to enable intensive ri...

Despite a widely embraced ecological turn and strident critique of megastructures in the 1990s, construction of large infrastructure has been reignited worldwide. While Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and River Basin Management (RBM) have at least discursively held sway as the dominant paradigm in water management since the late 1990s,...

This paper serves international water conflict resolution efforts by examining the ways that states contest hegemonic transboundary water arrangements. The conceptual framework of dynamic transboundary water interaction that it presents integrates theories about change and counter-hegemony to ascertain coercive, leverage, and liberating mechanisms...

In the past decades Dutch flood defence infrastructure has met with a growing societal awareness of landscape and cultural values, of the importance of local livelihoods, and increasingly strong claims and demands for active citizen involvement in decision-making and planning processes that change people's life-worlds. These have wrought important...

The southwest coastal delta of Bangladesh is not only geographically home to a dynamic interplay between land and water, and between fresh surface water and saline tides, but also to contentious debates on flood management policy and hydraulic engineering works. It has been argued that dealing with delta floods in this region boils down to adopting...

Dutch flood management policy was for a long time dominated by a protection-oriented approach. However, in the last 10 years a more risk-oriented approach has gained ground, denoted by the introduction of the concept of multilayered safety in 2009 in the National Water Plan. Since then, the dominant policy coalition focusing on resistance has found...

In this study, we review the ways in which water has recently been conceptualized by both natural and social scientists as either hydro‐social or socio‐hydrological. We do this in order to discuss whether and how they can be compatible, in order to enable dialogue across disciplines that seek to address the ecological and social challenges related...

While multi-functional river rehabilitation has taken the limelight in today's water management, its follow-up phase, maintenance, much less so. A key challenge for today´s environmental management is the number and diversity of actors and sectors involved, each with their own perceptions, interests and resources. The present contribution seeks to...

Coastal communities in Bangladesh are at great risk due to frequent cyclones and cyclone induced stormsurges, which damages inland and marine resource systems. In the present research, seven marginal livelihood groups including Farmers, Fisherman, Fry (shrimp) collectors, Salt farmers, Dry Fishers, Forest resource extractors, and Daily wage laboure...

The increasing frequency and severity of both natural and technological disasters in the world, especially but not exclusively in urban areas, put cities at the centre of discussion among practitioners and scholars alike, raising fundamental questions about nature and society, about development and technology. Disasters make evident the lack of sus...