Putting Practice Theory into Practice: Drought, Climate Change, and the Uncertainty of Water Demand Dr Alison Browne Lancaster Environment Centre

Calling all Translators... Successful policy = Social science as ‘active mediator’ and ‘translator’ However: – Is translation enough? – Is business and industry involvement merely a ‘fourth’ discourse? – Is there room to unveil normative elements of discourses? – Argue the need for change?

Overview Introducing a new ‘discourse’ into the debate – that of ‘practice theory’ Identifying need for resetting policy and scientific agenda Identifying maladaptations in current agendas Identifying current research at LEC chiefly the Adaptation and Resilience in a Changing Climate project (ARCC-Water)

ARCC-Water Applying sociological approach to regional water resource models (SE UK) sensitive to climate change Identify true uncertainty and sensitivity of water using practices to climate and other social, technical and infrastructural changes. Social Science Impacts: – to provide a (sociologically informed) estimate of future demand – ‘agitator’ of the assumptions of the physical science agenda within this project and the water industry.

The Problem of Estimating Demand Approaches which focus on average calculations of demand actually fail to reflect the different services that water provides, as well as the distinctive characteristics of the different practices (gardening, laundering, bathing etc), in and as part of which water is consumed in daily life.

The Disconnect between Supply and Demand Agendas which focus on simply interacting with the public (to reconsider their water use, to reconsider their use of water efficient devices etc) simplifies the complex relationships between the development of supply and infrastructural options (including technological change) and the everyday practices that characterise water demand.

Maladaptation Five different types of characteristics – increasing emissions of greenhouse gases; – disproportionately burdening the most vulnerable; – having high opportunity costs; – reducing incentives to adapt; – and increasing path dependencies.

Discourse Coalitions, Saturation and Institutionalisation Discourse Coalitions in the Economic, Psychological and Engineering Agendas – signify the importance of intervention in terms of supply, provision of water technologies and behavioural change as immediately related to the valued concept of ‘water’.

Maladaptive Discourse Coalitions Are these discourse coalitions actually maladaptive? Do they reduce the ‘interventions’ that are legitimised as adaptive within the space of water resource management? E.g., Legitimising large scale infrastructural change (desalination, recycled water) and choice based consumption (water efficient technologies) versus the efficacy of ‘bringing back the flannel’ i.e., changing cultural understandings of what it means to be clean, value of gardens, value of water using services?

Calling all Agitators... Practicing Practice Theory Practice based discourses open up other alternatives for – understanding water management – For conceptualising demand – For considering a wider understanding of the concept of ‘intervention’ – For reshaping dominant discourses – For providing new ways into interpretive governance regimes that challenge agendas and discourse coalitions

Barnett, J. & O'Neill, S. Maladaptation. Global Environmental Change 20, (2010). Chappells, H., Medd, W. & Shove, E. Disruption and change: Drought and the inconspicuous dynamics of garden lives. Social & Cultural Geography (in press).Hajer, M. Policy without polity? Policy analysis and the institutional void. Policy Sciences 36, (2003). Medd, W. & Chappells, H. Drought and demand in 2006: Consumers, water companies and regulators [Final Report]. (Lancaster University Lancaster, UK, 2008). Medd, W. & Shove, E. The sociology of water use. 75 (Lancaster University Lancaster, UK, 2006). Sofoulis, Z. in Creating Value: The Humanities and their Publics. 36th Annual Symposium of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, November 2005, Canberra: AAH Throgmorton, J. A. The rhetorics of policy analysis. Policy Sciences 24, (1991). Throgmorton, J. A. On the virtues of skilful meandering: Acting as a skilled-voice-in-the-flow of persuasive argumentation.. Journal of the American Planning Association 66 (2000).