ABSTRACT
An overview of the major shifts in the discursive construction of water, as well
as the policy shifts, which have been associated with different stages in the
evolution of the discourse, was presented in Chapter 4. The way the concept of
water is framed has an important infl uence on the ways in which water reform
policies come to be shaped. Shifting narratives of the causes of and solutions to
water issues both produce and drive policy processes, making spaces available
(as well as reducing them) in which different forms of water knowledge can be
articulated and mobilized. These narratives not only convey storylines of causes
and consequences but also often have embedded within them the advocacy of
particular policy instruments: “What appears as knowledge is structured by the
aim to which it is directed” (Nustad and Sending 2000: 221). Constructed in a
way that permits intervention, the promotion of particular technical approaches
lends further persuasiveness to policy discourses. When storylines are appealing
and instrumentation appears to be clear-cut, uncertainties are dispatched and all
that is required is implementation.
