Scaling discourse analysis: Experiences from Hermanus, South Africa and Walvis Bay, Namibia1

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Scaling discourse analysis: Experiences fromHermanus, South Africa and Walvis Bay,NamibiaRoger Keil a & Anne-Marie Debbané aa York University , Toronto, CanadaPublished online: 21 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Roger Keil & Anne-Marie Debbané (2005) Scaling discourse analysis: Experiences fromHermanus, South Africa and Walvis Bay, Namibia , Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 7:3, 257-276,DOI: 10.1080/15239080500339786

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Scaling Discourse Analysis: Experiences From Hermanus,

South Africa and Walvis Bay, Namibia1

ROGER KEIL & ANNE-MARIE DEBBANE

York University, Toronto, Canada

ABSTRACT Scaling discourse analysis refers to the necessity to consider environmentaldiscourse a multi-dimensional and diversified practice. Depending on the various levelsof state and society at which environmental policies are applied and depending on thegeographical scale at which their solution is sought, we have to differentiate both policyprocesses and outcomes in environmental politics. We introduce the importance of scalein mapping the multiple trajectories through which complex and intertwined relationsof power produce and reproduce uneven geographies in the area of urban environmentalpolicy. More specifically, we are seeking to cast light on the relationships between scale,discourse and the politics of urban environments. Using an approach influenced byurban political ecology, the relevant discourses here are constructed in a triangle ofterms: urban, ecology and policy. In this triangle, there are no givens and invariables.Its three points are constituted through contested discourses and practices. We approachour analysis from an understanding of urban water policies in two municipalitiesNamibia and South Africa as the outcome of a discursive and material practice operatingat various levels of state and society and as an integral part of wider processes of social andpolitical change.

KEY WORDS: Scale, discourse, urban environmental policy, water, Southern Africa

Introduction

Earth Summit: After days of intense negotiations, leaders settle on ablueprint to keep the planet alive. From the overfishing of the oceans,to the life-or-death problem of poverty across the continents, the subjectsdiscussed at the Earth Summit are among the biggest imaginable(The Independent, September 3, 2002).

This headline effectively captures the essence of the World Summit on SustainableDevelopment (WSSD) that was held in Johannesburg during the last week ofAugust in 2002. During this period, major international newspapers headlinedthe world’s environmental problems that threatened the very survival of the

Correspondence Address: Roger Keil, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J1P3, Canada. Fax: 1 416 736 5679; Tel.: 1 416 736 5252; Email: [email protected]

Journal of Environmental Policy & PlanningVol. 7, No. 3, September 2005, 257–276

1523-908X Print=1522-7200 Online=05=030257-20 # 2005 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080=15239080500339786

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planet, relaying the urgency and political will displayed by world leaders toreverse this impending doom of world poverty and environmental degradation.Kofi Annan declared that the WSSD must “set humankind on a new path thatwill ensure the security and survival of the planet for succeeding generations”.But, whose survival? Whose planet? What path? About one hundred leaders,vesting in themselves the power to make these decisions in the name of sixbillion people, had converged in Sandton, South Africa’s wealthiest suburb—home of the Oppenheimer dynasty that rule over the DeBeers conglomerate, argu-ably one of the most destructive, exploitative and oppressive corporations in theworld and yet a key role player at the Summit. As almost half of the world’spopulation suffers from daily starvation, lack of access to water and sanitation,and adequate housing, leaders of the world mulled over how they would goabout saving the planet.

The forgoing forcefully illustrates how a particular discourse becomes mobi-lized at the global scale, and further reveals how “the power to proclaim globalityis the power to put the world on alert from which there is no escape, the place atwhich there exists no option for disengagement” (Herod & Wright, 2002, p. 1).Of course, there are many more examples from which to draw to make thispoint. However, in the context of the example above, the WSSD instantiated apolitical and discursive moment in which heads of state joined up with worldbusiness leaders and exerted their power to forge a global political agenda thatpromoted public–private partnerships as offering the most promising solutionsto the world’s pressing social and environmental problems experienced atmultiple geographical scales and reflecting profoundly uneven socio-ecologicalrealities.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the importance of scale in mappingthe multiple trajectories through which complex and intertwined relations ofpower produce and reproduce uneven geographies in the area of urban environ-mental policy. More specifically, we are seeking to cast light on the relationshipsbetween scale, discourse and the politics of urban environments. The analysis isapproached from an understanding of urban water policies as the outcome of adiscursive and material practice operating at various levels of state and societyand as an integral part of wider processes of social and political change, expressedin socially and materially contradictory ways.

The environmental policy literature is now replete with references todiscourse theory (Desfor & Keil, 2004; Fischer, 2000; Fischer & Hajer, 1999;Hajer, 1995, 2003; Hajer & Wagenaar, 2003; Rydin, 2003). While a wide range ofapplications of discourse analysis have come from this fertile academic field,most would certainly agree with a fundamental definition—clear and pristine—which Maarten Hajer has proposed for the use of discourse analysis. He used itprimarily to find out “why a particular understanding of the environmentalproblem at some point gains dominance and is seen as authoritative, whileother understandings are discredited” (1995, p. 43). Similarly, one can continueto hold on to a more or less non-controversial definition of discourse as “a specificensemble of ideas, concepts, and categorizations that are produced, reproduced,and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning isgiven to physical and social realities” (Hajer, 1995). It is important to note herethat this understanding of discourse is linked in the field of environmentalpolicy to the notion of a discursively constructed notion of nature (Hajer, 1995).In fact, this constructionist view is distinctive about the newer “post-postivist”

258 R. Keil & A.-M. Debbane

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studies of environmental policy of which Hajer among others is a representative(see also Desfor & Keil, 2004). To speak of “discourses of nature,” is often ident-ified with a post-structuralist turn in the social sciences (Castree, 2001b, p. 12),although many spokespersons for the linguistic turn identify as Marxists. AsDavid Demeritt (2002) has argued in a lucid review of the constructionist litera-ture, there are, in fact, various strands of constructionism, which build on differentunderstandings of what nature is and how it is constructed. Specifically withrespect to urban research, Loretta Lees (2004) has recently provided a limited2

but useful review of some discourse theoretical literature. She briefly identifiestwo related sets of problems in this literature: the lack of distinction betweenthe Marxist and Foucaultian traditions of discursive analyses; and the lack ofmethodological precision. Another central unresolved question, which hasrecently emerged in the literature on environmental policy is the following:How does the scaling of discourse analysis allow us to understand urban environ-mental policies as a power-laden process through which multiple narratives andtheir associated practices are negotiated and contested at interlocking scales? Howare environmental policies simultaneously constituted by and constituted ofgeographical scales in ways that articulate certain political projects (Swyngedouw,2004a)?

Hajer himself has made great strides to implicitly include considerationsof scale in his work on international environmental policy. In recognizing the“institutional void” in the arena where environmental politics now operates ina globalized world, Hajer maintains:

More than before, solutions for pressing problems cannot be found withinthe boundaries of sovereign polities. As established institutional arrange-ments often lack the powers to deliver the required or requested policyresults on their own, they take part in transnational, polycentric networksof governance in which power is dispersed. . . . In such cases action takesplace in an ‘institutional void’: there are no clear rules and norms according towhich politics is to be conducted and policy measures are to be agreed upon(Hajer, 2003, p. 175).

This protracted issue of the rescaling of sovereignty has been taken up by politicalscientists (Magnusson, 1996), and has had a particular significance with regard tothe environment: Robert Paehlke (2000), for example, has discussed the questionof how environmental policy in one country—Canada—has been recalibratedunder globalization pressures and how environmental decision-making can be“rightsized” (Paehlke, 2001). Yet, neither of these literatures explicitly speaks tothe issue of scale. For that purpose, one has to look elsewhere. McMaster &Sheppard (2004b, p. 18; see also Herod & Wright, 2002, pp. 147–214) note in arecent textbook treatment of the subject:

Discursive representations of scale are just beginning to emerge as adistinct theme, drawing on the more general concern, during the recentcultural turn in human geography, with discourse theory. In discoursetheory, it is argued that rather than language reflecting the world, theworld comes to reflect language.

While this may be too categorical and simple a distinction which disregards dis-cursive traditions nested in political economy and materialist theory, we agreewith these authors when they observe: “In this view, the importance of certain

Scaling Discourse Analysis 259

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ideas and phenomena, such as certain scales, and the ways in which they areroutinely perceived and thought about, are shaped by societal discourses”(McMaster & Sheppard, 2004b). In turn, of course, scales reflect back on theways in which the world is constructed. Scaling discourse analysis, then, refersto the necessity to consider environmental discourse a multi-dimensional anddiversified practice. Depending on the various levels of state and society atwhich environmental policies are applied and depending on the geographicalscale at which their solution is sought, there is a need to differentiate bothpolicy processes and outcomes in environmental politics. This paper discusseshow this process of scaling relates to comparative cases of environmental conflictin two towns in Namibia and South Africa. Water policies and politics in SouthAfrica and a Local Agenda 21 project in Namibia were specifically studied.

The analysis is influenced very strongly by current debates on urban politicalecology (UPE) (see Keil, 2003, forthcoming for a review). In a slight twisting of thethree constitutive elements of UPE—urban, political and ecology—the relevantdiscourses are constructed in the context of this paper in a triangle of terms:urban, ecology and policy. The main argument in this paper initially is that inthis triangle, there are no givens and invariables. Its three points are constitutedthrough contested discourses and practices.

(i) Following Henri Lefebvre’s (1991, 1996, 2003; Schmid, 2005) work, the urbanis constituted at an always changing level of socio-spatial action that connectsthe global (general) with the specific (individual). It is, in addition, the site ofthe realization of everyday life. The urban is constituted through social actionand structural conditions that operate on a variety of scales. It is not to beconfused with the local, but, in fact, contains elements of socio-spatialreality from the body to the global. The urban is realized through the livedexperiences of social collectives and individuals who construct their livesin a multiplicity of interconnected activities and discourses. The urban, there-fore, cannot be expressed merely in terms of political boundaries (Weber),statistical analysis (most positivist urban studies), a predetermined set ofcollective services (Castells), or the boundaries of commutersheds (Harvey)alone (to pick only some of the many different ways in which ‘the city’ hasbeen defined in the literature). The urban will always have to be understoodas the conflicted outcome and site of discursive constructions that go beyondthese positive determinations. It contains the immeasurable, the possible andthe intangible. Similarly, the same logic applies to the term ‘urban sustain-ability’: it specifically does not mean local sustainability, but takes a viewof urban which consciously accepts its construction—in the Lefebvriansense—as a combination of the global/universal and the individual.

(ii) Ecology is a term that has belonged to the most controversial and misused inthe history of the twentieth century. Specifically in the wake of the ChicagoSchool of Sociology, human and urban ecology became highly questionableapplications of what essentially seemed biological concepts to social reality.There are, of course, competing conceptions of the societal relationshipswith nature, among which this analysis prioritizes those that emanate froma political economy tradition. For the purpose here, Castree’s (2000) recentdiscussion of some of the important debates among ecological Marxistsis relied upon. Castree (2000, p. 28) points to the production of nature as“a continuous process in which nature and capital co-constitute one another


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in temporally and geographically varied and contingent ways (emphasis in theoriginal)”. Castree (2000, p. 31) calls for “contextualised analyses of capital–nature relationships in particular times and places as they affect differentconstituencies”. This points to what is most important about the productionof nature thesis in the context of this present work: it enables us to includespace and scale (and the production of space and scale) as constitutingdimensions of the production of nature. This is relevant as the urban hasbeen identified as a particularly important site where the production ofnature takes place in the current era. A process-orientated understandingof relations of nature, society and economy relates directly to the discursiveconstruction of the political economy of nature and hence of ecology as asocio-natural practice. The analysis here rests on the assumption that the pol-itical economy of urban natures is a set of material and discursive practices,which articulate nature, society and economy (differentiated by variousspaces, scales and times). Research focuses on the interaction of municipal,urban and regional political institutions, locally expressed economic interestsand civic activism in areas of urban environmental justice and water policy.On an abstract level, this understanding of articulation corresponds toBenton’s important notion: “The ecological problems of any form of socialand economic life would have to be theorised as the outcome of this specificstructure of natural/social articulation” (Benton, cited in Castree, 2000, p. 22).Such articulation is examined through discourse and socio-ecologicalpractices.

(iii) Like urban and ecology, policy is a discursive construction. It is constitutedlargely through the competing claims of story-lines and discourse coalitionsusing these story-lines to advance their political goals. Any notion of ration-ally or neutrally produced policies (fashioned after the device of an allegedlyneutral scientific process, for example) is a sheer illusion. What is defensiblein policy formulation processes is largely a matter of relative power of actorsin the policy process. In addition, policies always articulate social agendasbeyond the stated objectives of their specific field. That is, urban environ-mental policies made for water, air or soil are always also about issuessuch as social control, economic growth and potentially liberation (Desfor& Keil, 2004).

Underlying this paper are two case studies. First, there is the view fromHermanus, a coastal town in the Western Cape, South Africa, where water hasbecome a critical nexus in which to examine relationships of power, unevengeographies and urban environmental policy. The perspective of equity is devel-oped in terms of access to water in the black township Zwelihle in Hermanus,South Africa. The Municipality of Greater Hermanus recently carried out urbanwater policy reforms to integrate social and ecological objectives in the provisionof water services. This particular case study was selected as it afforded the oppor-tunity to research what the national government has labelled a model for watermanagement. More importantly, for the purposes of this paper, the restructuringof water policies in Hermanus illustrates how urban environmental policies areshaped by a complex web of socio-ecological relations that operate in and throughmultiple scales and simultaneously construct new scales of socio-ecological nego-tiation, compromise and conflict. As shall be seen, the discourse of sustainabilitythat frames water policies in Hermanus captures wider processes of state


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restructuring, the commodification of municipal services, global economic inte-gration, and social redistribution and becomes a key political strategy to articulatea national post-apartheid project.

Secondly, the paper looks at municipal environmental policy in the town ofWalvis Bay, Namibia. A Local Agenda 21 project, funded by the Danish govern-ment and administered by the Danish development company Cowi-AS, hascreated a new policy framework for local environmental policy. One of the specificpolicy areas affected is the delivery and management of this desert town’s waterresources and the survival and protection of the local lagoon. As the town grows,as its economy expands and population increases, Walvis Bay is faced with anumber of equity and access issues related to water. Thinking about environ-mental policy in this particular town occurs in a contextual frame of referencethat involves at least the following themes: local injustices (expressed in thesegregated landscape of post-apartheid Walvis Bay), local conservation discourse(the lagoon), historical injustices (imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism),transnational economic development (fishing, tourism and salt), global appealsto sustainability (the Danish connection) and issues of post-liberation nationaldevelopment.

The first section of this paper examines the recent geographical literature thatchallenges ontologically normalized categories of scale and aims to develop anepistemology of scale that offers a more powerful analytical tool for geographicalresearch. In the following section, literature in political ecology is relied on tointroduce the relationship between scale and socio-ecological relations, and todemonstrate how the urbanization of water is embedded in scaled power relation-ships. Attention then turns to work that examines the discourses surroundingurban water policies in Hermanus, South Africa, and Walvis Bay, Namibia. Thearticle concludes by looking back once again to the WSSD as a way of suggestingthat interscalar relationships are strategically important in articulating an alterna-tive politics of socio-ecological change.

Geographies of Scale

The terms ‘scale’ and ‘re-scaling’ have recently received much attention in socialgeography (Brenner, 1997, 1998, 2000; Herod & Wright, 2002; Howitt, 2002; Kelly,1999; Marston, 2000; McMaster & Sheppard, 2004a; see also www.carleton.ca/polecon/scale). Although it is not the intention to repeat this work, a brief over-view of the main ideas and debates that have ignited so much interest in scaleis in order. As they are used here extensively, a short definition may be in order.The re-scaling of urban life worlds is part of all processes of urbanization but itis perhaps the most visible characteristic of the current period of globalization.Not only are humans and commodities brought into immediate proximitythrough global urbanization processes, the re-scaling includes also the growingsimultaneity of the urban experience. Not surprisingly, previously, scales havebeen viewed as largely rigid and stable because only through increasing globali-zation experiences of modern existence have been extended and newly ordered.Transnationalization itself destroys the fixity of scales of socio-spatial action andstructures that contextualize this action. Scales are not structured through geophy-sical or other seemingly unchangeable preconditions but are constantly changingproducts and sites of social production (Brenner, 2000; Keil & Brenner 2003;Swyngedouw, 2000). Following Brenner, it is possible to argue that the scale


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question has moved into the centre of urban discourse (Brenner, 1997, 1998, 2000).In the first instance, the urban scale can now be grasped as a “complex materiali-zation of capitalist social relations” (Brenner, 2000, pp. 364–365). In the secondinstance one needs to move away from inflexible functional differentiations,for example, of different state levels. Who and what state level is responsible forenvironmental policy, for example, is a matter of constant re-negotiation amongpolitical and social actors and their discursive interventions and struggles.

There is now wide acceptance among critical human geographers thatgeographical scale is not an ontologically fixed category; instead, scales areactively produced by a multiplicity of social actors as a means to organizegeographical differentiation (Smith, 1984; Taylor, 1982). As a social construction,scales constitute arenas in which power is exercised to construct spaces ofexclusion/inclusion and form identities, and where divergent ideologies areexpressed (Delaney & Leitner, 1997; Herod & Wright, 2002; Smith, 1993;Swyngedouw, 2004a).

The Politics of Scale

Much interest has been generated in the politics of scale in relation to the rapidlychanging geographies that have taken hold during this period of intensiveeconomic globalization. Smith (1984) has defined the politics of scale asthe social, economic and political processes through which social actorsproduce and reproduce scales of socio-spatial organization. Geographical scalesthus articulate a spatial configuration of power relations through which socialactors engage in a contest of power to achieve their particular political goals.

Through political and economic restructuring, the state has been directlyimplicated in enabling the extension of transnational circuits of capital (Harvey,1996; Swyngedouw, 2000). Swyngedouw (2000) refers to the re-organization orrescaling of social regulation and power as “glocalization” where new arrange-ments of governance, which include the devolution of national capital–labourregulations to localized forms of wage negotiations and working conditions; thedismantling of national welfare regimes leading to the downscaling of publicmoney transfers; state intervention in the national economy is downscaledeither to the level of the expansionary urban regimes or upscaled to supra-nationalregulatory institutions such as the EU, NAFTA and the WTO. Glocalization or there-territorialization and de-territorialization of governance represents a scalar fixfor the state that on the surface appears as the devolution of state power, but inreality is accomplished through increasing authoritative power and controlleading to greater political exclusion and limited democratic engagement(Cox, 2002; Swyngedouw, 2000).

For the purposes of this paper, the politics of scale are related to the formationof environmental policies in the field of water. The paper follows Erik Swynge-douw (2004a, p. 134), who has recently explained: “The mobilization of scalarnarratives, scalar politics, and scalar practices, then, becomes an integral part ofpolitical power struggles and strategies. This propels considerations of scale tothe forefront of both ecological and emancipatory politics”.

A number of empirical investigations have shown how scaling processes alsoincorporate gender, racial, cultural, ecological, political, economic, as well ashistorical dimensions (Heynen, 2003; Howitt, 2002; Katz, 2001; Kurtz, 2003;Marston, 2000; Nelson, 2004; Swyngedouw, 2004a; Towers, 2000; Williams,


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1999). Through representations of scale and scale politics, these studies demon-strate how relationships of identity, place and power are encapsulated inscaling processes. This means that multiple forms of oppression and resistanceare constitutive of scaling processes, but also that scale is socially productive(Williams, 1999). As Smith (1993, p. 114) explains, “By setting boundaries, scalecan be constructed as a means of constraint and exclusion, a means of imposingidentity, but a politics of scale can also become a weapon of expansion andinclusion, a means of enlarging identities”. It follows then, that an adequateanalysis of scale requires looking at the intersecting classed, racialized andgendered relations of power through which scaling processes of social changeare mediated.

Four important points can be made to summarize briefly this discussion onscale. First, scale is not an ontologically fixed category but a social construction;secondly, scales are produced through a contest of power, which constitutes apolitics of scale; thirdly, a relational analysis of scales focuses on understandingthe social processes that construct scales, as well as the multi-directional and inter-secting relationships between scales; and, fourthly, multiple relations of power areembedded in processes that are constitutive of scale.

A Political Ecology of Water: an Approximation

Before entering the narrative on the Hermanus case, it may be useful to situate thisstory in a more general discussion on urban water. The urbanization of water,perfected through technological modernization, represents one of the mostfundamental and ingenious socio-ecological projects inscribed within a histori-cal–geographical process through which nature is perpetually transformed(Harvey, 1996; Swyngedouw, 1996, 2004b). Water is harnessed, diverted, captured,stored and transformed and then circulated within a complex undergroundreticulated network to finally flow from our taps. While in its initial stages, urban-ization and the urbanization of water were determined by geo-climactic variables,sophisticated water production systems opened new frontiers where the“natural” availability of water was no longer a barrier (Swyngedouw, 1996,p. 390). Take one example, among many more, of the Lesotho Highlands WaterProject, a multi-phase high capacity water supply infrastructure project, whichbegan in the early 1990s, intended to meet an anticipated increasing demandfor water in Johannesburg, the urban and industrial heartland of South Africa,and also one of the driest regions of the country. Through a series of five damsand tunnels, water is diverted and travels over thousands of kilometres acrossthe mountains of Lesotho to Johannesburg.3 As a result of technological andengineering supremacy over water, urban water flows through reticulated net-works in limitless quantities. The “conquest of urban water” has thus modifiedsocial relationships with water, transcending its survival characteristics into“the realm of commodity” (Swyngedouw, 1996). In this sense, the urbanizationof water is the outcome of relations and processes of production that discursivelyand materially “socialize nature” (Castree, 2001a), that is, shape social relation-ships with nature, and specifically water.

The production of urban water symbolically and materially embodiesthe intertwined social, ecological, political and economic processes operating inand through multiple scales that produce and reproduce urban social life(Desfor & Keil, 2004; Swyngedouw & Heynen, 2003; Swyngedouw, 1996, 2004b;


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Young & Keil, 2005). At the same time, the socio-ecological transformation ofwater is integral to processes that constitute and reconstitute scales, both socialand ecological forms of organization, in ways that inflect cultural and politicalmeaning into social relationships with water (Haraway, 1991, 1997, cited inSwyngedouw, 2004a). More importantly, questions about control over andaccess to water are mediated through these scalar configurations that internalizestructures of power at multiple scales along class, racial and gender lines. Theserelations of power operate through dialectical relationships of domination/subor-dination, inclusion/exclusion, oppression/exploitation, and are a function of pol-itical economic interests. As Harvey (1996) insists, socio-ecological projects arealways political projects. Water then provides a conceptual and empirical lensthrough which to unearth how processes producing specific socio-ecological con-ditions intersect with scaling processes in ways that express a spatialized politicsin which water becomes a contested terrain of political and social struggle. Urbanpolitical ecology focuses this analysis on the discursive and material practicesthrough which urban socio-ecological inequalities are historically produced,sustained and resisted.

Recent literature in the political ecology of water (Bakker, 2003; Kaıka, 2003;Keil & Graham, 1998; Swyngedouw, 2004a, 2004b; Young & Keil, 2005) has exam-ined processes of political and economic restructuring of urban water policies. Interms of the question of scale, this literature has illustrated the multiscaled dimen-sions and relationships through which the political and economic restructuring ofurban water services takes place. However, few have examined how urban wateris constitutive of processes that construct scales. Swyngedouw (2004a) doesprovide two insightful examples where he examines the construction of scaleand the politics of re-scaling through case studies on the political ecology ofurban water in Guayquil, Ecuador and the modernization of the Spanish “water-scape”. First, he illustrates how the urbanization of water in Guayquil, Ecuador ispredicated on the re-territorialization of ecological scales and structures of politi-cal-economic power that produced uneven geographies of socio-ecologicalrelations. At each turn in the national economy, the deeply stratified spatial organ-ization and regulation of water in the city was reconfigured to accommodatepolitical economic interests at various and interrelated scales. Secondly, the poli-tics of scale are examined through the discourses surrounding the policies andplanning of national hydraulic projects in Spain over the course of the nineteenthcentury. In a concerted attempt to uplift the country out of political and economiccrisis, the ruling power and scientific elite converged to institute a national waterregime that disrupted existing provincial and municipal structures of wateradministration through the mobilization of hegemonic discourses of moderniz-ation and of ecological imperatives. This rescaling of water politics was metwith strong resistance from a traditional rural elite fighting to preserve a scaleof water administration that facilitated their control over the existing social order.

Drawing on the previous discussion, the relationships between scale andurban water policy discourses will be explored next through the case studies.The case studies draw on the analysis of the discourse underpinning theprogrammes and policies based on reviewing central policy documents, mediaarchives, participant observation and on insights from interviews with key politi-cal actors and community residents, as well as from attending public meetings.The field-work has resulted in a clear understanding of the interactions withinsocial-ecological processes and the power lines that direct them.


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The Cases

Hermanus, South Africa

Hermanus is a coastal town, 130 km east of Cape Town, nestled between moun-tains and sea. Its notability has grown in recent years, not only as a primetourist destination, but also as being a national model for progressive watermanagement with the introduction of the nationally and internationally acclaimedGreater Hermanus Water Conservation Programme (GHWCP) in late 1996. TheGHWCP evolved through a collaboration between the municipal and nationalgovernments. However, the discursive and material practices surroundingwater policies in Hermanus unfold through a myriad of interconnected scalesthat operate simultaneously and multi-directionally. Furthermore, these scaledrelationships and processes are part of the overall construction of the urbanscale. The water debate that sparked the water conservation programmeemerged amidst increasing concerns about a strained water supply system,which intersect with the social, economic and political processes unfoldingsince South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994.

First, demand for water has skyrocketed in Hermanus as the town has beenexperiencing rapid population growth, economic development and an explodinginternational tourist industry, all of which pose a threat to the sustainability of thetown’s available water supply. A national policy shift in water management awayfrom conventional supply-side solutions required alternative solutions, wherebymanaging demand for water offered a proactive approach to dealing with ascarce water supply. Secondly, local government boundaries were re-demarcated,entailing a process of municipal amalgamation. Thus, in 1995, the Municipality ofGreater Hermanus was formed to amalgamate eight suburbs. These includedmainly white affluent as well as low-income black and coloured suburbs, histori-cally referred to as townships.4 Prior to amalgamation, each of these suburbsmanaged their own water supply, which then fell under one managementsystem of the Municipality of Greater Hermanus. Furthermore, like other munici-palities around the country, intergovernmental transfers were slashed by 85 percent (Beall et al., 2000). Thirdly, as the former black township, Zwelihle suffersthe most from the distributional inequities as a result of historical geographicalprocesses of uneven distribution of piped water networks. Access to water ser-vices in the township is mostly limited to outdoor taps and toilets, while whiteareas enjoy first-class water services. While non-payment of services was a formof resistance under apartheid, this persisted afterwards due to non-affordability.Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) policy makers consider thatdefeating the non-payment of services can be achieved by making water moreaffordable to the poor, which also improves equity in access to water. Fourthly,macroeconomic policies (i.e. Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR)programme) are cast in a neoliberal framework of fiscal discipline and the corpor-atization of municipal services. The urban water supply system in Hermanus isthus at the crossroads of having to meet increasing demand and reduce inequitiesin access to water within the limits of available water supply and under thepressure to balance budgets. In an attempt to reconcile these issues, theGHWCP was developed as a water management strategy to promote “sociallyjust and sustainable water management practices” (Van der Linde, 1997).

The ‘water crisis’ in Hermanus precipitated a shift in urban water manage-ment, by which the ecological imperative enabled the implementation of


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cost-effective practices. The pivotal factor of the GHWCP was to increase watertariffs sufficiently such that a reduction in water consumption would not erodeincome from water services because as one municipal official pointed out,“The municipality must be treated as a business. Water services must generateenough income to sustain itself” (Theo Loubser, Senior Income Accountant, inter-view). In keeping with national cost recovery policies, the tariff structure of theGHWCP consists of a basic charge for water and a consumption charge whichis based on a free lifeline supply followed by an eleven-step gradually increasingblock tariff. The lifeline supply is meant to provide basic access to water for allwhile the block tariffs play a double role by acting as an economic incentive tocurb demand for water and also as a cross-subsidizing mechanism. As aholiday town, the municipality has long relied on the basic charge to provide asteady inflow of income regardless of whether homeowners are physicallypresent. Although the basic charge is categorized into three different tariffs,according to levels of income, Zwelihle residents, the majority of who qualifyfor lower or indigent tariffs, have not had access to this subsidy and bear adeep financial burden.

In its first three years of implementation, the GHWCP tariff structureachieved its stated goals: a 30 per cent reduction in water demand and a 20 percent surplus in water revenue, the bulk of which was generated during thepeak holiday season (DWAF, 1997). During this same period, poor communitiesexperienced massive water cut-offs due to non-payment of accounts, as in Zwe-lihle, where it was estimated that over half of the residents were affected(Deedat et al., 2001). Further punitive measures were taken against residentswhose accounts were in arrears, with eviction notices being served. Thisunleashed a loud community outcry that made national headlines, which notonly destabilized local water politics but reverberated out to the scale of nationalgovernment, anxious to uphold its self-proclaimed progress in improving accessto water, as well as to salvage the reputed success of its model water conservationprogramme. Consequently, the national water minister intervened, urging themunicipality to avoid water cut-offs and to put a moratorium on evictions.

The situation in Hermanus where residents from formerly black townshipspay the same municipal rates as wealthy fully serviced suburbs for inferiorservices (water, electricity, roads, storm drainage, waste removal, street lighting)and suffer from exposure to environmentally noxious facilities such as seweragetreatment plants and dumping sites accurately depicts the socio-ecological inequi-ties tainting the South African urban landscape. Apartheid’s system of racializedplanning and development firmly set the foundation, which becomes unshake-able under forceful cost recovery policies, the corporatization of municipalservices, and private sector developments with strong tendencies towardred-lining poor neighbourhoods. These market-orientated “developmental”local government practices reflect wider political processes occurring at thenational level, which are themselves subjected to the powerful influence of globa-lized development discourses.5

Several scalar considerations can be drawn to highlight how urban waterpolitics in Hermanus are enacted through a constellation of multi-scaled processesinfused with relations of power cutting across classed, racial and gender lines.First, the rescaling of local politics through municipal amalgamation facilitatedthe centralization of urban water management, which implied the universal appli-cation of water policies despite the densely spatialized socio-economic differences


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between poor and affluent suburbs, and a historical geography of spatially racia-lized distribution of piped water.

Secondly, urban water policies aimed at providing a lasting solution to thetown’s restricted water supply were framed within the discourse of sustainability(or ecological modernization). Thus, the “water crisis” created an ecologicalimperative that instantiated a political opportunity permitting a fundamentalrestructuring of the water tariff structure from one that provided domesticwater services at virtually no cost to residents to one that resulted in an exponen-tial rise in water tariffs charged to residents. The strain on water supply was inreality a direct result of profligate water consumption in affluent white suburbs,yet poor township residents, whose consumption of water is limited to meetingbasic human needs, disproportionately bore the brunt of the water crisis. Ratherthan localizing demand management strategies to curb unsustainable waterconsumption at the scale at which the problem originated, the problem wasdisplaced from one scale to another. This scalar disjuncture can be observedsimilarly in the way in which the reduction of water demand was assessed.

Thirdly, the new water policy led to a re-regulation of social practicesembedded in a particular set of values that operated specifically at the scale ofthe household. On the one hand, the local government made concerted attemptsto regulate water consumption by instilling a water conservation ethic. The policywas introduced in conjunction with an aggressive communication campaign thatpromoted water conservation strategies in order to alter wasteful consumptionpractices. However, this campaign was indeed localized in affluent suburbs,clearly recognizing where promotional campaigns would be most effective. Onthe other hand, a national campaign that was aimed at reversing a “culture ofnon-payment” in townships invoked notions of citizenship and of nation-buildingto encourage the payment of municipal accounts. This campaign was highly gen-dered as women in the majority of township homes bear the responsibility ofensuring access to water to the household and of paying bills, which was madeobvious by the campaign’s public advertisements that featured an image of awoman holding a paid-up municipal account. It is at the scale of the household,where the regulation of water consumption practices takes a particular form,that the discursive and material contradictions of water conservation policiesand the intersection of multiple relations of power become most visible.

Finally, the community protests that erupted in Hermanus reveal the differentscalar strategies utilized by township residents and the national government. Thetownship residents jumped scales by making their voices heard through thenational press resulting in positive outcomes; conversely, the national governmentaggressively sought to contain the dispute at the local scale so as to prevent the scalestretching of community struggles to other localities experiencing similar problems.

In Hermanus, the combination of political, economic, social and ecologicaldimensions created a political and discursive opportunity to reformulate waterpolicies framed within the discourse of sustainability to legitimate a drasticincrease in water tariffs. While appealing to the ecological imperative mightcarry weight in affluent suburbs that profligately consume water, it does nothold up to the scrutiny of poor township residents that continue to encounter his-torically racialized socio-ecological inequities that shape their everyday practices.Examining the scaled processes through which urban water politics in Hermanusunfold reveals the political-economic relations and social relations of everydaypractices through which uneven socio-ecological conditions are produced and


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reproduced. In addition, focusing on ways in which discursive and materialprocesses regulate and organize spatial relations illuminates spaces of possibilityfor mobilizing a socially and ecologically just politics of water such that priority isgiven to equitable access to water for basic human needs ahead of hedonistic andwasteful consumption practices.

Walvis Bay, Namibia

Walvis Bay is a port town of c. 37 000 on the central Atlantic coast of Namibia.Characterized by the stark contrast of desert and sea, the Walvis Bay urban areahas become the site of an extensive urban sustainability project based on the prin-ciples of Local Agenda 21 (LA21) (Barnard, 2001; Namib Times, 2001). Sustainabledevelopment has generally become the hegemonic discourse of developmentpolitics at various scales and this instance of LA21 politics will be treated as anexpression of this general tendency (Brand & Gorg, 2002; Gorg & Brand, 2002).Globally, through initiatives such as LA21, municipalities and urban regionshave received a general framework through which they can aspire to improvelocal environments and to further urban growth (Low et al., 2000). The case ofWalvis Bay, which is reviewed here, is certainly part of this discourse. Ecologicalmodernization here refers to tangible processes of technological and proceduralchange that are designed to allow cities (however chaotic such a concept is inthis context) to use less energy and materials, to pollute less, and to create moredurable social relationships with nature (see Desfor & Keil, 2004).

Walvis Bay’s socio-spatial structure is characterized by its apartheid historyunder South African administration in the second half of the twentieth century.The socio-demographic pattern is clearly one of high segregation. The current resi-dential zones correspond rather directly with the former apartheid structure. Theformer township of Kuisebmond, for example, still carries the traits of segregationand poverty, with the town’s highest population density and its overwhelminglyAfrican population. Narraville, a previous coloured township, also has higherdensities and is less wealthy than the majority white districts in the south of themunicipality (Billawer & Ekobo, 2002; Silverman, 2002). Water plays a centralrole in this story be it through the concern for the town’s lagoon, the quality ofdrinking water for the growing urban population or the availability of enoughfresh water resources for the town’s booming fishing industry.

Not surprisingly, water use both in absolute terms and per capita is lowest inthe poorest suburbs in the north and the east of the city and highest in the south.Visually, there is a stark contrast between the modern single family home andmultiplex structures surrounded by green lawns in the south, and the run-downhostels and squatter settlements that exist in Kuisebmond, although a newhousing project in the area of the migrant worker hostel holds promise for themany new migrants to the area attracted by employment opportunities in thefishing industry. The town has good reticulation throughout its area, althoughthere are huge differences in the number of actual access points to the watersystem (Billawer & Ekobo, 2002; Department of Water, Waste and EnvironmentalManagement, Walvis Bay, 2002).

The Walvis Bay LA21 project was first designed in 2000, overseen by theDanish Cooperation for Environment and Development (Danced) (Conservation,2002). The Danish consulting company COWI was awarded the contract toconduct the project, which officially started in May 2001. It coincided with a


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national initiative to increase debate around sustainable development in Namibia(Tarr, 2000). The project was mostly designed around specific technical processesin the fields of water, waste and environmental management for which the Muni-cipality and COWI would together work out joint action plans. The project officeshave been housed at the Civic Centre of Walvis Bay, which has facilitated closedaily interaction of the project team with municipal staff. The municipality hasa Department of Water, Waste and Environmental Management (WWE), whosenewly formed Environmental Management Section (EMS) spearheads the LA21project (Municipality of Walvis Bay, 2002). The project fits well into the existingstate architecture which

delegates power from the national level to local authorities to administermunicipal areas. This includes the responsibility to manage naturalresources. The Municipality of Walvis Bay and its Council was establishedunder the provisions of the Act as a Class One Municipality, meaning thatit is autonomous and self-financed. Municipal by-laws and policies withregard to housing, environmental health, town planning, public partici-pation and littering, amongst others, are all important for the implemen-tation of environmental management policy (Municipality of Walvis Bay,2002, p. 6).

Project organization reflected the multi-scalar nature of its work, includingDanced, Cowi, the Government of Namibia, the local municipality, various stake-holders in the Walvis Bay community, and outside experts. The inter-governmentalrelationships of the project are quite noteworthy. On the one hand, the LA21 projectfollows the levels of government as they exist in the Namibian state structure; onthe other hand, the project re-casts the scales of local/urban politics/policy itselfby inserting an international (Denmark through Danced; partner city Hillerod,which, among other things donated four bicycles to the project (Namib Times,2002); the development specialists from Europe and South Africa, etc.) and aglobal dimension/scale (LA21 as a UN global project); it breaks open the givenunderstandings of the environment of Walvis Bay and the political powers thatdeal with it as well as the economic, social and cultural pressures that bring them-selves to bear on it. Namibia’s statusas a new post-colonial state is crucial in thismulti-scale architecture. In addition, the global level represented through theUN-driven LA21 process is highly intrusive. As in similar cases, though, theconcept of a Local Agenda 21 was considered to remain an abstraction for politicalactors and municipal staff (Danced 2001), despite the project’s multi-scale nature,there are disconnections and gulfs between various levels or scales of action andunderstanding that are connected to the divergent ideas and practices of projectactors and stakeholders. The project itself operated in four components: Environ-mental policies and strategies in Walvis Bay Municipality; Walvis Bay CoastalArea Study; Environmental Funds and Tariffs; and Local Agenda 21 Micro-Projects.

The Coastal Area Study is certainly the most visible part of the entire projectand most clearly the one with which outsiders and locals would identify with aconservation theme although actually more staff time has gone into environ-mental policies and strategies as well as the LA21 micro-projects. For thepurposes of this paper, however, those aspects of the project that involved creating“improved awareness and responsibility for environmental issues and resourcesavings for citizens in the territory of Walvis Bay” (Danced, 2001, p. 23) will beconcentrated on. Among these efforts, were clearly those that attempted to alter


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the supply and demand situation for urban water and sewage services in WalvisBay. These services have been an indicator of the best and worst in the socio-pol-itical reality of the municipality of Walvis Bay.

More or less explicitly the Walvis Bay project carried with it many differentnotions of justice and injustice that were not automatically part of the originaldesign of the project. Environmental policies and micro-projects alike were heldto adhere to the LA21 principles which, as one project memorandum stated hadto be in line with the five LA21 principles:

. A holistic, cross-sectoral approach

. A multi-participatory approach

. A long-term sustainable development view

. A global perspective

. Equity and justice (Walvis Bay Local Agenda 21 (WBLA21), 2002).

Originally the project document contained only the first four LA21 principlesand “in the process of working with LA21 in Walvis Bay in the first year of theproject, it became clear that a fifth LA21 principle was needed in the context.Therefore, another LA21 theme ‘Equity and Justice’ was added” (WBLA21, 2002).

This move towards equity and justice is a definitive part of the draft-integrated environmental policy of Walvis Bay. This policy is the Municipality’stool by which it pursues the goals set out by the LA21 project. The Policy“integrates policy strategy and implementation plan elements” (Municipality ofWalvis Bay, 2002, p. 4). As the project planners recognized that environmentaljustice had to be part of the notion of sustainability they used in the project, thedraft environmental plan of the municipality stated accordingly:

All people are entitled to the same legal rights with regard to naturalresources and quality of life. Imbalances in such rights, resources andresponsibilities negatively affect household productivity, socio-economicadvancement and natural resource management. Citizens need to beactively involved in managing their shared environment (Municipalityof Walvis Bay, 2002, p. 7).

The Walvis Bay LA21 project highlights the difficulties of many development pro-jects in establishing a sense of procedural and substantive justice. To the degreethat this project reflects ‘universal’ or ‘global’ values, it will by-pass the realneeds of the people of the town, particularly of the growing African majority.This danger is built into both the project design (due to its Danish origin) andinto the existing municipal structure, which, like many of its South Africancounterparts, displays a noticeable technocratic paternalism, particularly in thearea of municipal services, that has some basis in the country’s segregated past.To the degree, however, that the project attempts to work ‘on the ground’ withcommunities, it shows signs of being able to use its multi-scale, multi-culturaland plural make-up to the advantage of those that need socio-economic andenvironmental improvements most (and there are indeed many signs that thisoccurs, which is also reflected in the composition of the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual staff of both project and municipal workers). What is working againstthe well-intentioned and highly competent project is the stark reality of post-apartheid Namibia, where there is little sign of break-through in the ratherstatic economic and social relationships of wealthy and poor people. TheWBLA21 project has to be viewed as an attempt to combine pre-liberation good


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municipal management traditions, existing and new technological expertise,modes of ecological modernization, local and international activities, modernand traditional knowledges and practices to create a viable growth strategy inthe physical, economic and social parameters set by national macro-goals of devel-opments, the standards of the international development community, the basicneeds of the people in the town and suburbs and the harsh realities of natureand realities of place (such as perennial water scarcity). As far as the discourseof environmental justice is concerned, there seems to be much consensus that ithas to be addressed through municipal policy and project activities alike. No fun-damental critique of the project was launched from a justice point of view. Onlyconservationists voiced critique of the way in which the Coastal Area Study alleg-edly underplayed the environmental problems associated with the lagoon. Thiscritique was countered easily, however, by the excellent scientific execution ofthe project and did not become a significant threat to the work of project staff.

Conclusions

The work presented in this paper promises to lead to a few generalizable con-clusions at this point. The diverse urban environments in Hermanus and WalvisBay are constituted by multi-scaled processes between the body of individuals(using water, for example, at different rates), the regulatory mechanisms of munici-pal environmental institutions, national environmental policies (water in SouthAfrica, LA21 in Namibia), international development agencies and the global dis-courses of sustainability and transnational corporate actors. It is clear that theregional ecologies in each case differ widely in the way they are defined andused by various actors involved in the making of environmental policy. It hasbeen demonstrated in this paper that the scaling of the discourse of policymaking is central to these cases, as complex local situations in Hermanus andWalvis Bay are overlaid with multi-scaled problematics from the body to the global.

From this analysis can be drawn the point that discursive analysis needs toproceed carefully into several directions: (i) it must be sensitive to the scales atwhich discourses are being produced and are operative; (ii) when scale is seenas a discursive construction, discourse must likewise be viewed as scaled; (iii) dis-course is not immaterial superstructure above physical nature and social struc-ture—it is part of the construction of both nature and society (pardon thedichotomy) at various scales.

This paper began with a quote from a newspaper headline forecastingenvironmental catastrophe at a planetary scale, which appeared following theWSSD, as a way of illustrating how the discourses surrounding this epic gatheringenabled the mobilization of a global political agenda of “sustainable develop-ment”. What received less attention in the papers, however, were the vibrant butpeaceful protests that paralleled the formal meetings unfolding in exclusivespaces reserved for the power elite. These protests constituted an eclectic groupof activists involved in environmental, social justice, anti-neoliberal globalization,anti-privatization, anti-racist, human rights, women’s rights and peasantstruggles, to name but a few. While their interests were highly diversified and “par-ticularistic”, they were unified in their rallying cry denouncing the corporatizationof development and proclaiming that the “World was not for sale!” Behind thepromising solutions and powerful rhetoric, they argued that the WSSD was agrand spectacle to legitimize the neoliberal ideologies of the hegemonic structures


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of power and to preserve the existing social order of ecological plundering andsocial injustice. The spatial practices and divergent discourses through which com-munity activists and the political elite organized their activities reveal an intensestruggle for power to command control over particular values and ways ofseeing. Not only does this contest of power provide an illustration of a politicsof scale, it also illuminates the intersecting and multidirectional scalar relation-ships and configurations of power. Moreover, the community activists wagingtheir struggles in historically and geographically specific localities exhibit a clearunderstanding of the “geometries of power” and the political opportunities thatbecome available through “jumping scales”. In this light and as these casestudies reveal, the question of scale must be seriously considered for geographicalinvestigation in general, and specifically for a critical analysis of environmentalpolicies. But one must keep in mind, as Swyngedouw & Heynen (2003, p. 912)write, that “[t]he priority, both theoretically and politically, therefore, neverresides in a particular social or ecological geographical scale; instead, it residesin the socio-ecological process through which particular social and environmentalscales become constituted and subsequently reconstituted”.

Acknowledgement

Research for this paper was supported by a Faculty of Environmental StudiesSmall Research Grant and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research CouncilSmall Research Grant. Roger Keil thanks Robin Bloch for generous support ofhis research in Walvis Bay. The Walvis Bay, Namibia section of the paper alsobenefited greatly from conversations with Martin Amedieck, Hungiree WilsonBillawer, Andre Brummer, Kakujaha Kahepako and David Uushona at theMunicipality of Walvis Bay.

Notes

1. In a companion article (Debbane & Keil, 2004), it was argued that urban environmental justicemovements around the world constituted a challenge to common practices and discourses ofecological modernization but that environmental justice had to be conceptualized and understoodin its specific environments.

2. Limited because it reviews a very thin slice of the urban literature which deals with discourse. Thepaper has cultural blinders (it is very US and UK centred) and focuses on geography but seems tomake claims about urban studies, in general. For an earlier review see Collins, 2000.

3. For a fascinating account and in-depth analysis of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project see Bond(2002).

4. Coloured communities in the Western Cape Province (which includes Hermanus) are descendantsof interracial relationships during the colonial era between African and Malay slaves and Europeansettlers.

5. See RDSN (2000) and Bond & Ruiters (2002), for an in-depth analysis of South Africa’s waterpolicies. Case studies on neoliberal water reforms in post-apartheid South Africa include Bakker& Hemson (2000), Beall et al. (2000), Bond (2002), McDonald (2002), McDonald & Pape (2003),Ruiters (2003).

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Documents

Scaling discourse analysis: Experiences from Hermanus, South Africa and Walvis Bay, Namibia1