Papers by Irene Leonardelli
The international journal of the commons, 2024
Efforts to measure and regulate groundwaters and irrigators are notoriously ineffective. The star... more Efforts to measure and regulate groundwaters and irrigators are notoriously ineffective. The starting point of this article, therefore, is to question the continued faith in techno-managerial solutions to groundwater depletion. We discuss the potential of the conceptual vocabulary of 'care' to complement, refresh and expand ways of talking about and doing groundwater governance. Mobilizing a diverse range of examples from places where pressures on aquifers are particularly acute, we do this by exploring what care entails in everyday practices of groundwater use and management. We show that foregrounding care nuances and sometimes challenges stories of users unavoidably depleting aquifers when given the chance and means to do so. Irrigators may display concern about the longer-term sustainability of the aquifers on which their livelihoods depend, even when their own pumping practices are unsustainable. In spite of pressures to intensify and individualize, farmers sometimes do hold on to or creatively develop collective rules to fairly share groundwater and use it sustainably, complementing strategies to make do with what is available with investments in conservation and recharge. Attention to care, moreover, highlights the ongoing processes of tinkering that governing groundwater always entails. The ability to tinker hinges on intimate and often embodied knowledge of a watery place. Accepting the care involved in governing groundwater, our analysis therefore concludes, prompts a reconsideration of what is and who has water expertise, with important implications for the role of 'outside' experts. More than a new theory, we propose embracing care as an analytical sensibility, with the study of practices of care serving as one promising way to widen the conceptual and political space for understanding and doing human-groundwater relations.
Engineering Studies, Jan 16, 2024
Springer International Publishing eBooks, 2023
Springer International Publishing eBooks, 2023
The Socialist Republic of Viet Nam is one of the six pilot countries of the European Union-funded... more The Socialist Republic of Viet Nam is one of the six pilot countries of the European Union-funded Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Evidence for Policy (MECLEP) project.Drawing from an extensive number of sources, including academic papers and reports produced by the Government and national and international organizations, this assessment aims to: (i) provide an overview of the linkages between migration patterns and environmental change in Viet Nam; (ii) critically analyse national policies that address these links; and (iii) propose some related research and policy implications.Viet Nam is particularly exposed to floods and typhoons as well as droughts and sea-level rise, which have major impacts on the country’s environment and the livelihoods of its 90.73 million people. Adverse environmental conditions clearly influence migration patterns in the country: since the 1990s, the relocation programmes implemented by the Government for communities affected by environmental d...
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2021
This review comes from a themed issue on Transformations to sustainability: critical social scien... more This review comes from a themed issue on Transformations to sustainability: critical social science perspectives
Frontiers in Human Dynamics
In this paper we present a situated analysis of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the ... more In this paper we present a situated analysis of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the life of small-scale farmers and agricultural laborers in India, Algeria, and Morocco. We draw on data collected through phone interviews since April 2020. Inspired by feminist scholars, we analyze our findings thinking with—and entangling—the concepts of intersectionality, resilience and care. We firstly document the material impacts of the lockdown measures, focusing particularly on the experiences of single women farmers and laborers, whose livelihood and well-being have been notably compromised. Secondly, we unfold how different agricultural actors have come up with inventive ways to respond to the unexpected situation which they are facing. In doing so, we highlight the importance of considering the multiple and entangled socionatural challenges, uncertainties, and marginalizations that different agricultural actors experience, as well as the transformative potential of their inventi...
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space
In this paper, we propose obliqueness as a feminist mode to analyse waterscapes, intersecting fem... more In this paper, we propose obliqueness as a feminist mode to analyse waterscapes, intersecting feminist political ecology with post-human feminist scholarship. Obliqueness means cultivating attentiveness to those things and events that at first sight appear inconsequential because they do not fit with official plans or predominant (power) structures. Through a methodological focus on the continuous making-of such structures – on acts of tinkering with institutions, ideas and technologies – obliqueness notices not just how structures are reproduced, but also helps draw attention to inconsistencies, divergences and transgressions – what we call overflows. Hence, our oblique analysis of a waterscape of a village in Maharashtra, India revealed overflows to two kinds of structuring: one stemming from the infrastructural lay-out of an irrigation system, and one stemming from intersecting hierarchical relations of caste and gender. These overflows point to possibilities for being and relati...
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2021
If the success of agricultural intensification continues to rely on the depletion of aquifers and... more If the success of agricultural intensification continues to rely on the depletion of aquifers and exploitation of (female) labour, transformations to groundwater sustainability will be impossible to achieve. Hence, the development of new groundwater imaginaries, based on alternative ways of organizing society-water relations is highly important. This paper argues that a comparative documentation of grass-roots initiatives to care for, share or recharge aquifers in places with acute resource pressures provides an important source of inspiration. Using a grounded anti-colonial and feminist approach, we combine an ethnographic documentation of groundwater practices with hydrogeological and engineering insights to enunciate, normatively assess and jointly learn from the knowledges, technologies and institutions that characterize such initiatives. Doing this usefully shifts the focus of planned efforts to regulate and govern groundwater away from government efforts to control individual ...
COVID-19 in Rural India, Algeria, and Morocco: A Feminist Analysis of Small-Scale Farmers’ and Agricultural Laborers’ Experiences and Inventive Practices, 2021
In this paper we present a situated analysis of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the ... more In this paper we present a situated analysis of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the life of small-scale farmers and agricultural laborers in India, Algeria, and Morocco. We draw on data collected through phone interviews since April 2020. Inspired by feminist scholars, we analyze our findings thinking with-and entangling-the concepts of intersectionality, resilience and care. We firstly document the material impacts of the lockdown measures, focusing particularly on the experiences of single women farmers and laborers, whose livelihood and well-being have been notably compromised. Secondly, we unfold how different agricultural actors have come up with inventive ways to respond to the unexpected situation which they are facing. In doing so, we highlight the importance of considering the multiple and entangled socionatural challenges, uncertainties, and marginalizations that different agricultural actors experience, as well as the transformative potential of their inventi...
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
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Papers by Irene Leonardelli