Community-based Water Management in Urban Informal Spaces: Capabilities and Collective Action

Abstract

This thesis contributes to scholarship on applying the Capability Approach (CA) in the informal water sector in post-colonial cities in the Global South. It lays out helpful insights in the field of Sustainable Development Goal no. 6- clean water and sanitation in the backdrop of climate justice. This research aims to translate theoretical roots of the CA into meaningful participatory policy by using a case study approach complimented by different methods of qualitative data collection. The empirical findings are built on in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus-group discussions with participants from informal settlements in India and Indonesia, members of universities, NGOs, government organizations and peoples’ collectives. This study underscores that cities in the global south are complex and that to study them requires more epistemic diversity guided by a decolonial lens. It starts with a systematic literature review, followed by a purposive literature review. The reviews generated four themes: (i) Human needs, well-being and development; (ii) Social cohesion and community processes; (iii) Water security and psycho-social stress and (iv) Vulnerabilities, resilience and adaption. After which, three overarching theories guided the conceptual framework- Sen’s Capability Approach, Ostrom’s theory of the commons, and combined theories of socio-ecological resilience. Through its findings, it proposes the Capability Locus Pathway for Socio-Spatial Change, along with the concept of the Capability Space, to evaluate what transformative processes look like in informal urban spaces and what power communities have in terms of agency and opportunities to lead such collective action.