Water governance

Abstract

This essay is about water governance and relationality. It reflects on the questions that articulate this forum on relational International Relations (IR): what do relational theories of IR offer to the field and add to the debate about IR? What are the promises or limits of relational approaches, and how can or should discussion proceed? I narrate my personal story about exploring and experiencing relationality to offer some reflections and thoughts on these questions which are relevant not only for IR, but to the ways we engage reality. I illustrate the potential of relationality by referring to three dimensions where relationality provides with alternative thinking: the problem of ontological difference; the pluralization and diversification of ways of thinking and being and the engagement with the other than other-than-human. These aspects are some among many others, but they announce opportunities, challenges, tensions, contradictions and possibilities. In the end, the essay reveals not only a transformative experience but a very different approach to water governance providing the reader a general understanding of the alternative thinking derived from relational standpoints and the possibilities it opens to theorize IR and beyond.