Margreet Zwarteveen Prof., PhD

Biography

Margreet Zwarteveen is an irrigation engineer and social scientist, who joined IHE Delft in 2014 to become its professor of Water Governance, within the Integrated Water Systems and Water Governance Department. Her professorial affiliation is with the Governance and Inclusive Development Group at the UvA, see http://www.uva.nl/en/news-events/news/uva-news/content/professor-appointments/2014/03/margreet-zwarteveen-professor-by-special-appointment-of-water-governance.html

Research Summary

Zwarteveen studies water allocation policies and practices, focusing on questions of equity and justice. Her research includes the study of different institutional and technical modalities for allocating water and regulating water flows, and of different ways to understand or legitimize these. Zwarteveen uses an interdisciplinary approach, seeing water allocation as the outcome of interactions between nature, technologies and society.

The relation between power and water is central in the work of Zwarteveen, with explicit attention to gender. Her current research looks at re-allocations of water from agriculture and rural areas to cities and industries: how do these re-allocations happen, with what effects, and how are they legitimized in policies and knowledge? She for instance studies how the introduction of supposedly water efficient technologies (drip irrigation) goes accompanied with, and causes, changes in water tenure relations that favour some people more than others. Zwarteveen is also interested in questions emerging at the interface between science and policy when governing water, especially in relation to the challenges of dealing with complexities and uncertainties.

Zwarteveen is the Dutch coordinator of an Open Research Area project, called Delta's dealings with uncertainties (DOUBT) (see http://aissr.uva.nl/research/externally-funded-projects/content4/recent/deltas-dealings-with-uncertainty-in-global-knowledge-travel.html or http://delta.hus.osaka-u.ac.jp/). 

Publications

see also: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/Q-9796-2017

Articles

Tiwale, S., M. Rusca and M. Zwarteveen. 2018. The Power of Pipes: Mapping Urban Water Inequities through the Material Properties of Networked Infrastructures. The Case of Lilongwe, Malawi. Water Alternative 11(2): 314-335. http://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol11/v11issue2/439-a11-2-6/file

B. Batubara, M. Kooy and M. Zwarteveen. 2018. Uneven urbanization through flood infrastructure interventions in (Post-) New Order Jakarta: socio-spatial differentiation and equalization in and beyond the mega-city. Antipode (50) 5: 1186-1205. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12401

Kooij, S. van der, M. Kuper, M. Zwarteveen and C. de Fraiture. 2017. A user-centred approach to irrigation performance: drip irrigation in the Krichfa area, Morocco. Water International (September 2017). https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2017.1373319

Zwarteveen, M.Z., J. Kemerink-Seyoum, M. Kooy, et al. 2017. Engaging with the politics of water governance. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water (September 2017). https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1245

Sosa, M., R. Boelens and M. Zwarteveen. 2017. The influence of large mining: Restructuring water rights and rural communities in Apurimac, Peru. Human organization 76(3):215-226. https://doi.org/10.17730/0018-7259.76.3.215 

Zwarteveen, M. and E. Rap. 2017. Guest editor’s introduction: Engineering Masculinities in Water Governance. Engineering Studies (August 2017). https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2017.1363019

Vera R. Delgado, J. and M. Zwarteveen. 2017. Queering Engineers? Using History to Re-think the Associations between Masculinity and Irrigation Engineering in Peru. Engineering Studies (August 2017). https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2017.1361427

Zwarteveen, M. 2017. Hydrocracies, Engineers and Power: Questioning Masculinities in Water. Engineering Studies (August 2017). https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2017.1358730

Alda-Vidal, C., M. Rusca, M. Zwarteveen, N. Pouw and K. Schwartz. 2017. Gendered Occupations and Occupational Genders: The case of water provisioning in Maputo, Mozambique. Gender Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography (February 2017). https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1339019

Dominguez-Guzman, C., A. Verzijl and M. Zwarteveen. 2017. Water Footprints and ‘Pozas’: Conversations about Practices and Knowledges of Water Efficiency. Water 9(1):0016. https://doi.org/10.3390/w9010016

Books

Venot, J.P., M. Kuper and M. Zwarteveen (eds.). 2017. Drip Irrigation for Agriculture. Untold Stories of Efficiency, Innovation and Development. London and New York: Earthscan from Routledge.

Chapters in books

M. Zwarteveen, H. Smit, C. Dominguez-Guzman, E. Fantini, E. Rap, R. Boelens and P. van der Zaag. 2018. Accounting for water. Questions of representation in a non-modern world. In: S. Lele, E.S. Brondizio, J. Byrne, G.M. Mace and J. Martinez-Alier (eds.), Rethinking Environmentalism: Linking Justice, Sustainability, and Diversity. Strungman Forum Reports, vol 23. J. Lupp series editor. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. See: https://esforum.de/publications/sfr23/Rethinking%20Environmentalism.html

L. Bossenbroek and M. Zwarteveen. New spaces for water justice? Groundwater extraction and changing gendered subjectivities in Morocco’s Sais. In: R. Boelens, T. Perreault and J. Vos (eds.), Water Justice. Cambridge University Press: 350-345

D. Roth, M. Zwarteveen, K.J. Joy and S. Kulkarni. Water governance as a question of justice. Accepted for publication in: R. Boelens, T. Perreault and J. Vos (eds.), Water Justice. Cambridge University Press: 43-58

Ahlers, R., M. Zwarteveen and K. Bakker. 2017. Large Dam Development: From Trojan Horse to Pandora's Box. In: B. Flyvbjerg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198732242.013.27

Zwarteveen, M. and R. Boelens. 2017. Defining, researching and struggling for water justice: some conceptual building blocks for research and action. In: R. Boelens, B. Crow, J. Hoogesteger, F. E. Lu, E. Swyngedouw, J. Vos (eds.), Hydrosocial Territories and Water Equity. Theory, Governance, and Sites of Struggle. London and New York: Routledge.

Kuper, M., J.P. Venot and M. Zwarteveen. 2017. Introduction: Panda or Hydra? The untold stories of drip irrigation. In: Venot, J.P., M. Kuper and M. Zwarteveen (eds.). 2017. Drip Irrigation for Agriculture. Untold Stories of Efficiency, Innovation and Development. London and New York: Earthscan from Routledge: 1-15.

Zwarteveen, M. 2017. Decentering the technology: explaining the drip irrigation paradox. In: Venot, J.P., M. Kuper and M. Zwarteveen (eds.). 2017. Drip Irrigation for Agriculture. Untold Stories of Efficiency, Innovation and Development. London and New York: Earthscan from Routledge: 16-37.

Kooij, S. van der, M. Kuper, C. de Fraiture, B. Lankford and M. Zwarteveen. 2017. Re-allocating yet-to-be saved water in irrigation modernization projects: the case of the Bittit irrigation system, Morocco. In: Venot, J.P., M. Kuper and M. Zwarteveen (eds.). 2017. Drip Irrigation for Agriculture. Untold Stories of Efficiency, Innovation and Development. London and New York: Earthscan from Routledge: 68-84.

Bossenbroek, L., M. Kuper and M. Zwarteveen. 2017. Sour grapes: multiple groundwater enclosures in Morocco’s Sais region. In: Venot, J.P., M. Kuper and M. Zwarteveen (eds.). 2017. Drip Irrigation for Agriculture. Untold Stories of Efficiency, Innovation and Development. London and New York: Earthscan from Routledge: 105-121.

Veldwisch, G.J., V. Borsboom, F. Ingen-Housz, M. Zwarteveen, N. Post-Uiterweer and P. Hebinck. 2017. Low-cost drip irrigation in Zambia: gendered practices of promotion and use. In: Venot, J.P., M. Kuper and M. Zwarteveen (eds.). 2017. Drip Irrigation for Agriculture. Untold Stories of Efficiency, Innovation and Development. London and New York: Earthscan from Routledge: 204-217.

Wanvoeke, J., J.P. Venot, M. Zwarteveen and C. de Fraiture. 2017. The conundrum of low-cost drip irrigation in Burkina Faso: why development interventions that have little to show continue. In: Venot, J.P., M. Kuper and M. Zwarteveen (eds.). 2017. Drip Irrigation for Agriculture. Untold Stories of Efficiency, Innovation and Development. London and New York: Earthscan from Routledge: 218-236.

Kuper, M., M. Benouniche, M. Naouri and M. Zwarteveen. 2017. ‘Bricolage’ as an everyday practice of constestion of smallholders engaging with drip irrigation. In: Venot, J.P., M. Kuper and M. Zwarteveen (eds.). 2017. Drip Irrigation for Agriculture. Untold Stories of Efficiency, Innovation and Development. London and New York: Earthscan from Routledge: 256-265.

M. Zwarteveen. 2016. Questioning Masculinities in Water. In: M. Shah and P.S. Vijayshankar (eds.), Water. Growing Understanding, Emerging Perspectives. Essays from Economic and Political Weekly. Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan: 199-217.

Other

Zwarteveen, M. 2015. Regulating Water, Ordering Society. Politics and Practices of Water Governance. Inaugural Lecture, Amsterdam: UvA. http://cf.bc.uva.nl/download/oraties/oraties_2015/Zwarteveen_Margreet.pdf

Other information

The BLOG of the Water Governance group: https://flows.hypotheses.org/

Several webinars: 

IWRA "Towards Equitable Water Governance"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSJ4jUnMxYI

IHE almuni Online Seminar: "Engaging with the Politics of Water Governance" https://youtu.be/-w80aeqgBdk