Second Order Water Scarcity in Southern Africa: Report on Zambia and South Africa submitted to DFID

RapportsInternational audienceThis project developed a new approach to apprehend the construction of water scarcity grounded in structurationist theory. It developed a methodology to decipher this intricate web of power relations extending over a variety of scales, to discover the actors active within it without predetermining their existence or the legitimacy of their existence, and, finally to return this knowledge to those active within these interactions. It developed a hydropolitical map of Zambia and South Africa both as a communication tool to exchange with the actors involved in these constellations and as a knowledge construction tool. It harnessed structurationist theory within a qualitative research approach. The first section of this report details the work done on Zambia and the second section (in the second PDF file attached to this output) is devoted to South Africa. This order reflects the chronological order followed in this project. Although both countries were initially supposed to be studied simultaneously, a series of unforeseen events led the research to be started on Zambia in January 2003, months before the start of the project in May 2003, while the research on South Africa only started much later, once the University of Kwazulu Natal came on board of the research team. This allowed the research team dealing with South Africa to learn from the experience acquired in Zambia and produce a refined methodology