Non-owners' success: confrontations of rules in rivalries between water users in Belgium and Switzerland
Researcher: David Aubin Publisher: Routledge Documentation: Environmental Politics Water scarcity increases with growing human pressure and threatens the coexistence between heterogeneous users. Rival water users negotiate their competing claims by activating rules, and confronting them to come to local arrangements. The type of local arrangement capable of overcoming rivalry depends on the power that rules confer on the respective users. The property rights or public policies activated confer a role of owner or final beneficiary on the users. If two owners confront one another, then a transactional arrangement is needed: the users reach agreement and share the costs of the arrangement. Alternatively, if a final beneficiary confronts an owner, then a compensatory arrangement is necessary. In this situation, the state must compensate the loss of property financially. The qualitative comparison of four cases of water rivalries partially refutes these initial assumptions and reveals ...