5 - Hydraulics

Summary

This chapter examines processes of hydraulic development and state-building. It explores the ways in which modern ‘hydraulic missions’, and the new waterscapes and patterns of water use and supply resulting from them, reflect and have helped consolidate specific state-building and national development agendas. Building on this, the chapter shows that these hydraulic projects have also repeatedly involved dispossession, displacement, conflict and violence, and everywhere created new forms of insecurity for some alongside ‘water security’ for others; and as corollaries of this, that water-related conflicts have been more closely associated with development than its dearth, and more with resource abundance than scarcity. Lastly, the chapter argues that the spectre of climate change has already led to a resurgence of hydraulic development and associated conflicts – and that more will surely follow. Empirically, the chapter focuses on Israel, Cyprus, Syria and Sudan, providing illustrative examples of the range of hydraulic conflicts and insecurities which have ensued across these cases, associated especially with dam building, land-grabbing and agricultural modernisation.