Water resource grabbing: a focus on rural Malawi

Abstract

Beds and bank enclosures are practices that are understudied within water resources grabbing. The practice involves property owners, such as dwelling houses, resorts, lodges, hotels, farms, and others enclosing their property bordering watercourses like rivers and lakes, thereby excluding local communities’ access to the said common resources in their quest for livelihood activities. This is done despite the Malawian National Water Resources Authority’s 2013 Act, which prohibits cultivation or carrying out any activity within the beds and banks of watercourses and lakes and their adjacent land strips, except as determined by the Authority. Water grabbing is usually considered on a larger scale, involving large-scale transactions for the production of export crops and corporate agendas. Less often, it involves small-scale watercourse enclosures that are done locally. Using Political Ecology Framework, the paper argues that bed and bank enclosures are new form of water resources grabbing. The practice perpetuates poverty as communities are denied access to one of the most important assets in their livelihoods. The paper contradicts with the popular Malthusian perspective in Political Ecology Framework that poor people are a cause of water resources degradation, but rather the narrative is utilized by local capitalists to marginalize communities from accessing water related resources.

Keywords

• Water resource grabbing
• beds and banks enclosures
• watercourses
• political ecology framework
• rural Malawi
• African Studies