Water Policy in New Caledonia

Even though water is not yet a scarce resource in New Caledonia, the archipelago nevertheless faces a number of significant water-related challenges, stemming in part from supply–demand imbalances, a range of water quality issues, but also a complex regulation context with water competences embedded within different legal orders and scales (indigenous customary lands, municipality, province and New Caledonia). Facing these issues, the Government of New Caledonia launched the construction of the country's first water policy based on a broad consultation that involved 1 out of 600 New Caledonians, the locally so-called “Shared Water Policy” which proposed a detailed policy strategy with nearly 700 actions planned.

The book is divided into four main parts. The first one sets the overall context and includes a description of water resources and flows, an overview of water quality issues, a presentation of the balance between resources and uses, and a discussion of current legal framework related to water. The second part is devoted to bridging the gap between customary land studies and water policy. It seeks a way to include water representations and customary water management practices into the new policy. In those chapters, the authors consider water management as a co-production of nature and societies (Aubriot and Riaux, 2013; Budds and Linton, 2014) and use the notion of hydro-social water cycle to examine how cultural and historical dimensions of Kanak water management are integrated in or arranged with modern water management. The third part presents the new water policy and the original participatory process used to build it. We assess this broad participative and democratic process from different points of view: the government, the local managers who propose insights from the first participatory experience in New Caledonia, and the researchers. The fourth part questions the Future of Water Policy in New Caledonia. This part examines the process from a reflexive and critical point of view and wrapped up the main lessons that can be learnt from this case study in the Pacific. We finally conclude that the case of this archipelago could be a source of inspiration for policy makers especially in countries where indigenous populations and/or legal pluralism orders coexist.

Academics, researchers and students interested in research on 'indigenous peoples' rights to water will find an original illustration of the interconnections between indigenous peoples' political, land and environmental claims and claims to ownership of the resource. For researchers and experts working in regions where the symbolic weight of freshwater for island communities’ matters, this book describing the New Caledonian case will complement the analyses already available on the Pacific. Secondly, this book will be of interest to researchers working on participatory methodologies for more inclusive water policy and governance processes, particularly in cross-cultural and potentially conflictual contexts. It describes the process and the tools that supported the construction of the “Shared Water Policy”, and how existing participative frameworks have been adapted to fit the needs of this policy design. Territorial managers (technicians, engineers, project managers, union directors, etc.) directly involved in the implementation of participatory approaches will find this book a valuable source of insight.