UDTR — Radar mondial des droits de la Nature

Saving Sindhu: Indus Enclosure and River Defense in Pakistan

Identification

Clé publique

doi:10.17615/baka-5268

Auteurs

—

Année déclarée

2019

Langue déclarée

en · eng

Type source

Doctoral thesis

Première détection

2026-11-09T19:09:16.802965+00:00

Dernière observation des métadonnées

2026-11-09T19:09:16.802965+00:00

Dernière vérification HTTP

Non effectuée

Résumé documentaire — langue originale

Why do ideas of river defense take hold in some places along the same river and not others? Ideas of river defense emerged at the turn of the 21st century with a broader awareness that we are living in the Anthropocene era. The rapid construction of dams and irrigation systems over the past two centuries altered human-river relations to support modern lifestyles, with high costs for human and non-human riverine communities worldwide. While environmental and anti-dam groups have raised awareness about the adverse human impact on rivers and challenged powerful state and interstate institutions, it is not clear why and how ideas of defending nature emerged and took hold in some places rather than others. Scholars point to pre-existing sacred traditions, political recognition of indigenous groups, or the spread of secular-scientific environmentalism to explain the phenomenon, but these explanations neither explain variations along the same river nor work for the case of riverine movements in Pakistan. The present study focuses on variations in social movements along the northern, central, and southern Indus River to examine the material and cultural drivers of the politics of river control in Pakistan. The study extends the classical theory of the enclosure of commons to the case of rivers to examine how dams and irrigation systems alter the socio-material flows of rivers, impact state-society relations, and lead to different kinds of cultural claims over rivers by the state and societal actors. The study relies on archival and ethnographic data from three contemporary riverine social movements from Pakistan, two of which represent positive cases of river defense. The study finds that the deltaic and floodplain communities suffer recurring and cumulative impacts of river infrastructure development and have the most potential for the emergence of ideas of river defense. Activists realize this potential by organizing subaltern groups and centering them in existing ethnic identity-based movements. To do so, activists challenge the state’s claims to legitimacy and synthesize scientific evidence with cultural attitudes of river reverence to generate new concepts of territory, sovereignty, and rights that link the rights of humans to the rights of rivers. The strategic and creative work by riverine activists helps imagine alternative futures of human-river relations that privilege the defense of global rivers.

Identifiants

DOI

10.17615/baka-5268

OPENAIRE

doi_________::7bf7a5c4541d0726e185285dccb80ec4

Repères documentaires

Famille documentaire

Thèse

Types déclarés par les sources

Doctoral thesis

Juridictions étudiées — sources explicites

PK

Entités naturelles mentionnées

Fleuve / rivière · Territoire

Les mentions d’entités ne constituent pas une preuve de reconnaissance juridique. La juridiction étudiée est distincte du pays d’affiliation des auteurs.

Sources

OpenAIRE · Document 1 · Document 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.17615/baka-5268
• Document · https://dx.doi.org/10.17615/baka-5268

Statut documentaire

Pertinence à examiner

Bibliothèque

Cette identité n’est pas encore intégrée à la Bibliothèque juridique.