Urban Mountain Waterscapes in Leh, Indian Trans-Himalaya

Water governance in urbanizing high mountain towns of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region (HKH) presents a major challenge that scholarship has only recently started to address. Climate change-related climatic and hydrological variabilities intersect with rapid socio-economic developments and urbanization induced by globalization dynamics. Drawing on the case study of Leh, a small but fast-growing North Indian mountain town in the Trans-Himalaya of Ladakh, this research investigates how these dynamics affect urban water access and distribution. Natural and socio-political conditions also have an impact on water governance. The study, therefore, considers both the sensitive high mountain environment in a cold-and setting and the complex socio-economic and political aspects of this changing hydro-social environment. To investigate questions of everyday governance, the analytical framework builds on the concepts of waterscapes, hydro mentalities, and water citizenships. Rooted in the wider field of urban political ecology, this framework offers a hydro-social perspective based on a relational, actor-oriented approach. A comprehensive analysis of the arena of actors in Leh’s waterscape allows for a deep understanding of current water-related changes and resulting governance approaches on the one hand and highlights inequalities arising within the town population on the other. The study triangulates quantitative and qualitative methods to take into account processes from the household to the governmental scale. The fieldwork was conducted in the district capital Leh between 2014 and 2018. The Union Territory of Ladakh is a dynamically developing region: rapid economic growth is largely based on tourism, the region has a high geopolitical importance due to its location at international borders, and Leh has increasingly received administrative importance as a governmental centre of the region. These complex historical and current political and socio-economic developments contribute to shifting livelihoods and rural-urban migration. The results show that urbanisation processes increasingly exert pressure on the already scarce water resources of the town and (re)produce unequal access to water resources and infrastructures. Current water govemance approaches are dominated by a state-led infrastructure scheme that aims at centralising water supply and sanitation. While the scheme is beneficial for some, others have to bear the social and environmental costs of the urban restuctianings. This study is a case example of similar dynamics in the wider HKH, while also pointing out challenges that are unique for the study area. This study aims to contribute to the enhancement of the hitherto insufficient state of research on human-water relations in the region by critically reflecting current govemance approaches to build a basis for future policy-making.