Vanity vegetables and quarry farming - findings of a pilot project

1. Vanity vegetables and quarry farming -findings of a pilot project Dr. Bettina Lange, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford and Dr. Mark Shepheard, Law Faculty, McGill University

2. How are English farmers’ conceptions of a right to water changing? • An unresolved question in natural resource stewardship literature: what is the significance of private property rights for protecting common pool resources?How is an economic right to water conceptualized and what drives these conceptions? • Various types of ‘rights’ conceptions: administrative rights, ‘new property’, individual/collective rights, common pool resource conceptions – in flux – policy reforms

3. Methodology • Purpose: map how farmers think about a right to water and identify key factors that shape such conceptions • 2 contrasting exploratory case studies: a water rich region (North-East) and water scarce one (Anglia), variation in further factors • Qualitative empirical data: interviews with 12 key stakeholders and analysis of key public policy documents and relevant legislation • An eco-socio-legal perspective

4. What does a ‘right to water’ mean to farmers? • Hybrid rights-stewardship conceptions: focus on water quantity • - on a substantive discursive level: water conservation is seen as part and parcel of running an efficient farm business • - on a procedural level: an administrative right to water becomes qualified through stewardship conceptions

5. 3 key factors driving the development of hybrid rights-stewardship conceptions • 1. Green production and consumption standards: voluntary farm product assurance schemes and contractual relationships with supermarkets • 2. The legal institutional framework: - the legal framework for abstraction licensing - self-regulation: water sharing among farmers • 3. Ways of thinking about the space in which water for abstraction flows and in which it is used.

6. Green production and consumption standards • Associated with commercial chains in which farmers are embedded • Stronger influence on water conservation than the abstraction licensing system? • Appear to foster stewardship, but… • Emphasis on product quality and market access creates a commercial reality that downplays water conservation e.g. potato skin finish (‘vanity vegetables’)

7. The legal institutional framework • Abstraction licensing: -qualification of individual administrative right to abstract: EU habitats protection • -limitation of compensation rights -transfer into environmental permitting • Response to this framework also shaped by nature of the farm tenancy: ‘quarry farming’

8. Water sharing • Farmer collaboration to manage water scarcity,water abstractors groups: a forum for negotiation of water sharing arrangements with the regulator • Single common licence or agreed restrictions common to a group • Giving rise to hybrid rights-stewardship conceptions • Adjusting individual administrative rights toward stewardship requires arrangements to reward reductions and incentives for sharing.

9. Ways of thinking about space • Space: a natural pre-given category or shaped by regulatory objectives and thus power relations? • The space of the farm: farms as networks of parcels of land common pool resource conception of water • The ‘catchment’: water flowing in interconnected channels: common pool resource conception of water • Ecologically embedded water stewardship

10. So what? • ‘rights’ and ‘regulation’ often understood as distinct socio-legal phenomena • But here structural internal links between ‘rights’ to and ‘regulation’ of water • Approaches to water use also shaped by discursive constructions of ‘rights’ claims • Opening up a conception of rights: tort of breach of statutory duty