Speaker
Description
Marseille is situated in a dry region lacking water courses and groundwater reservoirs. Despite such scarcity, the city benefits of an abundant freshwater supply of the best quality. The Canal del Marseille is the 1800s infrastructure that allows this by extracting water from the Durance river – an artificial system replicated at a bigger scale and integrated by the Canal EDF, the Canal de Provence, and several storage basins.
The territorial hydraulic network is efficient and mostly composed of pressurized underground pipes which minimize leeks: it draws water from the river ecosystem and bypasses the surrounding landscapes for the benefit of anthropic consumption. Together with energy production, the system uses 80% of the Durance’s flow. While the distribution principles don’t normally cause conflicts between human consumers, the river doesn’t have a legal personality, lacking representation for its environmental flows needs – on which many ecosystems in a vast territory depend, like the étang de Berre wetland, endangered by the Canal EDF’s outlet, and the Rhone delta area.
The extractivist water ‘cycle’ of Marseille – where only 12% of the ground isn’t sealed and floods regularly saturate the drainage networks – ends into the sea, sometimes without treatment. Yet the presence of two water streams within the urban area can be an occasion for rethinking the city-water relationship: how can urban soils be transformed to support biodiversity?
While water bodies can paradoxically weaken their stand by achieving legal rights (O’Donnell 2018), a ‘political ecology of things’ perspective (Bennett 2010) may strengthen the value of all water flows, especially in the need of a new environmental justice for the city (Morizot 2024; ETH 2020) in a climate that is becoming drier (Bertrand 2023). Can a new awareness of urban water help recognise the global necessity (Latour 2015) of a new ecological balance with the larger territory?
References
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things.
Bertrand, N. et al. (2023). Retour d’expérience sur la gestion de l’eau lors de le sécheresse 2022.
Cunha, D. da (2018) The invention of rivers: Alexander’s eye and Ganga’s descent.
Dematteis, G. (2014) ‘Dalla terra al territorio. Una ricerca tra geografia e urbanistica’, in M. Bianchettin del Grano (ed.) suolo. letture e responsabilità del progetto. Roma: Officina edizioni, pp. 79–101.
ETH Zürich (with Something Fantastic). (2020). Migrant Marseille: Architectures of social segregation and urban inclusivity (M. Angélil & A.-C. Malterre-Barthes, Eds.).
Hellberg, S. (2021). The biopolitics of water: Governance, scarcity and populations.
Jean, M. (2011). Les architectes de l’eau en Provence: De la Renaissance au XXe siècle.
Kaika, M. (2005). City of flows: Modernity, nature, and the city.
Latour, B. (2015). Face à Gaïa: Huit conférences sur le nouveau régime climatique.
Morizot, B., & Husky, S. (2024). Rendre l’eau à la terre: Alliances dans les rivières face au chaos climatique.
O’Donnell, E. (2019). Legal rights for rivers: Competition, collaboration and water governance.
Swyngedouw, E. (2004). Social power and the urbanization of water: flows of power.
| Keywords | urban political ecology; water biopolitics; ecological commoning |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
