Flowing Power in the Community: How decisions are made and their consequences for water accessibility in Western Kenya

Abstract: Water resources management has been reconfigured over time and space; as power over decision-making processes has increasingly been vested from the state and distributed among networks of private and non-governmental actors. Geographical scholarships of environmental governance seek to critically analyse this transformation in order to grasp how decisions are made, and the consequences that entail in the structure and delimitation of how different groups access natural resources. The present study will depart from this framework to analyse an empirical study of a community water resources management project in Kenya. Furthermore, the framework is supported by critical scholarships of community and participation, gendered discourses on spatial subjectivities, along with the notion of nature’s role in projects of water resources management, to ensure a holistic approach to the case at hand. The data was collected during two months of fieldwork applying both qualitative and quantitative methods, used in a narrative analysis of decision making processes regarding the distribution of water, and the consequences of these decisions in terms of accessibility to water analysed through GIS. The findings of the study show how interests of particular actors drive and shape decision-making processes regarding distribution, where benefits from access to clean water is not equal for all social groups.