Co-designing a water policy in a decolonization process Insights from a research program integrating Kanak ontologies in New Caledonia

Abstract

New Caledonia is in a process of negotiated decolonization as set out in the Nouméa Agreement in 1998. The Nouméa Agreement decreed and organized the "decolonization" of the archipelago through, the progressive transfer of the French State's powers to New Caledonia, the organization of a first referendum on self-determination in 2018. In this context, water governance in New Caledonia is the result of a particular institutional organization: under the article 44 of the Organic Law of 1999, amended in 2009, the public river domain excludes customary lands. These lands represent 27% of New Caledonia's surface area and 52% of drinking water catchments. On these lands, chiefdoms and clans exercise sovereignty over water and natural resources.

Even if water is not a scarce resource in New Caledonia, tensions are beginning to appear especially around "sacred" water on customary lands, around the payment of water bills and over-consumption of drinking water and around pollution (mining, agricultural and domestic pollution). Thus, at the beginning of 2018, only a few months before the first referendum on full sovereignty, the Government of New Caledonia launched the construction of the country's first water policy. Only a few months later, after a broad consultation that involved about 1 out of 600 New Caledonians, the government adopted a detailed policy strategy and an action-planning document with nearly 700 actions. Led by the Minister of Agriculture (non-independent) and the Minister of Customary Affairs (independent), this policy is now called the Shared Water Policy.

In this context, a research program was funded by Cresica (Consortium for the research higher education and innovation in New Caledonia) to analyze the representation, the values and practices associated with water on customary lands so as to support innovative management rules and modes of governance, co-constructed with indigenous and local stakeholders on the basis of this knowledge.

The presentation is motivated by the aspiration to share the results of this research program. It presents the original participatory process used to build the Shared Water Policy. It focuses in particular on the process, methodology and tools used to support policy design. It shows how the indigenous water representations and ontologies were or could be integrated in the new water policy and actions plans such as the limitations of this process in terms of including customary values and norms