Enlivening development: Water management in post-conflict Baucau city, Timor-Leste

This paper explores how the state and others involved in the ‘development enterprise’ in Timor-Leste are (mis)recognizing the potential of the existing environmental governance and exchange capacities of local customary institutions and practices in relation to water supply and management. Examining the problematic of water supply in a particular place-based instance – more specifically, the intermesh of the customary, state and market sectors – it ponders how customary institutions might be better supported to extend their range of political and economic credibility and contribute to a reconfiguration of dominant community managed water supply models. Drawing out the workings of a ‘diverse economy’ where a customary economy is enmeshed with, and to some extent undermining, a weak capitalist sector, the paper argues that a failure to address issues of resource ownership and control and to engage the strengths and import of local customary institutions will have serious ramifications for the successful implementation of national development objectives in post-conflict Baucau city and elsewhere in Timor-Leste. Instead, it argues for an enlivened development approach wherein locally socialized landscapes are recognized as credible political sites with which ‘development’ can engage and power relations can shift.