Bridging the socioeconomic inequality gap in the process of adapting water allocation to climate change: the sociopolitical role of civil society in Taiwan

Climate change not only encompasses ecological collapse but also directly or indirectly contributes to increased socioeconomic inequality. Specifically, the literature has explained water inequality theoretically, where a compounding feedback loop is formed by climate crisis, water scarcity and injustice, and marginalised populations face a disproportionate burden. However, as the world entered an era of global water bankruptcy, whereas climate-induced socioeconomic inequality is continuously widening, the need to seek solutions and hold stakeholders accountable with the goal of addressing water injustice is pressing. As a result, this study proposes an analysis of water injustice from an actor-oriented perspective to explore the different roles that civil society may play in the event of state and market failure with the goal of promoting good water governance that can help mitigate socioeconomic inequality. By systematically investigating an empirical case study of climate adaptation-oriented water transfer in Taiwan, this research investigates three specific research subquestions pertaining to justness, legitimacy and effectiveness: 1) Whose (in)justice does civil society represent? 2) What strategies does civil society use to increase its legitimacy? 3) How effectively can civil society be used as a leveraging power in water infrastructural politics? We then highlight two roles that civil society can play as a bridging organisation in this context. The first such role is social and positions civil society as a social defender that has discursive correction capacity, whereas the other role is political and identifies civil society as a strategic politicizer that has politicisation capacity. The contributions of this study thus lay a foundation for future research.