From lakes as urban commons to integrated lake-water governance: The case of Bengaluru's urban water bodies Sharachchandra Lele Distinguished Fellow - Centre for Environment & Development, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) Email: slele@atree.org Mrinalini Bakshi Sengupta Senior Research Associate - Centre for Environment & Development, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) Email: mrinalini.bakshi@atree.org 05 Abstract Across rapidly urbanizing South Asia, erstwhile irrigation tanks or “lakes” are being swallowed into towns and cities and being given new meaning as providers of environmental amenities. The campaigns in Bengaluru city in southern India to protect and rejuvenate these lakes have managed to stave off the conversion and also privatization of these lakes, and led to participatory management of a few of them. Most lakes, however, are still degraded. Why this is so and what institutional arrangements might improve the chances of success in lake governance? Drawing upon a combination of secondary material, key informant interviews, and year-long participant observation in governmental efforts at stemming lake degradation in Bengaluru, we seek to deepen current understanding of the values associated with lakes, their bio-social nature, and the roles played by and interactions between key actors and agencies. We argue that a) the societal stakes in lakes extend beyond local users of the lake itself, whether traditional or modern, to users of water downstream and in other parts of Bengaluru; b) there are significant trade-offs between different uses and an inherent asymmetric and broader connectivity resulting from the flow of water and wastewater, and c) therefore the governance of these lakes not only needs participation of local citizens, but also coordination between and democratic control over several other agencies that are involved in managing water and wastewater and in allocating water or regulating its quality. We explore alternative institutional arrangements that might better address this need for an integrated urban lake- water governance. Keywords: Urban lake governance; water governance; integrated management; democratic environmental governance Sharachchandra Lele et al. / SAWAS 8 (1), 2018 © 2018 SAWAS Acknowledgements: We are grateful to a large number of individuals and organizations, too many to list completely, that are working on issues related to Bengaluru’s lakes. We would, however, like to specifically acknowledge Ramprasad (Convenor of the Friends of Lakes network), S.Vishwanath, Shubha Ramachandran and Avinash Krishnamurthy (Biome Environmental Trust), Prof. Rama Prasad (Member, Technical Committee, KLCDA), Kshitij Urs (ActionAid) and Annapoorna S Kamath (Jalaposhan Trust) for their help. This research is part of a larger study titled “2035 Vision for Sustainable and Equitable Water and Wastewater Management in Bangalore” that is supported by a grant from the Royal Norwegian Embassy, New Delhi to ATREE. We are grateful to the project team for their support, and specifically to Veena Srinivasan and Nakul Heble for their inputs.