Switzerland’s cultural landscapes – green pastures and flowering hay meadows – have been deeply shaped by resources (forests, pastures, and irrigation water) governed as commons (Allmende). In spite of radical changes to their institutional and infrastructural framework, the irrigation systems of Canton Valais remain grounded in an enduring ethos of care, crucial to sustaining local landscapes and their communities.
A case study from Törbel (Valais) helps frame the current challenges facing the irrigation system: how to support long-standing cooperation and care for the landscape as climate change and new technologies reshape established social practices?
Törbel’s irrigation system, fed mainly by snowmelt, is increasingly under strain from climate change. Water shortages are now common by late summer. In response, the municipality is considering integrating sensors and digital tools to track water use against the established water schedule (Wasserplan) and water rights more accurately. This is in line with wider efforts to monitor and optimise water use across the canton.
Complexity and Informality Enables a Flexible yet Stable Form of Governance
Törbel’s current network includes over 600 sprinklers divided into twelve sectors. Rights to water are tied to land ownership, and maintenance costs are proportional to land area. Irrigators are bound to a water schedule (Wasserplan) posted by the municipality at the start of every irrigation season. There is no official record of water use beyond the Wasserplan, which relies for its application on cooperation and the flexible adoption of rules. In this sense, irrigation in Törbel today may still share some important characteristics with «The System Nobody Knows,» (1974), which is how anthropologist Robert Netting described it over half a century ago. The system appeared to have no explicit and comprehensive set of rules and regulations. It was known only in a very discrete way by each appropriator, concerned nearly exclusively with the exercise of their own water right. Through exchange, negotiation, and purchase of use rights, the allocation of water was adjusted in response to varying needs. Complexity and informality enabled a flexible yet stable form of governance.
Today, as digital technologies promise greater control and efficiency, can such systems retain flexible cooperation when rules become fixed through geo-location and monitored in real time? This case prompts broader reflections on how new forms of ‘commoning’ might allow for the values embedded in traditional commons – care, cooperation, and adaptability – to be integrated within new socio-technical regimes.
Nicole de Lalouvière is a landscape architect and postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design, Prof. Tom Avermaete. Her research explores historical and contemporary forms of commons to uncover insights relevant to pressing architectural challenges.
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