Open Access

David Kuhn, Robert Lütkemeier, Fanny Frick-Trzebitzky, Linda Söller, Kristiane Fehrs

• Highlights • Germany plans more long-distances water transfers to secure drinking water supply. • Long-distance water transfers can unfold lock-ins that limit adaptive water governance. • Our interdisciplinary case study shows how lock-ins emerge over different spaces and times. • Commercialisation of water but also local protests contributed to various lock-ins. • We therefore call for context-specific assessments of potentials and risks of LDWT. Abstract Germany plans to expand water transfers over long distances in the light of numerous and pressing challenges for drinking water supply. Research on inter- and intrabasin water transfers warns, however, that major investments in large-scale infrastructure systems accompanied by institutional logics and political interests often lead to a so-called lock-in. As a consequence, long-distance water transfers can limit the potential for adaptive water governance in the involved supply areas over decades with negative impacts for people and the environment. By using a case study in Germany as an example, we researched when, where and how such lock-ins around long-distance water transfers emerge. In the infrastructural development of the Elbaue-Ostharz transfer system we found various lock-ins that overlap in space and time. Some are located at the centre others at the margins of the infrastructure and commercialization of the water sector as well as hydraulic and hygienic concerns interlock with local protests in a way that the expansion of the long-distance water transfer infrastructure is presented continuously as imperative. Our findings contribute to a relational understanding of lock-ins of long-distance water transfers as contingent and diverse processes. Given the widespread occurrence of lock-ins, we argue for a context-specific assessment of potentials and risks of long-distance water transfers in times of multiple crises.