Watershed Politics and Climate Change in Peru

Astrid B. Stensrud

Description

This book travels to the heart of power, inequality and injustice in water politics. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Peru, Astrid B. Stensrud explores the impact of climate change and extractivist neoliberal policies – including Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), a global paradigm that views water as a finite resource in need of management.

Engaging with the many different actors and entities participating in the constitution of the watershed – from engineers, bureaucrats and farmers, to mountains, springs and canals – Stensrud shines light on different yet entangled water practices and water worlds and how both the watershed and our understanding of water itself have changed.

Challenging hegemonic understandings, the book moves beyond conventional perspectives of political ecology and political economy to achieve a decolonial perspective.

Maps and Figures

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

List of Words in Quechua and Spanish

Series Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Water and Watershed Politics

1. Engineering Water Flows

2. Colonising the Desert

3. Water Payments

4. Water Uncertainties and Disasters

5. Water Efficiency

6. Legible and Illegible Water

7. Owning Water

Conclusion: Water Multiplicity

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Human Geography
• Social Science
• Commodities
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Mercancía (economía)
• Organización de las Naciones Unidas
• Perú
• América del Sur
• Sociology
• Watershed
• Integrated Water Resources Management
• Natural Resources
• Resource management
• Ethnography
• General officer
• Commodity
• World Bank
• United Nations
• South America
• Latin America
• Central America
• Anthropology
• Ecology
• SS Central America
• General
• Water
• Chivay
• Social
• Peru
• Banque mondiale
• Culture
• Organisation des Nations unies

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786807571
• Langue: English

Extrait

Watershed Politics and Climate Change in Peru
This superb ethnography invites us to slow down the assumption that water is either a resource or a vital force and attend to how its multiplicity implies a politics of entangled worldings. This book will change how you think about the politics of water!
-Mario Blaser, Associate Professor of Archaeology, Memorial University, Canada
Though many recent researchers have examined water through a climate change lens, this highly original book is distinctive in examining climate change through a water lens.
-Ben Orlove, anthropologist and Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York
This book expresses the power of ethnography. Using her kaleidoscopic notions, Astrid Stensrud presents an analysis of a politics of water that empirically emerging from multiple worlds to transform political ecology and political economy into pluriversal analytics.
-Marisol de la Caden, Professor of Anthropology, UC-Davis, California and author of Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds
An exemplary ethnographic analysis that, focusing on waterworlds in Peru, illuminates the many and diverse ways that people conceptualise and value water, engage with water, and compose human and non-human relationships through water.
-Veronica Strang, Executive Director, Institute of Advanced Study, University of Durham and author of Water, Culture and Nature
Anthropology, Culture and Society
Series Editors: Jamie Cross, University of Edinburgh, Christina Garsten, Stockholm University and Joshua O. Reno, Binghamton University
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Watershed Politics and Climate Change in Peru
Astrid B. Stensrud
First published 2021 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Astrid B. Stensrud 2021
The right of Astrid B. Stensrud to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 4020 3 Hardback ISBN 978 1 78680 747 2 PDF ISBN 978 1 78680 757 1 EPUB ISBN 978 1 78680 758 8 Kindle


This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Maps and Figures
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
List of Words in Quechua and Spanish
Series Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Water and Watershed Politics
Water as a matter of concern in the Andes
Water extractivism
Water multiplicity
The Majes-Colca watershed
Fieldwork in a watershed
The chapters
1 Engineering Water Flows
Hydraulic dreams
Conquering mountains
Water struggles
Institutional plurality
Caring for water and users
The social life of valve regulation
Conclusion
2 Colonising the Desert
Land for those who work it: the pioneer settlers
Searching for life and making a home
Neoliberalism, volatility and precarity
Dependency and risk
New water uncertainties
Conclusion
3 Water Payments
Neoliberal policies and water tariffs
Collective work in las comisiones
Sentient water and water-beings
Mediating water worlds
Conclusion
4 Water Uncertainties and Disasters
Communicating with the water-giving mountain-beings
Belated rain and dry springs
Money cannot be eaten: new insecurities
Climate cosmopolitics
Conclusion
5 Water Efficiency
Efficiency: a new water culture
Disencounters: technological fix and flexible design
Good use: relational fluidity
Entanglements: enclosures and leakages
Conclusion
6 Legible and Illegible Water
Water scarcity and legibility
Formalising water user rights in Colca Valley
Autonomy versus control and commodification
Mountains, reciprocity, respect and ownership
Land titles, legibility and potable water in Majes
Conclusion
7 Owning Water
Ownership, property and the (un)commons
Financial investment: the re-colonisation of land and water
Watershed politics I: Measuring and harvesting water
Watershed politics II: Nurturing and claiming water and land
Conclusion: nourishing investments and conditional ownership
Conclusion: Water Multiplicity
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Maps and Figures
Maps
1. The Caman -Majes-Colca watershed (left), with the Tuti water intake, Chivay and the irrigated pampa of Majes. The map also shows Majes-Siguas II project: the planned Angostura dam and the planned irrigation of Siguas (to the right of Majes) (Source: Autodema)
2. Colca Valley and pampa of Majes (Source: Google Maps)
Figures
1. A view of Colca Valley
2. The Majes Canal
3. Drip irrigation in the Majes Irrigation Project
4 Pagos (offerings)
5. Mount Hualca Hualca
6. World Water Day march in Chivay
7. Water flows in canals made of earth and cement
8. Land title documents for water license application
9. Watering trees in the desert of Majes
10. Water canals are crisscrossing the landscape of Colca Valley
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
AAA: Autoridad Administrativa del Agua (Administrative Water Authority)
ALA: Administraci n Local del Agua (Local Water Administration)
ANA: Autoridad Nacional del Agua (National Water Authority)
ATDR: Administraci n T cnica de Distrito de Riego (Technical Administration of the Irrigation District)
Autodema: Autoridad Aut noma de Majes (Autonomous Authority of Majes)
CASS: Comit de Administraci n de Servicios de Saneamiento (Administrative Committee of Sanitary Services)
Desco: an NGO working in Caylloma Province
IWRM: integrated water resources management
JASS: Junta de Administraci n de Servicios de Saneamiento (Administrative Board of Sanitary Services)
JUPM: Junta de Usuarios Pampa de Majes (Board of Water Users in Pampa of Majes)
JUVC: Junta de Usuarios Valle del Colca (Board of Water Users in Colca Valley)
lps: litres per second
MACON: Majes Consorcio (Consortium Majes)
Majes-Siguas II: the second phase of the irrigation project
MIP: Majes Irrigation Project (Proyecto Irrigaci n Majes)
MMC: million cubic metres ( millon metros c bicos )
Profodua: Programa de Formalizaci n de Derecho de Uso de Agua
PSI: Programa Subsectorial de Irrigaciones (Subsectoral Irrigation Programme)
Sedapar: Servicio de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado de Arequipa S.A. (Public Company of Potable Water and Wastewater Service of Arequipa)
WRL: Water Resources Law (Ley de recursos h dricos)
List of Words in Quechua and Spanish
apu : lord , mountain-being
ayllu : community; kinship-based collective of humans and non-humans
ayni : reciprocal exchange of labour and help
bofedal : cushion bogs in the headwaters, pasture for llamas and alpacas
campesinos : peasants, often associated with indigeneity and the highlands
ch alla : form of libation; sharing drink with the earth-beings
chicha : fermented maize drink
comadre : co-mother
compadre : co-father
cuenca : watershed/river basin
faena : collective/communal work party
iranta : offering (like pago )
k intu : bouquet of three coca leaves
libreta : control book for members of water users commissions
madrina : godmother, sponsor
minka : form of collective work based on reciprocity
Pachamama: the earth mother
padrino : godfather, sponsor
pago : offering made to the earth, springs and mountains
paqu : ritual expert (also called curandero , which means healer )
puna : high-altitude areas
samay : breath, life-force
sierra : highlands
sol : Peruvian Nuevo Sol (PEN), currency in Peru. In 2013 and 2014, 1 PEN = US 0.35.
t inka : form of libation, sprinkling of alcohol to earth-beings
tirakuna : earths , or earth-beings
untu : llama f