Metadata only record ; In this chapter Boelens and Zwarteveen deliver a sharp critique of the privatization of water rights in Andean countries. It is argued that historically, privatization has been used to concentrate power into the hands of the already powerful at the expense of communities that derive their livelihoods from common property management schemes. The authors are particularly critical of the Chilean example executed under the Pinochet regime and the continuing advice from the World Bank and other IFI's to continually adopt policies that abolish existing community systems and move towards much larger private systems.
[EN] In recent decades, water has been subjected to different commodification and de-collectivization processes. Increasingly, this is also affecting collective irrigation Water management. Critical analysis of this privatization and de-collectivization wave in the irrigation sector has mainly focused on neoliberal institutional policies and market-oriented legislation. However, subtly and silently but equally determinant, the adoption of water-saving technologies is fostering the penetration of private enterprise and market-based governance into these hydro social settings. This paper discusses this phenomenon through a case study of the community of Senyera in Valencia, Spain, tracking the privatization and subsequent contestation and re-takeover of water management by irrigation system users. The article shows how privatization removes users' autonomy in the name of common well-being, and increases irrigation costs in a context of little transparency. But the case also highlights users' capacity to re-value and re-signify, their past collective action, remembering and 're-membering to' the collective. Senyera water users critically and reflexively analyse privatization, reconstruct societal relationships around and embedded inside the new technology, and re-collectivize and re-moralize irrigation management in a new hydro social scenario. ; Support for this research has been partially provided by the project INIA RTA2014-00050-00-00 from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, partially financed with ERDF funds. ; Sanchis Ibor, C.; Boelens, R.; García Molla, M. (2017). Collective irrigation reloaded. Re-collection and re-moralization of water management after privatization in Spain. Geoforum. 87:38-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.10.002 ; S ; 38 ; 47 ; 87
Metadata only record ; This chapter focuses on special law, which is used throughout the Andean region to delineate legislative constructs for how policies are intended to affect indigenous peoples. Specifically, the authors focus on the use of special law in regard to water resource management and draw out the argument that while these "recognition policies" are intended to act as a bridge between local and national governance, throughout history such provisions have failed to heal relations between the two systems. This is highlighted through a discussion of the Peruvian and Chilean examples.
This article reviews and contrasts two approaches that water security researchers employ to advance understanding of the complexity of water-society policy challenges. A prevailing reductionist approach seeks to represent uncertainty through calculable risk, links national GDP tightly to hydro-climatological causes, and underplays diversity and politics in society. When adopted uncritically, this approach limits policy-makers to interventions that may reproduce inequalities, and that are too rigid to deal with future changes in society and climate. A second, more integrative, approach is found to address a range of uncertainties, explicitly recognise diversity in society and the environment, incorporate water resources that are less-easily controlled, and consider adaptive approaches to move beyond conventional supply-side prescriptions. The resultant policy recommendations are diverse, inclusive, and more likely to reach the marginalised in society, though they often encounter policy-uptake obstacles. The article concludes by defining a route towards more effective water security research and policy, which stresses analysis that matches the state of knowledge possessed, an expanded research agenda, and explicitly addresses inequities.
