Suchergebnisse

This book addresses two major issues in natural resource management and political ecology: the complex conflicting relationship between communities managing water on the ground and national/global policy-making institutions and elites; and how grassroots defend against encroachment, question the self-evidence of State-/market-based water governance, and confront coercive and participatory boundary policing ('normal' vs. 'abnormal'). The book examines grassroots building of multi-layered water-rights territories, and State, market and expert networks' vigorous efforts to reshape these water so.

In the Andes, water rights are enforced in processes of social struggle. This paper explains how water struggles by Andean user collectives cannot be understood aside from their rootedness in dynamic 'undertows': the multi-layered, often concealed water-rights foundations. They entwine plural legal sources and livelihood strategies; there, water rights are shaped materially and discursively. Undertows also constitute the socio-territorial home bases for communities' efforts to upscale their water rights battlegrounds into broader political-legal networks. In practice, this often happens in disguised political forms: through 'mimicry' shields and strategies, which also enable them to shop around in rulers' power factory. Dynamic sub-surface creation and proliferation of water rights repertoires constitute a strong source of defense against encroachment and disciplinary policies. ; En los Andes, los derechos de agua se materializan en procesos de lucha social. El artículo examina cómo la lucha por el agua de los colectivos locales no puede comprenderse sin su enraizamiento en subcorrientes dinámicas: los cimientos multicapas, a menudo ocultos, de los derechos de agua. Aquí se entrelazan estrategias comunitarias y fuentes socio-legales plurales. Las subcorrientes alimentan los socio-territorios y las culturas hidráulicas, estableciendo las bases para la defensa de los derechos locales hacia redes político-legales multi-escala. En la práctica, los arreglos y derechos propios a menudo están disfrazados por medio de escudos y estrategias de mimetismo (o imitación), que también permiten hacer uso de los medios de poder dominantes. La creación y la proliferación subsuperficiales de los repertorios sociolegales locales constituyen una importante fuente de defensa contra la usurpación de los derechos de agua y las políticas disciplinarias.

ABSTRACTThis article examines how the legal systems of Andean countries have dealt with the region's huge plurality of local water rights, and how official policies to 'recognize' local rights and identities harbour increasingly subtle politics of codification, confinement and disciplining. The autonomy and diversity of local water rights are a major hindrance for water companies, elites and formal rule‐enforcers, since State and market institutions require a predictable, uniform playing field. Complex local rights orders are seen as irrational, ill‐defined and disordered. Officialdom cannot simply ignore or oppress the 'unruliness and disobedience' of local rights systems: rather it 'incorporates' local normative orders that have the capacity to adequately respond to context‐based needs. This article examines a number of evolving, overlapping legal domination strategies, such as the 'marrying' of local and official legal systems in ways that do not challenge the legal and power hierarchy; and reviews the ways in which official regulation and legal strategies deny or take into consideration local water rights repertoires, and the politics of recognition that these entail. Post‐colonial recognition policies are not simply responses to demands by subjugated groups for greater autonomy. Rather, they facilitate the water bureaucracy's political control and help neoliberal sectors to incorporate local water users' rights and organizations into the market system — even though many communities refuse to accept these policies of recognition and politics of containment.

Water rights and property relations have become pivotal issues in water debates, reforms and intervention programs. Governments, development agencies and expert centers tend to consider 'water rights' as merely standard black boxes that juxtapose the frameworks of positivist technical and economist water science. But far beyond universal manuals and irrigation regulations, there is another water world, entrenched in the everyday lives of real people, male and female water users. The paper makes clear how Andean user collectives practice an enormous variety of water rights and management forms, as localnational- international hybrids that are created and affirmed in local water territories, embedded in historical and cultural-political contexts. ; Por el aumento generalizado de los conflictos por el agua, los derechos a este recurso se han vuelto ejes en los debates, reformas y programas de intervención hídrica. Los gobiernos, las agencias de desarrollo y los centros expertos tienden a considerar los 'derechos de agua' como meras cajas negras estándar que se yuxtaponen a los marcos de las ciencias técnicas y económicas positivistas. Pero mucho más allá de los manuales y las regulaciones de riego, hay otro mundo del agua íntimamente ligado a la vida diaria de gente real, hombres y mujeres que usan ese agua. Este artículo estudia cómo los colectivos de usuarios en la región andina practican una enorme variedad de derechos de agua y formas de gestión, como híbridos locales-nacionales-internacionales que se crean y afirman en los territorios hídricos locales, embebidos en contextos históricos y cultural-políticos.

Se esta cambiando la politica nacional de riego en el Ecuador. El INERHI, institucion estatal encargada de una buena parte de los sistemas de riego en el pais, desaparecera a corto plazo. Parte de sus funciones quedara a cargo del nuevo Consejo Nacional de Recursos Hidricos, sobre todo la de formular la politica nacional de riego y priorizar sus proyectos. (Ecuador Debate/DÜI)