Water security struggles in the Peruvian and Ecuadorian highlands

May 26th, 2014

J. Hoogesteger, M. Sosa, R. Manosalvas, A. Verzijl, M. Zwarteveen & R. Boelens, Wageningen University

In this paper we argue that water security is not just determined by absolute availabilities of water, but that it is also a function of the distribution of resources and services amongst different social actors. This relational perspective allows one to see that water security for one (group of) actor(s) may entail water insecurity for others1. Water security in this sense is both a reflection as well as an important constitutive force of prevailing social relations of power.

With today’s increasing pressure on water resources, ‘water insecurity’ is felt hardest by socio-economically and politically less powerful societal groups. Peasant and indigenous communities in the Andes are an example: their water security – based on generations of investments in building and maintaining infrastructure and embedded in collective institutions – is under threat2. The waters they need for agriculture and livestock are increasingly being claimed by more wealthy and powerful actors, who are often supported by public policies and investments that favour re-allocations to supposedly more productive or efficient uses.

This paper presents cases from Peru and Ecuador to document and analyse both the multiplicity of threats to the water security of peasant communities, as well as their multifarious struggles to combat them. We base our analysis on the four elements of water security that Dimitrov3 proposes: who or what is to be protected (the referential object of security), against what (the threats), how is protection reached (the means of pursuing security), and who is involved in creating this security (actor and institutional allies that secure water access/control).

These cases underscore that materializing water security for marginalized water user groups asks for a profound comprehension of local water rights and management contexts that includes conflicting interests within and among communities and, in particular, with powerful intervening actors. At the same time, for these collective users, a local perspective and local action often appear to be insufficient to bring security of water access and control closer.

Disputed water security in Cajamarca, Peru

Several springs of the Cerro Negro mountain in Cajamarca feed the La Ramada canal, used to irrigate 247 hectares in several smallholder communities (object of security). In 1993, backed by national policies and legislation and international bank support and mining agreements, the Yanacocha mining company started operations in the region and gained control over the Cerro Negro lands. The mining company also needed access to water resources.

In 2003, the mine succeeded in convincing a farmer leader to give up the community’s water rights, which thus became available to the company. The other community members only discovered this later; they realized that they were hoodwinked by the mine and filed an official complaint. The resulting negotiations between the mining company and the affected communities were followed by public protests, more legal procedures and subsequent studies (pursuing security) aimed at re-claiming the communities’ water. The struggles remain unresolved, but for the time being, the mine’s water security comes with the communities’ water insecurity4.

Struggles for water and recognition of wetlands in Huancavelica, Peru

In the Andes of Huancavelica, plans to construct the Ingahuasi Interceptor Drain to collect highland water resources and divert them for commercial irrigation on the coast (threat), would effectively cut all water influx to the irrigated wetlands of the indigenous community of Ccarhuancho (object). The drain furthermore obstructs the transhumance of alpacas. According to the environmental impact assessment, negative social and environmental impacts were minimal and local people would welcome the drain’s construction and ensuing labour opportunities.

However, Ccarhuancho and its neighbouring communities fiercely resisted. They demanded the right to use their water and recognition of their irrigated wetlands. The communities succeeded to enrol other Huancavelica communities, non-governmental organizations, high-standing regional politicians and water professionals (allies) in their struggle. The case was successfully presented before the International Water Tribunal and combined with a series of mobilizations and negotiations (pursuit), Ccarhuancho continues to maintain water security for their wetlands5.

Protecting water through formal water allocations in Ecuador

To protect their water security from state agencies, like public water companies and hydraulic megaprojects (threat), highland communities in Ecuador have started a fierce run on ‘formal’ state water allocations. Most of the times, these large-scale private- or State-driven technological interventions include enormous investments to secure formal and official water rights; allocations that directly compete with community livelihoods. Therefore, the communities of Cayambe developed supra-community organizations and linked up with non-governmental organizations, indigenous regional and national federations, and politicians at several administrative levels (allies) through collaboration, negotiations, road blocks, protests, political pressure and legal means (pursuit) to get state water allocations6.

Several other communities have engaged in similar processes for water rights recognition. The community of La Chimba in the northern Pichincha province has legally applied for water allocations for virtually every single stream that runs through what they consider ‘their water territory’7, whose extent is based on collaborative work struggles that are linked to ancestral assertions and transcendental values (object). The Oyacachi community even ‘collected’ that many official water allocations that paying the established user-fee to the national water authority became problematic. Yet for the communities these water allocations and related recognition at supra-local levels are important to guarantee their local water security and the sustenance of their ecosystems against external threats.

Conclusions

Prominent challenges of securing water access for poor and marginal groups and protecting fragile ecosystems are the main core of water equity and justice debates. Our research in Ecuador and Peru shows that even well-intended and carefully planned policies are not sufficient to secure these groups’ access to and control over their water resources. In the prevailing context, characterized by strongly un-even power relationships, their water security protection necessarily asks for strategically designed defence struggles against external threats.

Given the fact that their powerful adversaries tend to base their (local) water encroachment and development practices on strongly national-global networks, smallholder groups and communities also need to respond by bridging and connecting multiple scales and diverse actors. In these struggles, recognition by the state, its bureaucracy, politicians and other parties is of key importance, just as their capacity to link up and engage in multi-actor networks that possess broader, even international spatial reach.

These multi-scalar networks may integrate a diversity of (complementary) capacities, resources, contacts, and join official and informal powers to strengthen their stakes. This way, communities can gain recognition (legal, political, cultural) of their water needs and uses as demonstrated by the cases of Ccarhuancho, Cayambe, La Chimba and Oyacachi. Failure to do so bears the risk of losing their access to water to more powerful actors as happened in La Ramada.

References:

Boelens, R. and M. Seemann (2014). Forced Engagements. Water Security and Local Rights Formalization in Yanque, Colca Valley, Peru. Human Organization 73(1). Hoogesteger, J., R. Manosalvas, M. Sosa and A. Verzijl (2013). Nuevas escalas de acción: organizaciones y seguridad hídrica en los Andes. In Agua e Inequidad: Discursos, políticas y medios de vida en la región andina. J. Hoogesteger and P. Urteaga. Lima, IEP/Justicia Hídrica: 21-43. Dimitrov, R. (2002). Water, Conflict, and Security: A Conceptual Minefield. Society and Natural Resources 15(8):677-691. Sosa, M. and M. Zwarteveen (2012). Exploring the politics of water grabbing: The case of large mining operations in the Peruvian Andes. Water Alternatives 5(2): 360-375. Verzijl, A. and S. G. Quispe (2013). The system nobody sees: Irrigated wetland management and alpaca herding in the Peruvian Andes. Mountain Research and Development 33(3): 280-293. Hoogesteger, J. (2013). Trans-forming social capital around water: Water user organizations, water rights, and nongovernmental organizations in Cangahua, the Ecuadorian Andes. Society and Natural Resources 26(1): 60-74. Boelens, R., B. Duarte, R. Manosalvas, P. Mena, T. Roa Avendaño, J. Vera (2012). Contested Territories: Water Rights and the Struggles over Indigenous Livelihoods. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 3(3).

The authors are researchers with the Water Resources Management Group, Dept. Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, The Netherlands. The research is part of the Integrated Programme “Struggling for water security: Social mobilization for the defence of water rights in Peru and Ecuador” financed by NWO-WOTRO Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.

The views expressed in this article belong to the individual authors and do not represent the views of the Global Water Forum, the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, UNESCO, the Australian National University, or any of the institutions to which the authors are associated. Please see the Global Water Forum terms and conditions here.