The River Speaks

Speaking with the River: Embodied Encounters and Local Values of the Río Peñas Blancas in Response to Potential Hydroelectric Development in South-Pacific Costa Rica Carmen Alejandra Umaña-Kinitzki A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS Graduate Program in Environmental Studies York University Toronto, Ontario August 2017 © Carmen Alejandra Umaña-Kinitzki ii ABSTRACT In Costa Rica, the state’s decision to approve the construction of two private hydropower dams along the Peñas Blancas River is being called into question by local residents and non-governmental agencies who caution against the environmental, socio-cultural, and economic implications of constructing multiple dams along a potable and highly biodiverse river system. To explore these various concerns, I conducted research with 36 primary participants (including residents, peasants, conservationists and student youth) within the Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor (ASBC) in the south- Pacific region of Costa Rica. The primary objective of this research was to understand how local knowledges can inform state policy—particularly with regard to how environmental impact studies are conducted and written. In addition, by considering how the river itself is assembled from organic, geophysical, material, social, discursive, and technological components, this thesis offers alternative ways of envisioning freshwater that do not adhere to the dominant representations found within current policy. The study finds that the river is indistinguishable from the components that generate its quantity and quality, indicating that the effective conservation of the river’s water is integrally tied to and dependent on the protection of the conditions and elements that generate its flow. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to begin by expressing my deepest gratitude to Dr. Sean Kheraj who jump started my fascination in this area of research during my undergraduate studies by asking the critical question: what is nature? I would like to extend my appreciation to Dr. Zulfikar Hirji and Dr. David Murray whose methodological and theoretical insights were extremely valuable to this research. I would also like to thank Dr. Cate Sandilands for introducing me to the essential literature upon which my research is grounded, particularly the works of Jane Bennett, and whose course (Culture and Environment) permanently changed my perspective on socio-natural relations. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Peter Vandergeest for his invaluable feedback and ideas and for helping me to consider how power and authority inform Liberal Western ways of knowing nature, and the implications of these knowledges. I am also very grateful to Dr. Anna Zalik for pushing me to consider how power operates to inform resource extractive negotiations in the Global South. I am additionally very grateful to Dr. Shubhra Gururani for emphasizing the existence of other ways of knowing nature, and for asking the question: how might our dominant understandings of ethics and politics change if we consider other ways of knowing? I am also exceedingly grateful to my Supervisor Dr. Felipe Montoya and to my Advisor Dr. Anders Sandberg for their constant and unwavering support, and whose extremely valuable ideas and advice have made this work what it is. Our conversations, office meetings, and casual hangouts will be remembered fondly. Moreover, I feel extremely privileged to have had Dr. Anders Sandberg as such a wonderful and constant mentor throughout this entire degree. Words cannot express my gratitude for all of his endless support, insights, and wisdom. I would also like to thank York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, the Las Nubes Project, and the Lambert family for making my research within Costa Rica financially possible with the Lambert Family Graduate Award in Neotropical Research and Conservation. This thank you also extends to the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean for funding this study with the Paavo and Aino Lukkari Human Rights Award. A very special thank you goes to my mother, Carole Umaña, who not only started my passion for reading and writing but who also facilitated so many opportunities for me to follow my various interests and goals. Carole was a constant support throughout this degree and she continues to motivate me to keep improving on my own abilities. This project would not have iv been possible without her. I would also like to thank my father, Mauricio Umaña, and my abuela, Tita, for their kind words of love and support that have kept me going. I wish to extend a deep and sincere thank you to Brittany Maguire who not only enriched this research process with great insights and wonderful conversations, but whose friendship has been a gift. Cheers to many more future adventures. Finally, I would like to thank Veronica Zuñiga-Romo for her sincere friendship, for supporting me through the ups and downs, and for knowing when I needed to close the books and “get out” to enjoy the day. I would also like to thank Marita and other members of the Arias family who took wonderful care of me, and to the additional friends who I had the pleasure of meeting throughout my time in Costa Rica. A special thanks goes to members of the women’s group AMACoBAS, and to the aqueduct council (ASADA) of Santa Elena for including me as a member in their local initiatives. I would also like to deeply thank all allies and members of Movimiento Rios Vivos. Their struggles and efforts to protect the country’s rivers remain invaluable and inspire me in my objective to continue to research disputes surrounding freshwater and environmental policy. Finally, I wish to extend my gratitude to communities and activists throughout the world, and especially within Latin America, who continue to defend freshwater sources against extractive forms of industrial development. v FOREWORD My area of concentration within my Plan of Study explores different understandings of freshwater and their contributions to how this element is used and managed in the Neotropics. I am particularly concerned with how beliefs and values with respect to freshwater become embedded within distinct environmental positions that converge, or conflict within water and energy politics to inform decisions about freshwater access, allocation, and conservation. Moreover, I consider how these distinct environmental knowledge systems are mediated by power relations to become unevenly embedded within the rules and regulations that govern freshwater. I additionally explore how these rules and regulations operate in association with local beliefs and practices to constitute a region’s particular hydro-social conditions and the lived bodily-realities of its water dependents. Throughout this degree, I have considered these aspects of freshwater through the frameworks of environmental anthropology and political ecology. Together, these disciplines emphasize a changing nature to the dominant ways of understanding freshwater and valuing its capacities. With the future uncertainties of global climate change, population growth, and freshwater extraction for industry, increasing concerns about a global water crisis have become prominent in the language used by state and non-state actors to warrant this element’s control. I have experienced such control through numerous initiatives aimed towards citizens to self regulate our individual consumption: “don’t leave the faucet running, don’t water gardens or wash cars in a drought”. However, these initiatives often do not account for freshwater’s primary consumer: industrial/commercial industry. While water scarcity has become a largely naturalized condition within politics, theorists such as Lyla Mehta argue that the notion of scarcity is “usually socially mediated and the result of sociopolitical processes” that tend to “naturalize its anthropogenic dimensions”; prompting the need to distinguish between the material forms of scarcity that are increasingly and unevenly felt by water dependents, and the relative forms of scarcity that are generated by its industrial users (Mehta 2011:372). Extending from this, I borrow anthropological methods and theory to consider alternative ways of understanding freshwater conservation within mountain communities in Costa Rica, where residents contest dominant perceptions of water scarcity and freshwater management. Within this thesis, I expand upon the components within my Plan of Study (with regard to freshwater knowledges, uses, and management approaches) to envision alternative ways of understanding freshwater that bring its own agency to the forefront of its study. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT __________________________________________________________ II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ______________________________________________ III FOREWORD _________________________________________________________ V TABLE OF CONTENTS ________________________________________________ VI LIST OF TABLES _____________________________________________________ X LIST OF FIGURES____________________________________________________ XI LIST OF ACRONYMS _________________________________________________ XII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ____________________________________________ XIII 1 INTRODUCTION ___________________________________________________ 1 1.1 An Introduction to the Study ____________________________________________________ 1 1.2 Costa Rica’s Watersheds _______________________________________________________

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