Changing Water Use and Management in the Context of Glacier Retreat: a Case Study of the Peruvian Village of Huashao”
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“Changing water use and management in the context of glacier retreat: a case study of the Peruvian village of Huashao” Susan Conlon January 2018 A thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the University of East Anglia, School of International Development © "This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived therefrom must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution.” Abstract In Peru´s Callejón de Huaylas, the physical and social dynamics of water use and management are changing rapidly. A shift from subsistence to commercial crop production in comunidades campesinas is leading to intensive water use, compounding the impacts of glacier retreat on water availability. The 2009 Water Resources Law aims to address water scarcity and conflict though ‘formalising’ water use and management, bringing increased state control over water user organizations. This study explores how villagers in a water user organization in Huashao interacted with state discourses and practices of ‘formalization’. It uses discourse analysis to examine ‘formalization’ and its relationship to changing policies at the national and global levels. Through an ethnographic case study, it explores villagers’ everyday water use practices and the outcomes for social and institutional relationships. It investigates changing water use and management, the role of water users in shaping these changes and the influence of historical interactions with the market and NGO initiatives. The thesis shows that globalized discourses of water scarcity and climate change adaptation travel from global to local levels to subtly disperse state control over local water use and management. Yet, local water users interact with wider processes of social, historical and economic change in ways that respond to new commercial opportunities outside global management discourses. By asserting ways of thinking and acting around water based on flexible, opportunistic judgements to reproduce livelihoods, they challenge understandings of water and life in comunidades campesinas in ‘formalization’ policies. An ethnographic approach appreciates that people live with and negotiate contradictions in everyday life as they react to new water governance arrangements that defy simple interpretations of change in such contexts. I argue that understanding water users’ interactions with wider social change, and the outcomes for water use practices and management institutions, illuminates apparently contradictory behaviour. 2 Contents Tables and Figures .......................................................................................................... 7 Glossary of Spanish terms .............................................................................................. 8 Abbreviations .............................................................................................................. 10 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 1 : Introduction ............................................................................................... 14 1.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 14 1.2. A word on background ............................................................................................... 15 1.3. Accelerated glacier retreat & water-intensive socio-economic development in the Cordillera Blanca .................................................................................................................... 16 1.3.1. Central puzzle of the thesis ............................................................................ 20 1.4. A focus on place ......................................................................................................... 20 1.5. New governance arrangements – understanding the consequences for local water user organizations .................................................................................................................. 22 1.6. Introducing the case study - the village of Huashao .................................................. 23 1.7. Research questions and thesis structure ................................................................... 24 Chapter 2 : Water governance in Peru and interactions with water use and management practices in the Andes .................................................................................................. 27 2.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 27 2.2. Towards the transformation of Peruvian water management .................................. 28 2.1.1. Governance and institutions: the role of water user organizations and the spread of state control ................................................................................................... 28 2.1.2. A complex water bureaucracy with technocratic origins .............................. 31 2.1.3. IWRM – global influences and critique of the Peruvian approach ................ 36 2.3. Dominant constructions of water in policy – origins and critique ............................. 41 2.3.1. Water security and the ‘formalization’ of water user rights ......................... 42 2.3.2. IWRM as ‘adaptation to climate change’ ....................................................... 45 2.4. Local contexts – water management in the Andes .................................................... 49 2.4.1. Understanding water management in the Andes .......................................... 50 2.4.2. Comunidades campesinas in the new governance arrangements - social construction, historical marginalization and experiences of engagement .................... 53 2.5. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 59 Chapter 3 : Conceptual framework ............................................................................... 62 3.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 62 3 3.2. Place – foregrounding people and livelihoods........................................................... 62 3.3. Discourses and scale in water governance ................................................................ 65 3.4. Agency ........................................................................................................................ 71 3.4.1. Agency and social change .............................................................................. 73 3.4.2. Agency and institutions – embracing complexity .......................................... 77 3.5. Conceptual framework - brief illustration and narrative ........................................... 82 Chapter 4 : Methodology .............................................................................................. 84 4.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 84 4.2. Reflection on motivations .......................................................................................... 84 4.3. Epistemological grounding ......................................................................................... 87 4.4. Ethnographic case study methodology ...................................................................... 88 4.4.1. Selecting a case study site .............................................................................. 89 4.5. Being in Huashao & living with a family ..................................................................... 91 4.5.1. Accessing people and place ........................................................................... 91 4.5.2. Activities and emerging relationships ............................................................ 93 4.6. Other sources of data & data collection methods ..................................................... 96 4.6.1. Social groups & semi-structured interviews .................................................. 96 4.6.2. Resource map activity .................................................................................. 101 4.6.3. Secondary data ............................................................................................ 103 4.7. Analysis .................................................................................................................... 104 4.8. Reflections on research process .............................................................................. 106 4.8.1. Language ...................................................................................................... 106 4.8.2. Research ethics ............................................................................................ 107 Chapter 5 : The village of Huashao - people and place ................................................. 109 5.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................. 109 5.2. Huashao village and the Cordillera Blanca mountains ............................................ 110 5.3. Livelihood activities – diversity and change ............................................................ 115 5.4. Landscape