Social movements in defense of public water services: the case of Spain

In several cities and regions in Spain there has been a fight against privatization of water supply in the past decade. Some cities have decided to re-municipalise water supply and debates about implementing the human right to water and sanitation have been held in many parts of Spain, following the success of the Right2Water European Citizens' Initiative. This paper examines how the European “Right2Water” movement influenced struggles for access to and control over water in Spain from a political ecology perspective. It explores how “Right2Water” fuelled the debate on privatization and remunicipalization of water services and what heritage it has left in Spain. We unfold relationships with and between water movements in Spain—like the Red Agua Publica—and relationships with other networks—like the indignados movement and subsequently how water protests converged with austerity protests. In different places these struggles took different shapes. By deploying five case studies (Madrid, Valladolid, Terrassa, Barcelona, and Andalucía), we look at how the human right to water and sanitation framework served as a tool for social and water justice movements. Struggles for water justice in Spain are ongoing and we seek to identify the temporarily outcomes of these struggles, and whether power balances in Spain's water services provision have shifted in the past decade

Aguas diversas. Derechos de agua y pluralidad legal en las comunidades andinas

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

Luchas y defensas escondidas. Pluralismo legal y cultural como una práctica de resistencia creativa en la gestión local del agua en los Andes

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

Rivers of scarcity : Utopian Water Regimes and Flows Against the Current

'Utopians organized space, nature and society to perfection, including land and water governance -- rescuing society from deep-rooted crisis: “The happiest basis for a civilized community, to be universally adopted”. These days, similarly, well-intended utopian water governance regimes suggest radical transformations to combat the global Water Crisis, controlling deviant natures and humans. This lecture examines water utopia and dystopia as mirror societies. Modern utopias ignore real-life water cultures, squeeze rivers dry, concentrate water for the few, and blame the victims. But water-user collectives, men and women, increasingly speak up. They ask scholars and students to help question Flying Islands experts’ claims to rationality, democracy and equity; to co-create water knowledges and co-design water governance.

Contesting Hydropower Dams in the Eastern Himalaya: The Cultural Politics of Identity, Territory and Self-Governance Institutions in Sikkim, India

In India’s Eastern Himalayan State of Sikkim, the indigenous Bhutia communities, Lachungpas and Lachenpas, successfully contested all proposed hydropower projects and have managed to sustain an anti-dam opposition in their home regions, Lachung and Lachen. In this paper, we discuss this remarkable, un-researched, effective collective action against hydropower development, examining how identity and territory influence collective action through production, creation and application of vernacular knowledge systems. The role of the Dzumsa, a prevailing traditional system of self-governance among the Lachungpas and Lachenpas, has been central in their collective resistance against large dams in Lachung and Lachen. Our findings show that contrary to popular imageries, the Dzumsa is neither an egalitarian nor a democratic institution—rather, it is an exercise of an “agonistic unity”. The Dzumsas operate as complex collectives, which serve to politicize identity, decision-making and place-based territoriality in their struggle against internal and external threats. Principles of a “vernacular statecraft” helped bringing the local communities together in imperfect unions to oppose modernist designs of hydropower development. However, while such vernacular institutions were able to construct a powerful local adversary to neoliberal agendas, they also pose high social, political and emotional risks to the few within the community, who chose not to align with the normative principles of the collective

Minería de oro: promesas, conflictos y desilusión en Cerro de San Pedro, México

This article analyses how conflicts over land and water resources arose in Cerro de San Pedro, Mexico, when a Canadian mining company started an open pit mine in this municipality. We examine different positions in the conflict between the gold mine developer and local inhabitants, and how ambivalent national regulations and governmental bodies allowed a foreign company to operatewithout the required permits. For scrutinizing the conflict we use the Echelon of Rights Analysis (ERA) framework: four layers of dispute are being distinguished, involving conflicts over: resources; contents of rules and regulations; decision-making power; and discourses. We discuss how the foreign company‘s self-representation discourse as a socially responsible corporation contrasts with the environmental, political and social injustices it inflicts upon the local inhabitants, exacerbated by national policies and international trade agreements. Finally we argue that multi-actor, multi-scale alliances may offer opportunities to foster environmental and social justice solutions.<br/

Gobernanza del agua y territorios hidrosociales: del análisis institucional a la ecología política

During the last decades, different perspectives have emerged to respond to the challenges related to water management. This paper presents an introduction to the main theoretical approaches that currently are deployed to study water management and governance: new institutionalism, common-pool resources theory, and the empowerment perspective that is related to political ecology. The description of these approaches aims at contextualizing the different contributions presented in this special issue, several of which focus on the analysis of hydrosocial territories. Their main results are briefly summarized.<br/

Inundaciones políticamente construidas. El megaproyecto hídrico Chone en Ecuador

The construction and implementation of the hydraulic mega-project Chone (coastal Ecuador) was legitimized as a means to promote city development but has flooded and dramatically transformed rural territories. A utilitarian discourse regarding the «benefits of the urban majority» justified this project, at the expense of the ostensible «underdeveloped minority» in the countryside. Throughout the implementation of the megadam, peasants were represented as «backward» and «pre-modern», in need of adopting modernist urban imaginaries to fit official notions of progress. Policy-makers presented the risk of flooding as a mere «natural» and «technological» problem, obscuring the power relations that produce the urban-rural territorial transformations. From a political ecology perspective, we contend that the abundance of water is a political construct, instead of just a techno-natural phenomenon. We conclude by arguing that mega-projects are not only means to control water but also constitute mechanisms to order and govern society.<br/

Hybridizing the commons. Privatizing and outsourcing collective irrigation management after technological change in Spain

[EN] During the last decades, several regions of the world have experienced an increasingly forceful penetration by commercial service companies into irrigation water management, altering the institutional structures and procedures of common-pool resources management. In many cases, private-sector penetration takes place when water user organizations require a company to implement high-tech water control such as pressurized irrigation systems, as part of 'modernization policies'. This study focuses on four representative cases of these processes with differing degrees of private-enterprise penetration in the Valencia Region (Spain). The research analyzes the strategies of collective-private confrontation and collaboration that are emerging in irrigator communities, and characterize how they affect the management of these irrigation systems. Results show how private enterprise intrusion has unequally affected the interactions between the different components of these irrigation systems. This has created different hybrids between private and common pool-resources management institutions, as well as different autonomies, dependencies and socio-political subjects. Users' capacity to guide this coproduction process and maintain local control over their irrigation systems is essential to ensure the stability and preserve the robustness of each irrigation system. The quality of human capital and the recognition of collective water management values makes irrigation entities more robust vis-a-vis external pressures and disturbances, which in some of the cases analyzed have generated major social conflicts.This work has been done under the research project on Design and evaluation of strategies to adapt to global climate change in Mediterranean watersheds by using irrigation water intensively (ADAPTAMED) funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of Spain with FEDER funding.García Molla, M.; Ortega-Reig, M.; Boelens, R.; Sanchis Ibor, C. (2020). Hybridizing the commons. Privatizing and outsourcing collective irrigation management after technological change in Spain. World Development. 132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.10498313

Cambio tecnológico, privatización y recuperación de la autogestión comunitaria del riego. El caso de Senyera (València)

Processes of technological change foster the silent penetration of private enterprise in collective irrigation water management in numerous areas of Spain, and in other Mediterranean countries. This paper discusses this phenomenon through a case study of the community of Senyera (València), tracking the privatization and subsequent contestation and re-takeover of water management by irrigation system users. The article shows how privatization removes users’ autonomy and increases irrigation costs in a context of little transparency. The case also highlights users’ capacity to re-value and re-sig-nify their past collective action, turning it into new, creative forms of self-governance