Ríos, utopías y movimiento sociales. Reviviendo flujos de vida en Colombia y España

Ríos, utopías y movimientos sociales es una verdadera obra maestra. Socialmente urgente, políticamente significativo e intelectualmente profundo, el libro nos invita a repensar no solo las políticas de gobernanza del agua formales, sino también muchos de los discursos alternativos y supuestamente contrahegemónicos. De una manera comprometida con las luchas sociales y la justicia ambiental, Bibiana Duarte Abadía nos entrega una contribución importante a los debates de la ecología política del agua. Una lectura indispensable para aquellos y aquellas preocupadas por comprender cómo el agua y el poder se entrelazan, dan forma a las políticas y a la vida, y cómo las comunidades luchan por sus derechos y territorios hidrosociales

Environmental Justice Movements in Globalizing Networks: A Critical Discussion on Social Resistance against Large Dams

We examine the social resistance against large dams as environmental justice movements in four case studies - the Sardar Sarovar Project from India, the Hidrosogamoso from Colombia, the ‘new water culture’ movement in Spain, and the Lesotho Highlands Project from Lesotho - with diverse social, political and environmental contexts. We discuss three broad issues. First, the nature of the involvement of civil society and metropolitan intelligentsia in leadership roles. Second, how cross-class and multi-sectoral alliances have been forged between the local and the global. And third, how the notion of environmental justice in relation to social justice is adopted in these movements

¿Seguridad hídrica urbano-rural en los fondos de agua? Un análisis desde las relaciones de poder, la participación y la co-creación de conocimientos

En las últimas dos décadas los fondos de agua (FA) han cobrado importancia como mecanismos de conservación del agua y sus fuentes. Éstos promueven una serie de acuerdos entre diversos actores que participan en diálogos sostenidos en contextos de alta desigualdad socioeconómica y política. Así, los FA han logrado conectar a poblaciones peri-urbanas y rurales, habitantes de ecosistemas hídricos estratégicos, con importantes usuarios del agua como ciudades, hidroeléctricas, empresas públicas, privadas y multinacionales, entre otras. Bajo el enfoque de justicia hídrica, este artículo analiza el tipo de participación que tienen los distintos actores involucrados en la co-creación de conocimientos en torno a la seguridad hídrica promovida por distintos FA. El artículo ilustra dos casos de estudio, el primero en Ecuador (Fondo de Manejo de Páramos Tungurahua y Lucha contra la Pobreza (FMPLPT) y el segundo en Colombia (Fondo de Agua de Bogotá). Concluimos que estos FA centran sus esfuerzos en contextos urbanos y poco miran la seguridad hídrica rural

River Commoning and the State: A Cross‐Country Analysis of River Defense Collectives

Grassroots initiatives that aim to defend, protect, or restore rivers and riverine environments have proliferated around the world in the last three decades. Some of the most emblematic initiatives are anti-dam and anti-mining movements that have been framed, by and large, as civil society versus the state movements. In this article, we aim to bring nuance to such framings by analyzing broader and diverse river-commoning initiatives and the state–citizens relations that underlie them. To study these relations we build on notions of communality, grassroots scalar politics, rooted water collectives, and water justice movements, which we use to analyze several collective practices, initiatives, and movements that aim to protect rivers in Thailand, Spain, Ecuador, and Mozambique. The analysis of these cases shows the myriad ways in which river collectives engage with different manifestations of the state at multiple scales. As we show, while some collectives strategically remain unnoticed, others actively seek and create diverse spaces of engagement with like-minded citizen initiatives, supportive non-governmental organizations, and state actors. Through these relations, alliances are made and political space is sought to advance river commoning initiatives. This leads to a variety of context-specific multi-scalar state–citizens relations and river commoning processes in water governance arenas

Riverhood: political ecologies of socionature commoning and translocal struggles for water justice

[EN] Mega-damming, pollution and depletion endanger rivers worldwide. Meanwhile, modernist imaginaries of ordering `unruly waters and humans' have become cornerstones of hydraulic-bureaucratic and capitalist development. They separate hydro/social worlds, sideline river-commons cultures, and deepen socio-environmental injustices. But myriad new water justice movements (NWJMs) proliferate: rooted, disruptive, transdisciplinary, multi-scalar coalitions that deploy alternative river-society ontologies, bridge South-North divides, and translate river-enlivening practices from local to global and vice-versa. This paper's framework conceptualizes `riverhood' to engage with NWJMs and river commoning initiatives. We suggest four interrelated ontologies, situating river socionatures as arenas of material, social and symbolic co-production: `river-as-ecosociety', `river-as-territory', `river-as-subject', and `river-as-movement'. globalThis work was supported by the ERC European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [Riverhood, Grant Number 101002921]; see also www.movingrivers.org.Boelens, R.; Escobar, A.; Bakker, K.; Hommes, L.; Swyngedouw, E.; Hogenboom, B.; Huijbens, EH.... (2023). Riverhood: political ecologies of socionature commoning and translocal struggles for water justice. The Journal of Peasant Studies. 50(3):1125-1156. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2022.21208101125115650