Journal Article

Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10535/5

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Against the Privatization of Water: An Indigenous Model for Improving Existing Laws and Successfully Governing the Commons
(2003) Trawick, Paul
"The privatization of water is being strongly promoted by the World Bank in Peru and other countries as a solution to the problems commonly afflicting irrigation and water management, a proposal that has inspired strong protest among peasant farmers throughout the Andes. A viable alternative to it is presented here, one that would allow the Bank to do many of the things it would like to in creating water markets while making a serious effort, not only to protect the rights of small farmers in the region, but to improve dramatically the way that irrigation is carried out in many areas. This counterproposal is based on the fundamental principles of an indigenous Andean model for management."
Comedy and Tragedy in the Andean Commons
(2002) Trawick, Paul
"In the Andes of Peru a familiar story has unfolded in many communities around the sharing and use of water, a tragedy often attributed to an irresolvable conflict between the inherently selfish interests of the individual and the cooperative needs of the group. This article traces the history of irrigation in one highland valley based on comparative ethnographic research, examining the reasons for both success and failure in governing the commons and trying to explain why the former has given way to the latter in many, but by no means all, places. It reveals that success can be relatively unproblematic and was once widespread at the local level, and that failure has occurred where institutional arrangements have been imposed that, according to the conventional theory, should have prevented the tragedy instead of bringing it about: privatization of the resource, on the one hand, and State control of it on the other. Where selfishness and discord have prevailed they are driven by an apparent water scarcity that is socially constructed, the product of a new political ecology imposed initially by the local elite and then dominated by them with the State's help, at the expense of the peasantry. The author argues that, far from being inevitable, the tragedy of the commons in water management can be avoided, arrested, and perhaps even reversed."
Destitution Through Development : A Case Study of the Laka Laka Project in Cochabamba, Bolivia
(2010) Shriar, Avrum J.
"This study examined environmental and socioeconomic outcomes of a water project in rural Bolivia, and sought insights on how and why its planning was so flawed. The project destroyed an ancient, sustainable irrigation system, and replaced it with one that provides insufficient and diminishing quantities of water to many fewer people, appears to be causing land degradation and groundwater depletion, and has fueled conflicts. The study shows that even relatively small, NGO-led projects can generate significant negative impacts, and raises questions about the pressures on development agencies to charge ahead with projects, despite obvious potential for such impacts."
Going with the Flow: The State of Contemporary Studies of Water Management in Latin America
(2005) Trawick, Paul
"The author reviews four recent volumes on successful farmer-operated irrigation systems in Mexico, the Andes and other parts of Latin America, arguing that the authors, due to their ideological commitment to a post-structuralist point-of-view, have overlooked the fact that all the successful systems they describe are of one basic type, in which 'equity' of fairness among water rights and between those rights and accompanying duties have been defined concretely by local farmers themselves in almost precisely the same way in each case. The differences between these local systems, he argues, are far outweighed by the similarities between them, which indicate that they are of a single 'moral economy' type, based on the central principles of equity and transparency. This insistence on overemphasizing superficial differences between irrigation systems at the expense of basic and profound similarities between them is argued to have had a negative impact on the effort to improve water management in Latin America and come up with new and better national water laws to govern resource use."
The Moral Economy of Water: Equity and Antiquity in the Andean Commons
(2001) Trawick, Paul
"This article focuses on irrigation and water use in a community in the Peruvian Andes, one of numerous villages in the region where these activities are carried out in an unusual way. The practices and principles that make up this tradition, defining the rights and duties of community members in making use of the resource most vital for life, are identified and evaluated based on comparative ethnographic research. It is argued that they provide a highly effective way of managing a scarce and fluctuating resource that is held in common, an older Andean tradition that may have been adopted by the Incas and endorsed as an official policy--all of which might help to account for its wide distribution in the region today. In this particular case, the principles help to create an extraordinary kind of community, a transparent and equitable one in which a basic material symmetry or proportionality is expressed at many levels. This symmetry is closely related to other basic commonalities among community members, but of particular interest are its effects on social solidarity and cooperation and its association with a strong sense of ethnic identity. The implications of this tradition for solving contemporary problems in water management are also briefly discussed."
Perception and Interpretation of Climate Change among Quechua Farmers of Bolivia: Indigenous Knowledge as a Resource for Adaptive Capacity
(2013) Boillat, Sébastien; Birkes, Fikret
"We aim to explore how indigenous peoples observe and ascribe meaning to change. The case study involves two Quechua-speaking farmer communities from mountainous areas near Cochabamba, Bolivia. Taking climate change as a starting point, we found that, first, farmers often associate their observations of climate change with other social and environmental changes, such as value change in the community, population growth, out-migration, urbanization, and land degradation. Second, some of the people interpret change as part of a cycle, which includes a belief in the return of some characteristics of ancient or mythological times. Third, environmental change is also perceived as the expression of 'extra-human intentionalities,' a reaction of natural or spiritual entities that people consider living beings. On the basis of these interpretations of change and their adaptive strategies, we discuss the importance of indigenous knowledge as a component of adaptive capacity. Even in the context of living with modern science and mass media, indigenous patterns of interpreting phenomena tend to be persistent. Our results support the view that indigenous knowledge must be acknowledged as process, emphasizing ways of observing, discussing, and interpreting new information. In this case, indigenous knowledge can help address complex relationships between phenomena, and help design adaptation strategies based on experimentation and knowledge coproduction."
Successfully Governing the Commons: Principles of Social Organization in an Andean Irrigation System
(2001) Trawick, Paul
"Throughout the world it is unusual to find irrigation systems that work well, distributing water efficiently and with minimal conflict, especially in situations where the resource is scarce. This paper describes one such system in the Peruvian Andes, a peasant village where irrigation and water management are handled in an unusual way. It analyzes the village principles of social organization, showing that these create a situation of equity and transparency which provides people with a strong incentive to obey the rules and conserve water. By doing so, they are directly maximizing the frequency of irrigation, a benefit that is the same for everyone using a given source of water. The system is argued to be a highly effective and sustainable way of dealing with a scarce and fluctuating resource."
Vulnerability, Resiliance and Adaptation: Rural Development in the Tropical Andes
(2008) Stadel, C.H.
"In spite of a long settlement history of the tropical Andes, rural farming communities have always been exposed to conditions of ecological and economic vulnerability, risks, and even disasters. This has resulted, at certain times and in some regions, to a destabilization of livelihoods and to a manifestation of various forms of marginalization, to poverty or outmigration. However, Andean communities, over a long time, have given admirable testimonies of resilience and adaptations in the face of adverse conditions or new challenges. This paper examines the potentials and different facets of resilience and adaptation strategies of the rural campesinado in the tropical Andes. It emphasizes the proven traditional concepts of verticality, complementarity, reciprocity, and mutual community support, which to date support the feasibility and sustainability of Andean farming and community survival. In spite of this recognition, it is argued that Andean rural livelihoods always had to adapt to new developments, to threats and challenges, as well as to opportunities and alternative potentials. In the face of an almost ubiquitous penetration of modernization, new technologies, and economic and cultural globalization, the fundamental question arises, whether this can be considered as a path to progress and development, or as a threat to the survival of small-scale farming and rural community living. The paper concludes by formulating, albeit in a tentative form, some general suggestions for ‘development’ approaches and for research priorities in the rural Andes."

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