The Struggle for Water as a Common Good: The Experience of Andean Communities in Bolivia

Abstract

"In Bolivia, as in many other Andean countries, national legislation and policies often fail to consider the specific context of peasant and indigenous groups. With regard to water issues, local rights and community-based management strategies are legally and materially discriminated and overtaken by other water user sectors more influent at decision making levels. In the town of Cochabamba, the attempt to privatize drinking water services and impose a water rights allocation model based on 'concessions', provoked the reaction of rural and urban water user organizations that feared loosing control over their community-based water management systems and their rights to water access. In this paper we present the experience of Bolivian's irrigator organizations that elaborated their own Irrigation Law proposal to assure the legal protection of their water rights. It also presents a case study of an Andean community, its irrigation system and an analysis of the efficiency of their water rights allocation system."