Environment, Politics and Social Change

Seemann, Miriam

The author scrutinizes the claim of policy-makers and experts that legal recognition of local water rights would reduce water conflict and increase water security and equality for peasant and indigenous water users. She analyzes two distinct 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' formalization policies in Peru and Bolivia - neoliberal the former, indigenist-socialist the latter. The policies have intended and unintended consequences and impact on marginalized peasants and the complex inter-legal systems for providing water security on the ground. This study seeks to debunk the official myth of the need to create state-centric, top-down legal security in complex, pluralistic water realities. The engagement between formal and alternative 'water securities' and controversial notions of 'rightness' is interwoven and contested; a complex setting is unveiled that forbids one-size-fits-all solutions. Peru's and Bolivia's case studies demonstrate how formalization policies, while aiming to enhance inclusion, in practice actually reinforce exclusion of the marginalized. Water rights formalization is certainly no panacea.

Details

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan

Publication Date: 2016-01-06

Format: Hardcover

ISBN-13: 9781137545220

DOI: 10.1057/9781137545237

Dimensions: 216cm x140cm

Pages: 226