Avaliação: El manejo del agua en los Andes : pasado, presente y futuro – A political ecology of water and technology from the North-Central Highlands, Peru (AD 1000-present)

At present, water scarcity and concomitant climate change are increasingly seen as the main threat to human economies across large areas of the world. This is especially true of the Peruvian Central Andean highlands where lack of water is understood by experts as the single most threatened natural resource in the face of climate change and ever-retreating tropical glaciers. This is a sentiment echoed by local communities and populations.
In this Central Andean zone, it is the drier non-glaciated, Pacific-facing western mountain range –the Cordillera Negra– which is already suffering the debilitating economic and social effects of increased water shortage, including land abandonment, drought and crop failure, as well as out-migration of local populations and its effects on community social cohesion. Modern solutions to this dilemma have been to build small concrete dams along the headwaters of the Cordillera Negra. To an extent, this mirrors Prehispanic adaptations to the area. Indeed, in many cases the new dam has been placed on top of an older, pre-existing structure. These older Prehispanic dams were the product of millennia-long engineering projects that integrated these technologies with the immediate landscape. They were based on local know-how and were easily maintained by the community. Modern additions could hardly be more different, guided by a reliance on non-local expertise, cashflow, and with a functional lifespan of 50 years.
Juxtaposing old and new, I analyse the changing political ecology behind water availability and technological adaptations to the environment, thereby charting the origin of these hydraulic structures, their development and their shifting rationale and narrative of use.

• Water
• Hydraulic Technology
• Central Andes
• Political Ecology