PES hydrosocial territories: de-territorialization and re-patterning of water control arenas in the Andean highlands

Abstract

This article explores how payment for environmental services (PES) approaches envision, design and actively constitute new hydro-social territories by reconfiguring local water control arenas. PES aims to conserve watershed ecosystems by repatterning and commoditizing the link between ‘water service providers’ upstream and ‘water consuming’ populations downstream. Two case illustrations from the Ecuadorian highlands are used to clarify how PES implementation – though presented as if it were apolitical and neutral – weakens locally crafted hydrosocial territories in favour of dominant interests. If consolidated, this depoliticized PES implementation fosters the consolidation of new (market-environmentalist) territories, subjects and interactions, further marginalizing the less powerful upstream communities’ livelihood strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• payment for environmental services
• watershed
• hydro-social territory
• commoditization
• Ecuador

Notes

1. Neoliberal water governance techniques that were based on the Friedman/Hayek ‘Chicago Boys’ ideology, implemented through Pinochet’s 1981 Chilean Water Code, and subsequently imposed on Latin American countries by the World Bank as ‘the model’ throughout the 1990s (see e.g. Bauer, 1998, 2004; Budds, 2010; de Vos, Boelens, & Bustamante, 2006).

2. Land control includes, among others, land use restrictions, changes in land tenure forms (privatization of commons, or vice versa), reinforcement of legal control, force and violence (or the threat of them), and eviction (Peluso & Lund, 2011).

3. See Echavarría, Vogel, Albán, and Meneses (2004), Rodríguez-de-Francisco et al. (2013) and Wunder and Albán (2008) for more information on the Nueva América PES scheme in Pimampiro.