Trans-Forming Social Capital Around Water: Water User Organizations, Water Rights, and Nongovernmental Organizations in Cangahua, the Ecuadorian Andes

Abstract

Although the community represents a very important level at which existing social capital is used to mobilize resources and collective action in the Andes, many irrigation systems need supracommunity cooperation for their management. Based on a case study of the Guanguilquí and Porotog irrigation systems in the northern Ecuadorian Highlands, this article argues that external nongovernmental organizations can play an important role in facilitating the establishment of new supracommunity autonomous water user associations by (1) developing mutual trust relations and reciprocity between individuals and communities (bonding and bridging); (2) facilitating the establishment of a normative framework (water rights) that provides the rules of interaction; (3) assisting in the creation of relations with external agents (linking); and (4) developing local capacities for organizational and technical irrigation management. Once sturdy water user organizations consolidate, they have the potential to mobilize collective action for issues that stretch beyond the management of irrigation systems.

Keywords:

• Andes
• Ecuador
• irrigation
• nongovernmental organizations
• social capital
• water rights
• water user organizations

Acknowledgments

I thank Rutgerd Boelens, Michiel Baud, and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this article, as well as the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) through its department of Science for Global Development (WOTRO) and Intermón-Oxfam (especially Josep Ferrer, Spain) for funding and facilitating this research.

Notes

I use the term trans-formed social capital to indicate that it was (1) mutated from existing forms of social capital, and (2) formed into new structures of social capital around water.

This nongovernmental organization has worked for more than 20 years with the communities of Cangahua on rural development based on learning and on joint efforts among communities and the institution.

This case study is part of a larger research project which aims to understand how water user organizations (1) consolidate and (2) “up-scale” their struggles for water security in Ecuador (see also Hoogesteger 2012).

Participation and work tasks are assigned according to the capacity of the individual. Elderly and pregnant women are usually exempted from work.

In externally funded projects, communities usually agree to provide the required (un)skilled labor through mingas.

In general haciendas kept the best land, leaving the high-altitude parts for the communities.

To protect the identity of interviewees, the document refers only to the positions they have/had.

Initially 15 of the now 29 beneficiary communities came together. Most communities that joined later are situated at the end of the canal.

In 1990, several CAAP personnel organized independently to continue with the irrigation projects and formed IEDECA.

These were the different presidents of Ecuador during that time.

The final cost was US$19 million, rather than the originally budgeted US$3 million.

To use this water, communities still have to build 11 km of canal to conduct the water from its sources to the tunnel.