Niebla and Los Molinos, coastal towns in Valdivia (Chile), are experiencing a high degree of peri-urbanization, changes in land use/cover, and population growth, processes that impact the water supply system. This work analyzed the coverage, processes, and functioning of the drinking water supply system and presents four self-management mechanisms for access to water resources in these towns at the basin scale. Based on semi-structural interviews and field work, the results provide a comprehensive understanding of the functioning of the system, make visible the self-management mechanisms by households to access water, and express the lack of normative coherence in the territorial planning instruments between rural and urban areas and the areas of operation of rural health systems and urban health services.
We aim to conduct a comparative analysis of water access in the Parque Costero del Sur Biosphere Reserve (Buenos Aires, Argentina), approached from two perspectives: local narratives and water quality parameters for human consumption. The methodological design included semi-structured interviews with social actors, physicochemical and microbiological analysis of water sources distributed across the area, and the integration of their respective results. We grouped the mentioned characteristics into eleven categories. We describe three instances of non-compliance with the right to water access in terms of quality, accessibility, and acceptability. Arsenic and microbiological parameters most frequently exceeded local potable water standards. We identified similarities and differences between narratives and quality analyses, regarding both organoleptic and non-organoleptic parameters. Integrating local and scientific perspectives is essential for the sustainable management of the resource and for maintaining this area’s protected status.
This study is based on a real case concerning the impact of illegal mining on Yanomami indigenous lands, aiming to characterize how the scientific community has discussed the multiscalar and multidimensional aspects of the universal right to access potable water for the Yanomami People (YP) in the Brazilian Amazon. This qualitative and quantitative research was conducted through an integrative review of Brazilian databases. Of the 136 articles included, 109 had an environmental focus and 12 delved into water-related issues. The different dimensions analyzed provide interpretative pathways to understand the challenges faced by the YP in accessing potable water and to identify effective strategies for transforming the situation sustainably and equitably. The Environmental Bioethics agenda embraces and supports the social, environmental, cultural, and political complexities, especially in giving voice to the main actor in this conflict, the Yanomami Ethnic Group, who have been silenced and neglected in their autonomy and....
This work is framed within a dual theoretical-normative discussion (governance for sustainable inclusive development) and theoretical-ontological (how to analyze the systemic co-constructed relationships between water and society). Specifically, it examines a dynamic process in which the loss of strategic and centralized control over water was reconfigured into fragmented forms of governance and its implications on development dynamics. The work employs a socio-technical, diachronic, and multiscalar approach applied to the case study of La Plata district (Buenos Aires, Argentina) during the period 1973 to 2023. The analysis highlights the fragmentation of institutional decision-making dynamics, the (re)production of winners and losers, and how (mis)governance benefits populations in wealthy urban areas while particularly punishing poor families in peri-urban and rural areas, even though the latter feed 18 million people.
Water, its management, and distribution gained greater importance in the history of Jaén during the Andalusi period. The Roman city of Aurgi was established around the La Magdalena spring, which led to notable agricultural and urban development due to the abundance of water resources. From the 8th century onward, with the Arab presence, the city came to be called Ŷaīyān and stood out within al-Andalus for its advanced hydraulic management, which favored agriculture and ensured the supply of baths and mosques. Prominent authors such as al-Rāzī, al-Idrīsī, and al-Ḥimyarī documented the importance of water in the region, highlighting the fertility of the land and the existence of irrigation systems that promoted agricultural development. These chronicles and geographical works confirmed that the wealth, quality, and management of water were key elements in the growth of Ŷaīyān, making it one of the most productive areas in al-Andalus and establishing Jaén as a....
This article examines competition for water in the context of water crisis and scarcity. In the municipality of Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico, disputes and centralization of water control intensified significantly between the 1940s and 1980s. The water crisis reconfigured the power relationship between state and territory, creating strong competition between users in rural and socially marginalized contexts. Through the analysis of state archive sources, it is possible to analyze the role played by water, since it was a determining element within the productive process of key sectors and in the development of population centers, both urban and rural. Having water or not determined the success of some and the failure of others, with Morelia being the scene where an institutionalized policy of dispossession was manifested.
This article proposes a critical approach to the sanitation system that is currently considered conventional. Its distinctive characteristics and the historical and cultural conditions present at the time of its emergence and which define it to this day are analyzed. Signs of inadequacy to the current context are also highlighted. It is suggested that such a system presents a path dependence, determined by decisions taken in previous periods, which constitutes technological lock-in, in which the system is not questioned in its basic criteria and potential technical alternatives are discredited. Specifically, the intensive use of water, dependence on this resource and the centralization of infrastructure are issues that are not problematized precisely because of the predominance of the conventional system.
In 2004, Mazahua women demanded water through demonstrations at Los Berros, a water treatment plant, one of the largest hydraulic works of its kind in Latin America, located in the State of Mexico, which is part of the Cutzamala transfer. But what has been the role of Mazahua women in obtaining water before, during and after the said transfer? This article precisely values their participation in the face of water dispossession. From political ecology, environmental anthropology and ecofeminism, the context in which Mazahua women access water in their ethnoterritory is emphasized. Through interviews, field work and participatory mapping, it is specified that, despite the collective demands of Mazahua women, access to water at the territorial level is increasingly less affordable, is neither healthy nor sufficient, and is highly disputed after the transfer.
The objective of the paper is to typify the ways of knowing and understanding the water in the Lago Puelo National Park, Argentina. The sources used are institutional papers and oral recordings. Documents written by the National Parks Administration and oral sources from key actors in the territory are taken. The methodology is narrative analysis, categorizing applying grounded theory approaches. The most relevant findings are the evidence of ignorance about the views of regional actors in the planning and analysis of the main institution, around an element as relevant as water. From here, the main conclusion is that the complexity of the analysis of human and non-human aspects is very different, because human aspects are is considered in a very superficial way, despite being the origin of the main recognized management problems.
Uruguay has undergone a series of radical transformations of its rural territories so far in the 21st century, hand in hand with processes of change in land use triggered by agribusiness activities. Both in its agricultural variant (associated with soy monocultures) and forestry (linked to the cellulose industrial complex), these changes have seriously affected both the quality and the quantity available for other uses, including the supply of water to human populations. This dynamic of the socio-ecological metabolism in rural territories has had a cumulative impact on urban areas, in particular the metropolitan area of Montevideo, which for 3 months in 2023 did not have a drinking water supply as a result of a serious drought that was seen aggravated by the serious deterioration of the water producing basins in the face of the aforementioned productive intensification. In this sense, it has been proposed that the extraction of water by.....
Understanding that water access mobilizes an intense social and cultural life, encompassing structural inequalities, different social actors and different epistemologies about the environment, this article discusses the concepts of family and health that permeate the execution of a public policy, particulary, the Program One Million Rural Cisterns. Through long-term fieldwork in rural communities in the semi-arid region of Pernambuco and carrying out semi-structured interviews with different actors involved in the policy in question, it is became evident that, although the policy aims to incorporate elements of local culture in its design, the dialogue between technical-scientific and traditional knowledge still faces many obstacles. This aspects shows the need to expand studies on social water management practices and technologies and the importance of problematizing the interaction of different knowledge in promoting solutions to situations of water scarcity.
This paper analyses the costs associated with the supply of drinking water in rural areas under water scarcity, supplied by water trucks. We take a holistic approach to analysing these costs, including indirect or hidden economic costs, as well as the time and health costs to women who are in charge of household chores. The research is theoretically informed by feminist political ecology and applied to a small rural Chilean town located in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago. Our results contribute to unveiling the invisible costs of the transition to water supply by water trucks in rural Latin America, demonstrating that the cost borne by rural women living in water scarcity is much higher than the simple economic expense, with significant costs in terms of time and physical and mental health.
This dossier examines the strategies and challenges of water access in rural and peri-urban areas of Latin America in contexts of water scarcity. Through various contributions, it explores heterogeneous supply methods, water governance influences, socio-environmental conflicts, and socio-technical innovations developed by communities. The central role of women in water management is highlighted, as well as the importance of solidarity and self-management in overcoming limitations imposed by the lack of formal access. Additionally, it reflects on the relationship between access, water justice, and tensions arising from the urban-rural dichotomy. This collection of studies provides insight into how territorial and productive transformations, power relations, and public policies shape unequal water landscapes in the region.
This research engages with theories of urban political ecology and social practice with the objective of revealing socio-public water alternatives in the city of Medellín by analyzing the intersections between institutional, at the margins and autonomous water practices through time. Close attention is placed on the urban peripheries, and the role played by water justice movements. Results point to the emancipatory potential of water practices involving heterogeneous practitioners that put together creative sociotechnical approaches for extending water provision while concurrently bearing space for public-based utility policy and community autonomy.
Water security remains a significant challenge in Latin America, especially in rapidly growing urban, rural, and periurban regions. In Brazil, as in other countries in the region, intense urbanization in recent decades has led to a focus on large-scale infrastructure projects to meet the increasing demand for water. However, despite these efforts, many communities still face water access problems, especially those in peripheral and periurban areas. This article examines two case studies in Brazil —the macrometropolis of São Paulo and the semiarid region of Paraíba— to explore the challenges of building water security at the household level, moving away from the paradigm of macrostructures. The study reveals shared challenges, such as dependence on large infrastructure projects, as well as distinct approaches to ensuring water access, including civil society initiatives. The conclusions emphasize the importance of a more relational approach to understanding and addressing water access problems, especially in an uncertain......
The article employs documentary sources from the Municipal Archive of Gelves along with a specific bibliography that focuses on the historical process of land use and occupation in this Spanish locality, situated on the banks of the Guadalquivir River. The scarcity of public land and plans for the construction of social housing gave rise to the emergence of residential dwellings that became very vulnerable to the heavy rainfall that characterized the 1950s and 1960s. The local documentation provides us with very original and underexplored information that helps explain the vulnerability of the working-class neighborhoods of Gelves, such as Monte Cañuelo, the actions of public authorities, and the Duke of Alba, the major landowner in the area. Although we have previously studied the emergence of the Monte Cañuelo settlement, this time we stress the evidence that references the scarcity of land that explain its peculiar development.
The irrigation ditch system constitutes a primary domestic irrigation and supply system used both in ancestral populations and also by Hispanic cities in the Americas, denoting the urban development itself and the technological changes that accompany it. In the Aconcagua Valley, the presence of irrigation ditches and hydraulic devices reinforce the identity of this territorial enclave. This hydraulic system, based on elements from San Juan and Mendoza, has generated a fundamental pillar of socioeconomic, cultural and political life in each Aconcagua’s locality. For this reason, it is remarkable that the cities of San Felipe and Los Andes still have this ancestral irrigation system. Its deteriorated and polluted state has been translated into a heritage amnesia, which affects the collective memory and urban identity, where uses, customs and binding trades are forgotten. Despite the disdain, the irrigation ditches maintain their layouts and operation through the bends of each city.
La fuente de Cabrahígos, construida por el arquitecto José Hernández Sierra en 1775, es un destacado ejemplo de arquitectura urbana de Toledo (España) en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII. Fue punto de partida de un conjunto de fuentes dieciochescas en el entorno del paseo de la Rosa, principal arteria del actual barrio de Santa Bárbara. Este trabajo ofrece datos inéditos, a partir de la documentación conservada en el Archivo Municipal de Toledo y las publicaciones periódicas de los siglos XIX y XX, sobre su creación y desarrollo a lo largo de los últimos 250 años.
Here are the perceptions of culturally diverse ethnic communities, located in the lower basin of the Dagua River (Valle del Cauca, Colombia), about water, the landscape, and human activities that affect their quality and environmental conditions. This is achieved by highlighting the differences in perspectives between men and women on these matters, using a qualitative methodology that includes semi-structured interviews, social mapping workshops, and field trips with communities. These elements reveal, firstly, the presence of anthropogenic behaviors impacting the environmental quality of the watershed, as reflected in assessments by social agents and the limited action taken by environmental authorities in fulfilling their responsibilities. Secondly, understanding the past and current environmental conditions of the watershed suggests that, despite ongoing human intervention, there are forms of ethnic community management contributing to its environmental improvement
