Popular

Fluid struggles over climate and water justice in the Peruvian Andes

Anna Heikkinen
Global Development Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; anna.heikkinen@helsinki.fi

ABSTRACT: Deepening climate change is rendering water injustices ever more visible and deepening disputes in Latin America’s socio-ecologically delicate rural landscapes. This article analyses the fluid and multi-scalar ways in which water injustices are articulated and contested in the Peruvian Andes, increasingly threatened by climate change. The analysis draws on ethnographic-oriented research, focusing on the Yanacocha reservoir conflict in the Cunas watershed. By combining ideas from the political ecology of water and scalar politics, the study pays particular attention to how diverse justice claims by residents, private sector actors, politicians, and state authorities become intertwined and reshaped through shifting power relations across multiple scales. The study shows that water injustices are enmeshed within broader struggles over climate justice and fair agrarian futures in climate-sensitive rural regions such as the remote Peruvian Andes. In the Cunas watershed, the residents, who increasingly experience climatic threats in their daily lives, participate in cross-scaled power struggles in order to advocate for their own plural views of water justice. The study demonstrates a need to build stronger analytical linkages between intertwining claims about agrarian, climate, and water justices on multiple scales. This helps to better illuminate the many factors driving uneven water access in rural regions affected by climate change across the Global South.

KEYWORDS: Political ecology, water justice, climate justice, scalar politics, Andes, Peru