Beyond scarcity and its management

Sociocultural dimensions of the water crisis in the Atacama Desert

Bibliographic Data

ID21697252
AuthorsRaphael Cantillana Barañados (0000-0002-8979-4024, a Grup de Recerca en Antropologia Fonamental i Orientada (GRAFO), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Carrer de la Fortuna, Edifici B, Depto. de Antropologia Social i Cultural, Despatx b9-223, Campus UAB, Bellaterra 08193, Barcelona, corresponding author), Irene Iniesta-Arandia (0000-0002-1304-3232, b Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), FRACTAL Collective, Edifici ICTA-ICP, Carrer de les Columnes s/n, Campus UAB, Bellaterra 08193, Barcelona)
Year2022
Volume24
Issue7
Pages1124-1145
Publication date2022-07-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueWater Policy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1366-7017 • E-ISSN: 1996-9759
PublisherIWA Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2166/wp.2022.297
OpenAlexW4283700073
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited37

The depletion of freshwater sources by indiscriminate industrial actions is one of the direct causes of the current water crisis. One of the emblematic cases of this problem is the Atacama Desert, a unique hyper-arid zone in which an extensive copper industry depletes its scarce freshwater reserves. This territory, occupied for millennia by indigenous groups, is experiencing a water crisis that threatens its very subsistence. This paper uses the ethnographic method and the Water Justice framework to approach the everyday and often invisible issues of this crisis within the Mamiña community. This Quechua community holds an ambivalent position in front of the copper mine project because of its control of the water rights, the economic interests of some of their members, and the role of the Aymara minority. We suggest that researchers in this field pay more attention to the communities’ internal diversity and its relations with the copper industry to understand how the water crisis is detached from its biophysical conceptions to be socioculturally constructed

Agriculture · Archaeology · Arid · Development economics · Economics · Geography · Indigenous · Natural resource economics · Political economy · Political science · Scarcity · Sociology · Subsistence agriculture · Water scarcity · Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond · Law · Mining and Resource Management · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology

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