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

Relative deprivation, a silent driver in hydropolitics: Evidence from Afghanistan-Iran water diplomacy

Paria Mamasani
Department of Water Engineering and Management, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran; pariamamasani@modares.ac.ir

Milad Jafari
Department of Water Engineering and Management, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran; milad.jafari@modares.ac.ir

Behnam Andik
Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Environment, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran; andik@ut.ac.ir

Hojjat Mianabadi
Department of Water Engineering and Management, Faculty of Agriculture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran; hmianabadi@modares.ac.ir

Bahareh Arvin
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran; bahare.arvin@modares.ac.ir

Seyedeh Zahra Ghoreishi
Responsible Innovation Lab, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; seyedehzahra.ghoreishi@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT: This paper aims to unpack the affective factors in Afghanistan–Iran water conflict dynamics. It examines the role played by the feeling of relative deprivation (RD) (that is, riparian states’ subjective perception of their relative position) in conflicts over shared water resources. The model of RD-mediated hydropolitics is conceptualised through its application to Afghanistan-Iran water diplomacy by conducting process tracing and content analysis. The results reveal that Afghanistan’s domestic issues have led to a feeling of RD in its water sharing relations with Iran. Afghans’ feeling of RD has led to negative emotions and responses, which have in turn influenced decisions regarding their domestic use of transboundary waters and their withholding of water from downstream users. The RD feeling within Afghan society has a contributory role in hydro-infrastructural developments and the resultant desire on the part of government to meet societal expectations, notably within the Helmand/Hirmand River Basin. These responses aim to alleviate the RD feeling but have evoked social and political reactions as well as emotionally charged verbal disputes and water conflicts between riparian states. The research findings emphasise that RD feeling as a subjective and affective factor can subtly influence transboundary water behaviours, politics and diplomacy.

KEYWORDS: Hydraulic mission, hydropolitics, water diplomacy, Iran, Afghanistan, Harirud, Helmand