Watershed Politics and Climate Change in Peru

A critique of the global emphasis on water’s economic value and extractivist policies, based on an ethnography of a watershed in Peru

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This book travels to the heart of power, inequality and injustice in water politics. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Peru, Astrid B. Stensrud explores the impact of climate change and extractivist neoliberal policies – including Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), a global paradigm that views water as a finite resource in need of management.



Engaging with the many different actors and entities participating in the constitution of the watershed – from engineers, bureaucrats and farmers, to mountains, springs and canals – Stensrud shines light on different yet entangled water practices and water worlds and how both the watershed and our understanding of water itself have changed.



Challenging hegemonic understandings, the book moves beyond conventional perspectives of political ecology and political economy to achieve a decolonial perspective.