Abstract

GUEVARA-GIL, Armando. Unforeseen consequences: the disintegrating impact of integrated water resources management on peasant irrigation organizations (Huancavelica, Perú). agric. soc. desarro [online]. 2015, vol.12, n.3, pp.447-473. ISSN 1870-5472.

In this article, I analyze the negative impact of the application of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) on a small peasant irrigation organization, Santa Rosa de Tambo, located in Huancavelica, one of the poorest regions of Peru. Turned into the new buzzword of official water management, the acronym is dissolved when using it rashly, because it weakens self-managing organizations instead of recognizing them and incorporating them into a model that should be based on the articulation of the organizational diversity that characterizes irrigation in the Peruvian Andes. In order to study this process of lack of acknowledgment and discrimination, I focus on three episodes: the obstacles that Tambo faced to register its association and water rights; the demarcation of irrigation sub-districts that ignore their rights and interests; and the marginalization experienced during the process of creation of the basin council. The evidence suggests that it is imperative to reconstruct the conceptual framework of IWRM in order to apply it with positive results in unimaginable human and hydrographic landscapes for international technocracy, the Peruvian legislator and the water bureaucracy applying it to the letter.

Keywords : Peruvian Andes; hydraulic demarcation; formalization of water rights; disintegrated water management; peasant irrigation.

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