Water Sustainability and Politics – Examples from Latin America and Implications for Agroecology

Abstract

The adoption of agroecological practices entails important changes in several aspects of the allocation and use of natural resources. Improvements in the management of water resources and in the conservation of catchment processes represent crucial requirements for agroecology. The search for more sustainable water management is, therefore, critical for agroecological production. This review initially discusses the connections between agroecology and water sustainability and points out the failures of conventional responses to water management problems that are common in many parts of the North and Global South, particularly among subsistence farmers and vulnerable catchments. The experience of recent years demonstrates that, while most public policies aim to reconcile socioeconomic development with the conservation of aquatic systems, in practice those attempts have often led to the intensification of old and new disputes. In the center of the controversy lays a fierce disagreement about the interpretation of the meaning of sustainability and the practice of sustainable water management. As much as agroecology, water sustainability is a contested concept with principally political repercussions. Sustainable use and conservation of water requires a fair and equitable distribution of opportunities across groups and generations allowing all to benefit from the shared water environment. Imbalances resulting from anthropogenic water extraction, unfair water distribution and ecosystem deterioration (for example, resulting from the prevailing agribusiness model of agriculture production) are highly politicized questions that have serious implications for the promotion of agroecology. The second part of the review involves a conceptual discussion of a case study in Motul, Yucatan, Mexico. The Mexican example shows that agroecology in the Yucatan Peninsula is still marginalized, primarily because export manufacturing has been preferred over agricultural development in many regions of the Yucatan, and that freshwater for agricultural use (in the state as whole) is of limited quality – in part because of industrial underground water pollution, combined with adverse geology, soil, and hydrological conditions. An in-depth analysis of governmental authority policy will help clarify why such pervasive and limiting conditions for the development of agroecology in the state are likely to remain so, at least for intermediate to long time periods.