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9 - Large-Scale Dam Development and Counter Movements

Water Justice Struggles around Guatemala’s Chixoy Dam

from Part II - Hydrosocial De-Patterning and Re-Composition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2018

Rutgerd Boelens
Affiliation:
Wageningen Universiteit, The Netherlands
Tom Perreault
Affiliation:
Syracuse University, New York
Jeroen Vos
Affiliation:
Wageningen Universiteit, The Netherlands
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Summary

Large-scale hydraulic interventions - for hydroelectric power, year-round water supply, flood control, or diversions to irrigate agricultural crops - have long been recognized as essential infrastructure that secures the needs of modern society. Historically, the social and economic goods generated by water enclosure and distribution systems allowed increased density in cities and towns and fueled the expansion of economic and political power. Today, large-scale hydrodevelopment is central to the national energy budget for the majority of the world’s States. However, the evidence of systemic damage to local and global ecosystems and the life such systems support is increasingly apparent, and the relative societal good of this enclosure and use of the water commons is both challenged and contested by the synergistic and cumulative impact of hydrodevelopment. With an entry point provided by the lens of historical events that shaped a specific case, Guatemala’s Chixoy Dam, this chapter explores how and why the relative perception of hydrodevelopment and the enclosure of the water commons fuels movements for water justice.
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Water Justice , pp. 169 - 186
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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