Commodifying Water in Times of Global Warming

I was proud to get my picture from the World's Water Day in Chivay, March 2011, published on the front page of the NACLA Report on the Americas this spring. This was a special issue (volume 46, issue 1, 2013) called "The Climate Debt: Who Profits, Who Pays?"

The background of this issue is that nation-states in the Global South have historically contributed the least to carbon-dioxide emissions but are especially vulnerable to the consequences of climatic shifts because of the damage wrought by extractive industries and the limited resources to cope with such damage.

My article from Peru is called “Commodifying Water in Times of GlobalWarming”. It describes how climate change in the Andes is a kind of chronic disaster that creates winners and losers and leads to power struggles within a water regime that is influenced by individualized responsibilities. The struggle of poor and indigenous people for collective responsibilities in water management is in the article analyzed as an attempt to take control of an uncertain future.

The article and the rest of the issue can be found on NACLA’s webpage: https://nacla.org/edition/8974