Making the Megaproject: Water Infrastructure and Hydrocracy at the Public-Private Interface in Peru
To meet an increasing industrial and urban demand for water in a context of water scarcity in Peru, the state has invested heavily in hydraulic megaprojects to ensure water supply to citizens and corporations. The Majes Siguas Special Project (PEMS) in the Arequipa Region is an example of such a w...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Water Alternatives Association
2019-06-01
|
| Series: | Water Alternatives |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol12/v12issue3/539-a12-2-22/file |
| Summary: | To meet an increasing industrial and urban demand for water in a context of water scarcity in Peru, the
state has invested heavily in hydraulic megaprojects to ensure water supply to citizens and corporations. The Majes
Siguas Special Project (PEMS) in the Arequipa Region is an example of such a water infrastructure project. While the
first stage of PEMS, built in the 1980s, was financed and run by the Peruvian government, the second stage that is
currently underway is being co-financed and built by a private transnational consortium that will run the
infrastructure for 20 years. This can be understood as a process of temporary commodification of the water
infrastructure and places the hydraulic megaproject at the heart of tensions between seeing water infrastructure
as public utility and seeing it as private provision. This article asks how this tension between public and private is
played out in practice within the hydraulic bureaucracy and examines ethnographically how the Majes Siguas
Special Project is made over time by way of the everyday practices of experts. The study finds that these experts
anticipate the potential political effects of temporary commodification of water infrastructures to be both a risk
and a distinct possibility. The article argues that building, maintaining and managing hydraulic megaprojects are far
from straightforward processes, but should instead be understood as open-ended experimental reconfigurations
that the hydrocracy deals with through contingent practices of knowledge. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1965-0175 1965-0175 |