The socio-cultural, institutional and gender aspects of the water transfer-agribusiness model for food and water security. Lessons learned from Peru

Abstract

This paper critically analyses the potentials and frontiers of an agribusiness model developed along the arid coastal area of Peru. To make this model work, water from Andean rivers and lakes have been dammed and transferred to the coastal area through sophisticated and highly expensive hydraulic infrastructures. Although this ‘water transfer-agribusiness’ (WATA) model has attained its objectives to let the desert bloom and increase agro-exports from Peru, it does so at the cost of local environmental degradation, social unrest and gender disparities. These unintended consequences arose, in part, because the WATA model is anchored in ideologies of domination of nature and colonization of empty territories. The construction of water infrastructure, namely ‘Large Scale Irrigation’ (LSI) left aside the sociocultural, gender and environmental aspects that these kinds of interventions should include. Based on studies of water transfer from the Colca River to the ‘Pampas de Majes’ in the Arequipa region in the south-west of Peru, this paper analyses, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the consequences of such interventions on the food/water security and environmental health of the affected population.