Towards a Political Ecology of Water in Latin America

Political Ecology, understood as a field of social and political analysis of environmental problems, becomes relevant in the face of changes associated with the capitalist globalization that is expressed in the privatization of strategic natural resources, encumbrance of community property, and devastation of the environment. From that perspective, this article studies the neo-liberalization of nature and water in Latin America as a process based on the dispossession of peasants and indigenous peoples in their territories and the exacerbation of socio-environmental conflicts. Among other results, it was found that the state plays a central role both as a promoter (together with private stakeholders) of such changes in the region, and as a facilitator of processes of privatization, through legal and illegal mechanisms alike. This process has generated a variety of social movements for the defense of the territory and water that demanded access to justice and solutions to their socio-environmental conflicts.