Territorial pluralism: water users’ multi-scalar struggles against state ordering in Ecuador’s highlands

Abstract

Ecuadorian state policies and institutional reforms have territorialized water since the 1960s. Peasant and indigenous communities have challenged this ordering locally since the 1990s by creating multi-scalar federations and networks. These enable marginalized water users to defend their water, autonomy and voice at broader scales. Analysis of these processes shows that water governance takes shape in contexts of territorial pluralism centred on the interplay of divergent interests in defining, constructing and representing hydrosocial territory. Here, state and nonstate hydro-social territories refer to interlinked scales that contest and recreate each other and through which actors advance their water control interests.