An emerging knowledge system for future water governance: sowing water for Lima

Abstract

As urban infrastructures are built to last for decades, each infrastructure contains the anticipation for an uncertain future: a city-to-come, often built on capitalist and modernist dreams. In Lima, Peru, the model for water infrastructure development has long been a technocratic one, driven by values such as efficiency and modernization. However, facing a dual challenge of climate change and continuing urban growth, Lima’s water utility agency, SEDAPAL, is increasingly integrating elements of Andean water governance systems–commonly referred to as the sowing and harvesting of water–in its future strategies to maintain urban water security. Our approach builds on knowledge system analysis to examine the different approaches to water governance as distinctive manifestations of understanding the socio-ecological changes in Lima’s hydrosocial territory and how they are negotiated and integrated into Lima’s infrastructure futures. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in Lima and the Rímac watershed, our findings highlight the tension concerning what is incorporated in hybrid knowledge systems and what is sidelined. We conclude that, in the process of futuring, the integrations of knowledge systems should acknowledge plurality in epistemologies and positions and consider the historical contingencies that shape the exchanges between knowledge systems.