Virtual water trade and the contestation of hydrosocial territories

Abstract

Growing trade in virtual water -the water used to produce exported products from agriculture and mining sectors -affects local communities and the environment, and transforms hydrosocial territories. National and international water regulations reshape communities' hydrosocial territories by changing water governance structures to favour export commodity sectors, often inducing strong contestation from local communities. Transnational companies formulate and enforce global water governance arrangements oriented toward strengthening export production chains, often through asymmetrical relationships with local groups in waterexport regions. These arrangements compromise political representation and water security for both local communities and companies.ARTICLE HISTORY

Enfoques de la responsabilidad social empresarial en los agronegocios

“…En el caso de los agronegocios es claro que todos los agricultores que producen para los supermercados en Europa y los Estados Unidos, están obligados a suscribirse a uno o más sistemas de certificación. Ejemplos de estos sistemas son GlobalG.A.P., British Retail Consortium (BRC), Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), The FoodTrace Traceability Standard, IFS Food y también otros regímenes del sector no corporativo tales como la Rainforest Alliance (Vos y Hinojosa, 2016). Sin embargo, estos estándares están sometidos a fuertes críticas por parte de activistas sociales y ONG´s, debido a la poca participación que tienen los productores locales y demás usuarios de fuentes hídricas asociadas a la actividad agrícola.…”

“…Como resultado, los agricultores decidían recuperar su independencia y volver a vender en Sin embargo, han surgido críticas al modelo de certificaciones debido a que se evidencia la escasa participación de las comunidades locales y demás actores de la cadena de valor en el diseño de tales estándares. Por lo tanto, a futuro se requieren unos procesos consultivos y participativos con las partes interesadas para el diseño e implementación de los estándares de sostenibilidad (Forsman-Hugg et al, 2013;Vos y Hinojosa, 2016).…”

The Politics and Consequences of Virtual Water Export

“…Compared to mobilizations against mining sector extraction, so far, grassroots actions against water-extractive agribusiness exports have been limited at best, largely because of strong and deeply asymmetrical dependency ties within the sector (Vos and Boelens 2014). Local protests by water users" communities against water extraction by agribusiness have been documented in Ethiopia, Senegal, Tunisia, Mexico, Chile, Peru and Ecuador (Vos and Hinojosa 2016). In Spain the "New Water Culture" movement has had large influence in the change in national water policies, abandoning the National Hydrological Plan to bring water from the Ebro in the North of Spain to the South of Spain for export agriculture (Swyngedouw 2013(Swyngedouw , 2014.…”

De-colonizing water. Dispossession, water insecurity, and Indigenous claims for resources, authority, and territory

“…Both large-scale mining and large-scale commercial crops consume, degrade, and pollute water sources. Exporting metallic ore involves a flow of 'virtual water' from vulnerable zones toward rich foreign zones, while extraction, pollution, and degeneration of peasant-Indigenous territories affect the local population, who often get little good out of these production and international trade activities, but do suffer greatly (Boelens and Vos 2012;Vos and Hinojosa 2016).…”

“…Private companies' accumulation of both land and water-in a context of global neoliberal policies that increasingly impact local communities and Indigenous territories, more and more deeply-once again shows how powerful regions and stakeholders assure their own supply of foods and high-value products, literally draining distant localities and economically less powerful peoples (Harris and Roa-García 2013;Perreault 2014;Vos and Hinojosa 2016). This legal, extralegal or illegal theft of rural communities' and Indigenous peoples' land and above all their water sources curbs their own local territorial control (Duarte-Abadía and Boelens 2016;Hendriks 2010;Roa-García 2014;Rodriguez de Francisco et al 2013).…”