‘Dar la cara al Rio Rocha’: a political ecology analysis of multi-actor and trans-scalar initiatives for community river management in Cochabamba, Bolivia 

Abstract (English)

Cochabamba became world-famous in 2000 for the so-called "water war", a series of protests raised in response to the privatization of the city's municipal water supply company. Organized through a community coalition, these protests led to the reversal of the privatization.
Nevertheless, fair access to drinking water is not the only water problem facing the Cochabamba community. The Rio Rocha, around which the city was structured, was for centuries an element of identity, culture, leisure, and a resource for the local population. Today, the river is facing a gradual, relentless decline in environmental quality, principally due to rapid uncontrolled urbanization, and has lost its central role for the community. In response to this situation, in recent years various actors (institutional and civil society, local and transnational) have mobilized with various initiatives to 'restore visibility' and give a future to the river.
The present contribution, based on qualitative field research conducted in Summer 2024, aims to analyze this example of community activation for the care of a water body, applying the political ecology analytical trajectories of 'River-as-Ecosociety', 'River-as-Territory', 'River-as-Subject', and 'River-as-Movement', developed by researchers at the University of Wageningen within the Riverhood and River Commons projects. These four perspectives allow us to interpret rivers as socio-material entities, which are created and recreated through constant interaction between environment, infrastructure, and society. This approach also makes it possible to analyze bottom-up, grassroots responses to hydro-socio-territorial transformations that have disconnected communities from their river.
Indeed, the mobilization for the Rio Rocha can be read as an example of New Water Justice Movement (NWJM), a multi-scalar organization fighting to recover a riparian eco-society. This analysis highlights the strengths and weaknesses of a multi-actor and multi-scalar mobilization that, for the time being, does not seem to have achieved the desired results.