During the past three decades, the Pisque watershed in Ecuador's Northern Andes has become the country's principal export-roses producing area. Recently, a new boom of local smallholders have established small rose greenhouses and joined the flower-export business. This has intensified water scarcity and material/discursive conflicts over water use priorities: water to defend local-national food sovereignty or production for export. This paper examines how including peasant flower farms in the capitalist dream – driven by a ‘mimetic desire’ and copying large-scale capitalist flower-farm practices and technologies – generates new intra-community conflicts over collective water rights, extending traditional class-based water conflicts. New allocation principles in Ecuador's progressive 2008 Constitution and 2014 Water Law prioritising food production over flowers' industrial water use are unlikely to benefit smallholder communities. Instead, decision-making power for peasant communities and their water users' associations on water use priority would enable water user prioritization according to smallholders' own preferences.

Water management studies often overlook community diversity, different stakeholders’ values, and frames to claim water rights. Using a political-ecology approach, this article examines an irrigation system in Ecuador’s highlands via Fraser’s principles of justice (recognition, representation, redistribution). Large flower companies and indigenous smallholders frame their arguments differently to legitimize water allocation claims. Framing is effective when it resonates with other stakeholders’ values. Some unexpected findings are explained: most of the water is still used by large companies since communities took control; rules regarding water use differ greatly among sectors in the system; and small flower producers have been appearing recently.

Water management studies often overlook community diversity, different stakeholders’ values, and frames to claim water rights. Using a political-ecology approach, this article examines an irrigation system in Ecuador’s highlands via Fraser’s principles of justice (recognition, representation, redistribution). Large flower companies and indigenous smallholders frame their arguments differently to legitimize water allocation claims. Framing is effective when it resonates with other stakeholders’ values. Some unexpected findings are explained: most of the water is still used by large companies since communities took control; rules regarding water use differ greatly among sectors in the system; and small flower producers have been appearing recently.