En los Andes, los derechos de agua se materializan en procesos de lucha social. El artículo examina cómo la lucha por el agua de los colectivos locales no puede comprenderse sin su enraizamiento en subcorrientes dinámicas: los cimientos multicapas, a menudo ocultos, de los derechos de agua. Aquí se entrelazan estrategias comunitarias y fuentes socio-legales plurales. Las subcorrientes alimentan los socio-territorios y las culturas hidráulicas, estableciendo las bases para la defensa de los derechos locales hacia redes político-legales multi-escala. En la práctica, los arreglos y derechos propios a menudo están disfrazados por medio de escudos y estrategias de mimetismo (o imitación), que también permiten hacer uso de los medios de poder dominantes. La creación y la proliferación subsuperficiales de los repertorios sociolegales locales constituyen una importante fuente de defensa contra la usurpación de los derechos de agua y las políticas disciplinarias.

En los Andes, los derechos de agua se materializan en procesos de lucha social. El artículo examina cómo la lucha por el agua de los colectivos locales no puede comprenderse sin su enraizamiento en subcorrientes dinámicas: los cimientos multicapas, a menudo ocultos, de los derechos de agua. Aquí se entrelazan estrategias comunitarias y fuentes socio-legales plurales. Las subcorrientes alimentan los socio-territorios y las culturas hidráulicas, estableciendo las bases para la defensa de los derechos locales hacia redes político-legales multi-escala. En la práctica, los arreglos y derechos propios a menudo están disfrazados por medio de escudos y estrategias de mimetismo (o imitación), que también permiten hacer uso de los medios de poder dominantes. La creación y la proliferación subsuperficiales de los repertorios sociolegales locales constituyen una importante fuente de defensa contra la usurpación de los derechos de agua y las políticas disciplinarias.

We report high-resolution macroscopic charcoal, pollen and sedimentological data for Agua Caliente, a freshwater lagoon located in southern Belize, and infer a late Holocene record of human land-use/climate interactions for the nearby prehistoric Maya center of Uxbenká. Land-use activities spanning the initial clearance of forests for agriculture through the drought-linked Maya collapse and continuing into the historic recolonization of the region are all reflected in the record. Human land alteration in association with swidden agriculture is evident early in the record during the Middle Preclassic starting ca. 2600calyrBP. Fire slowly tapered off during the Late and Terminal Classic, consistent with the gradual political demise and depopulation of the Uxbenká polity sometime between ca. 1150 and 950calyrBP, during a period of multiple droughts evident in a nearby speleothem record. Fire activity was at its lowest during the Maya Postclassic ca. 950–430calyrBP, but rose consistent with increasing recolonization of the region between ca. 430calyrBP and present. These data suggest that this environmental record provides both a proxy for 2800years of cultural change, including colonization, growth, decline, and reorganization of regional populations, and an independent confirmation of recent paleoclimate reconstructions from the same region.

Indian agriculture is trapped in a complex nexus of groundwater depletion and energy subsidies. This nexus is the product of past public policy choices that initially offered opportunities to India’s small-holder-based irrigation economy but has now generated in its wake myriad economic, social, and environmental distortions. Conventional ‘getting-the-price-right’ solutions to reduce these distortions have consistently been undermined by the invidious political economy that the nexus has created. The historical evolution of the nexus is outlined, the nature and scale of the distortions it has created are explored, and alternative approaches which Indian policy makers can use to limit, if not eliminate, the damaging impacts of the distortions, are analysed.

In many parts of the world, groundwater users regularly face serious resource-depletion threat. At the same time, “groundwater overexploitation” is massively cited when discussing groundwater management problems. A kind of standard definition tends to relegate groundwater overexploitation only as a matter of inputs and outputs. However, a thorough state-of-the-art analysis shows that groundwater overexploitation is not only a matter of hydrogeology but also a qualification of exploitation based on political, social, technical, economic or environmental criteria. Thus, an aquifer with no threat to groundwater storage can rightly be considered as overexploited because of many other prejudicial aspects. So, why is groundwater overexploitation so frequently only associated with resource-depletion threat and so rarely related to other prejudicial aspects? In that case, what really lies behind the use of the overexploitation concept? The case of the Kairouan plain aquifer in central Tunisia was used to analyze the way that the overexploitation message emerges in a given context, how groundwater-use stakeholders (farmers, management agencies and scientists) each qualify the problem in their own way, and how they see themselves with regard to the concept of overexploitation. The analysis shows that focusing messages on overexploitation conceals the problems encountered by the various stakeholders: difficulties accessing water, problems for the authorities in controlling the territory and individual practices, and complications for scientists when qualifying hydrological situations. The solutions put forward to manage overexploitation are at odds with the problems that arise locally, triggering tensions and leading to misunderstandings between the parties involved.