Dayna Cueva Alegria Dissertation Award: Water Pollution Governance in Lake Titicaca: Creating Political Spaces of Democratization

My dissertation research project examines the implementation of sewage water treatment plants (SWTP) in the Puno region of Peru, and its significance for geographic scholarship on environmental democratization, governance, and the political ecologies of water. Since the 1990s, Puno rural communities that depend on water from neighboring Lake Titicaca have faced disproportionate and increasing vulnerability due to pollution from Puno’s urban centers. Yet, in spite of an historically antagonistic state-rural civil society relationship that has deprived rural communities of political power, Puno rural civil society environmental actors (CSEA) and state institutions have managed to join political efforts to address Lake Titicaca’s water pollution through the implementation of SWTP. In light of this, my research seeks to understand how such ‘synergies’ – the expansion and convergence of the cooperative political practices of CSEA and state institutions – have led to the implementation of SWTP, and whether this in turn indicates greater rural political empowerment, and ultimately the advancement of environmental democratization. I employ mixed qualitative and social network analysis methods for this purpose.