Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program

Since the 1990s in Peru, wastewater and solid waste from the Puno Region's rapidly expanding and unplanned urban centers have entered Lake Titicaca’s bays and its rivers, forcing Puno rural communities to face disproportionate and increasing vulnerability to polluted waters. However, the implementation of sewage water treatment plants in 2018 for six Puno towns marks an unprecedented Peruvian central government response and environmental outcome, providing the basis to investigate whether and how democratization has unfolded and advanced in Puno to govern Lake Titicaca’s water pollution. Thus, my study will employ a democratization framework to analyze how, in spite of marginalization and a historically hostile political landscape, Puno rural communities have channeled their political energy to effectively join efforts with local and central-level state institutions to gain decision-making power over water pollution governance. The analysis of environmental democratization focuses on synergy – patterns of co-evolving and converging bottom-up and top-down democratic political practices and environmental values deployed by rural environmental actors and state institutions over time to create more democratic spaces. Employing mixed methods, this analysis seeks to deepen knowledge by providing a fuller characterization of the advancement of democratization and its link to generating positive environmental governance outcomes for rural communities.