Water governance & Water Justice
One major current of my research is the political ecologies of rural water governance. A focus of this work has been on water rights for irrigation and the dynamics of irrigator mobilization in Bolivia. This project, funded by a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad fellowship, examined questions of rural water governance, state reform, and campesino politics in the Bolivian highlands. I spent the 2003-04 academic year in Bolivia researching rural water governance (particularly for irrigation) in the context of neoliberal state restructuring. I also examined the material and discursive practices and forms of social organization that irrigators’ associations in the Bolivian highlands employ in order to secure access to and manage water resources.
A second focus of my work has been on the intersection of mining and water contamination in Bolivia. This project, also funded by a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship (2011), examined the social and environmental implications of mine-related water contamination in the Department of Oruro, on the Bolivian Altiplano. Centuries of mining activity in the watershed has led to severe contamination of the Desaguadero River and Lakes Uru Uru and Poopó, part of the ecologically unique Titicaca-Desaguadero-Poopó-Salares endorheic (closed basin) hydrological system. This project examined three interrelated phenomena: (1) the ways that severe water contamination shapes the lives and livelihoods of indigenous and campesino populations downstream from mine sites; (2) the structures and processes of environmental governance through which water contamination and mining are managed; and (3) the forms of social mobilization that local populations engage in to seek remediation and compensation from mining companies and the Bolivian state.
A third focus has been on water justice. This work, carried out in conjunction with the international Water Justice Alliance (headed by Prof. Rutgerd Boelens of Wageningen University and CEDLA, The Netherlands), involves scholars and activists from throughout Latin America, Europe, the US and Canada. It is focused on tracing the struggles of rural and urban water users and theorizing social justice in relation to water rights, water access and water governance.
Publications
2018 Rutgerd Boelens, Tom Perreault, and Jeron Vos (eds.), Water Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
BOOK
2020 Tom Perreault, “Climate change and climate politics: Parsing the causes and effects of the drying of Lake Poopó, Bolivia.” Journal of Latin American Geography, 19(3): 26-46.
2014 Tom Perreault, “What kind of governance for what kind of equity?” Water International, 39(2): 233-245.
2012 Tom Perreault, Sarah Wraight and Meredith Perreault, “Environmental injustice in the Onondaga Lake waterscape, New York State USA,” Water Alternatives, 5(2): 485-506.
2008 Tom Perreault, “Custom and contradiction: Rural water governance and the politics of usos y costumbres in Bolivia’s irrigators’ movement,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98(4): 834-854.
2005 Thomas Perreault, “State restructuring and the scale politics of rural water governance in Bolivia,” Environment and Planning A, 37(2): 263-284.
JOURNAL aRticles
2018 Tom Perreault, “Prefacio.” In Jessica Budds and María Cecilia Roa García (eds.), Equidad y Justicia Hídrica: El Agua como Reflejo de Poder en los Países Andinos. Lima: Fondo Editorial, PUCP, pp. 13-17.
2018 Tom Perreault, “La memoria del agua: Contaminación minera, memoria colectiva y justicia hídrica,” in Gisselle Vila Benites y Cristóbal Bonelli (eds.), Justicia Hídrica. Quito: Abya Yala, pp. 95-118.
2018 Tom Perreault, “The meaning of mining, the memory of water: Collective experience as environmental justice,” In Water Justice, Rutgerd Boelens, Tom Perreault and Jeron Vos (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 316-329.
2018 Rutgerd Boelens, Jeroen Vos and Tom Perreault, “Introduction.” In Water Justice, Rutgerd Boelens, Tom Perreault and Jeron Vos (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-32.
2018 Tom Perreault, Jeroen Vos and Rutgerd Boelens, “Conclusion.” In Water Justice, Rutgerd Boelens, Tom Perreault and Jeron Vos (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 346-360.
2017 Tom Perreault “¿Un tipo de gobernanza para un tipo de equidad? Hacia una teorización de la justicia en la gobernanza hídrica.” In Bibiana Duarte Abadía, Cristina Yacoub, and Jaime Hoogesteger (eds.), La gobernanza del agua: una visión desde la ecología política y la Justicia hídrica, Quito: Abya Yala, pp. 27-47.
2017 Tom Perreault, “Governing from the ground up? Translocal networks and the politics of environmental suffering in Bolivia,” In Grassroots Environmental Governance: Community Engagements with Industry. Leah Horowitz and Michael Watts (eds.), London: Routledge, pp. 103-125.
2014 Tom Perreault, “Beyond the watershed: Decision making at what scale?” In Emma S. Norman, Christina Cook, and Alice Cohen (editors), Scaling Water Governance: The politics of watersheds, waterscapes, and hydrosocial networks. London: Ashgate, pp.117-124.
2013 Sarah Wraight, Tom Perreault and Meredith Perreault, “Injusticia ambiental en el estado de Nueva York, EEUU: Una perspectiva integradora,” In Aguas Robadas: Despojo Hídrico y Movilización Social, Aline Arroyo and Rutgerd Boelens (eds.), Quito: Abya Yala and Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, pp. 243-264.
2010 Rutgerd Boelens and Rocio Bustamante, Tom Perreault, “Struggles for water control: from water wars to mobilizations for day-to-day water rights defense” in Out of the Mainstream: Water Rights, Politics and Identity, Rutgerd Boelens, David Getches and Armando Guevera Gil (eds.), London and Washington, DC: Earthscan, pp. 281-306.
2009 Tom Perreault, “Assessing the limits of neoliberal environmental governance in Bolivia,” in Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? John Burdick, Philip Oxhorn and Ken Roberts (eds.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 135-156.
2008 Tom Perreault, “Popular protest and unpopular policies: state restructuring, resource conflict and social justice in Bolivia” In Environmental Justice in Latin America. David Carruthers (ed.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 239-262.
2007 Tom Perreault, “De la ‘guerra del agua’ a la ‘guerra del gas’: gobernabilidad de recursos, neoliberalismo, y protesta popular en Bolivia.” In Depsués de las Guerras del Agua en Bolivia, Carlos Crespo and Susan Spronk and (eds.), La Paz, CESU-UMSS/ Plural Editores, pp. 147-182.
2006 Tom Perreault, “Escalas socioespaciales, reestructuración del Estado y el gobierno neoliberal del agua en Bolivia,” in Políticas Hídricas y Derechos Campesinos e Indígenas, edited by Rutgerd Boelens, Lima, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos/ Quito, Abya Yala, pp. 281-315.