Caitlyn Dye

Preliminary abstract: In 2016 the government of Bolivia declared the country’s freshwater resources to be in an official state of emergency due to climate change. In response, the Bolivian state has made water a key development priority, and implemented an unprecedented expansion of water modernization projects, in order to increase the ‘security’of precarious water resources. Situated at the intersection of political ecology and the anthropology of the state, this proposed research examines how projects to achieve ‘water security’ are experienced by rural and urban residents on Cochabamba’s periurban fringe, where residents up until now have relied on privately built, informal water infrastructures that are managed locally. Through archival research, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews, this project explores how water securitization efforts proceed on the ground among state officials and community activists each with their own interests regarding the use of water. Drawing on critical studies of securitization, this project considers the implications of state infrastructural intervention to make water ‘secure’ for local identities, livelihoods, and discourses of safety and security. By exploring the growing entanglement of state responses to climate change with a post-9/11 discourse of ‘security’ this research will contribute to political ecology, anthropological studies of infrastructure, and critical securitization studies, as well as anthropological approaches to climate change