Diagnosis of water resources in context of agricultural drought and dependence basin Limarí, Coquimbo. Period 2000-2011

Abstract

Chilean development model, based mainly on exploitation and exportation of natural resources, generates productive and territorial inequalities. In Limarí’s basin, located in the semi-desert of Coquimbo’s region, production it’s mostly agricultural, and the expansion and increase of this primary activity over the past 30 years has generated socio - territorial problems. For example, to reach a balance over the use of water resources, especially in drought periods it’s a constant challenge, not only for the basin’s population, but also for the sustainability of the production system.

This problematic has already been detected in the region since last century, when a series of large reservoirs of fresh water. These reservoirs were meant to maintain the levels of water resources in Coquimbo’s region. Unfortunately, long periods of drought and low rainfall, climate change effects, and the constant intensification of agricultural activities over the last two decades, led to water shortage, a serious problem that different actors still doesn’t know how to fix.

Challenging the conventional understandings of environmental problems by following the approach of political ecology, and seeking to reveal certain power structures that underlies and reflects in the territory, the present study embarks in a diagnose of water resource in Limarí’s basin, searching to comprehend the actors reactions to many of the challenges that involves the use, access, governance, management and social conflicts of water resource.