The Political Life of Natural Infrastructure: Water Funds and Alternative Histories of Payments for Ecosystem Services in Valle del Cauca, Colombia

Sara H. Nelson, Leah L. Bremer, Kelly Meza Prado and Kate A. Brauman

Development and Change, 2020, vol. 51, issue 1, 26-50

Abstract: This article shows the two‐way relation between global norms and local conditions as they shape Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) theory and practice, through a case study of a water fund in Valle del Cauca, Colombia, the heartland of the country's sugarcane industry. Drawing on interviews, survey data and historical research, the article argues that the water fund should be understood in the context of the history of infrastructure for the sugarcane industry in the region, and that this infrastructural perspective provides a more nuanced insight into the fund's political life than the traditional PES framing. Furthermore, the article shows how the norms embedded in this locally grown programme circulated through international networks to influence PES theory and design. This case offers one example of the need to attend to the multiple and geographically specific histories of actually existing PES in order to understand its diversity in the present.

Date: 2020
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