Gender and Sustainability: Lessons from Asia and Latin America

5. Gender, Water Scarcity, and the Management of Sustainability Tradeoffs in Cochabamba, Bolivia

97 chapter five Gender, Water Scarcity, and the Management of Sustainability Tradeoffs in Cochabamba, Bolivia Amber Wutich Sustainable governance requires humans to make decisions that strike a balance between environmental, economic, and social resource uses. While recent research has explored the costs and benefits of these sustainability tradeoffs, gender-oriented analyses are often absent from this literature. In particular, we know little about how gendered roles and responsibilities shape how communities make, enforce, and cope with decisions about sustainability tradeoffs. To address this gap, this chapter examines the gendered management of sustainability tradeoffs in a waterscarce community on the outskirts of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Sustainability Tradeoffs Sustainability can be defined as an approach to development that seeks to preserve the long-term well-being of social and ecological systems. A core challenge of sustainability is weighing the costs and benefits of different resource management choices (Brown et al. 1987). This challenge was recognized by early environmentalists, who struggled to resolve the conflict between environmental and human needs for resources (e.g., Ehrlich 1972). Later proponents of sustainable development sought ways to meet current resource demands without undermining future generations’ capacity to do the same (Brundtland 1987). A new generation of sustainability scholars has begun to explore how tradeoffs among the three pillars 98฀ •฀ Amber฀Wutich of sustainability—environment, economics, and society—can be resolved to achieve sustainable development (de Vries and Petersen 2009). Recent studies have demonstrated how sustainability tradeoffs can yield different configurations of environmental, economic, or social costs and benefits. One common concern is the tension between ecological conservation and economic development (Spangenberg et al. 2002). These studies examine how economic development trades off against environmental conservation goals, or vice versa. In a recent example, Martinet and Blanchard (2009) demonstrated how reducing trawling in a shrimp fishery off French Guiana would enhance the long-term economic well-being of the fishery but could also negatively impact a protected frigatebird species that feeds off fishery discards. In this case, economic benefits would win out, causing ecological costs. Others have highlighted the conflicts among different resource conservation goals. For instance, in a study of global rice production, Mushtaq et al. (2009) suggested that water conservation may trade off against energy use because water-saving irrigation practices are more energy consumptive. Here, one kind of ecological benefit (water conservation) wins out, creating another type of ecological cost (energy consumption). Similarly, some have found that scarce resources prompt competition among different social groups. Woodward (2000), for example , examined how the current generation’s pursuit of economic development may trade off against the economic welfare of future generations. Each of these studies highlights the ways in which locally specific conditions result in unique sustainability tradeoffs within and between the three pillars of sustainability. In the new research on sustainability tradeoffs, there has been little, if any, discussion of gender. This is puzzling because gender has long been understood to play a crucial role in environmental management. Gendered roles and responsibilities shape the ways in which environmental resources are governed, extracted, allocated, and used (Rocheleau et al. 1996). Yet few have asked how gender affects the management of sustainability tradeoffs in determining who decides what tradeoffs will be made, who enforces these decisions, and who pays the costs. One exception is Palmer-Jones and Jackson’s (1997) research on gender and tradeoffs between sustainable development and labor intensity. Drawing on an investigation of water provision projects in Bangladesh, the authors found that the adoption of treadle pumps championed by proponents of sustainable development burdened impoverished women with greater workloads, increased energy expenditure, and caused more physical injuries. In brief, an economic benefit (low-cost water extraction technology) traded off against Gender, Water Scarcity, and Sustainability Tradeoffs ฀ •฀ 99 a social cost (increased workloads for women). Based on these results, Palmer-Jones and Jackson called for more research into the ways in which sustainable development projects reshape gendered divisions of work and time allocation. Yet this call has been largely ignored. In this chapter, I take up the challenge to investigate the gendered management of water scarcity in Cochabamba, Bolivia. As Palmer-Jones and Jackson’s research in Bangladesh demonstrated, water scarcity is a topic that provides unique insight into sustainability tradeoffs because gender plays such a prominent role in shaping water management. Water Scarcity Water scarcity is one of the world’s most pressing environmental crises (UNDP 2006). More than 1 billion people currently...