Water and Energy Resource Management in Chile’s Elqui River Watershed

Keywords: Latin America, Water Resources, Energy Transitions, Climate Change, Irrigation
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 12

Abstract

This research critically analyzes socioecological phenomena resulting from the water-energy-climate change interface in the semi-arid Elqui River Valley of Chile’s Coquimbo Region. Specifically, the project investigates outcomes shaped by processes linked to irrigation modernization, an emerging phenomenon aimed at addressing inefficiencies and scaling down operations in water dependent areas. Irrigated agriculture is a key driver of water and energy practices. However, Chile’s water and electricity codes operate within separate legal frameworks, despite their increasingly integrated nature. Consequently, disparities exist between national policies and empirical outcomes in a water scarce environment, thereby creating tensions that are being exacerbated as climate change impacts manifest. Chile has the opportunity to alleviate these incongruities through integrating water and energy decision-making, central components of key national legislation, specifically the Energía2050 Initiative and the National Climate Change Action Plan. Still though, landscapes such as the Elqui Watershed are being shaped by incongruities between the concentration of power from commercial agricultural development, operating at at the expense of small-scale entities and natural resource conservation in the form of modernized water and energy systems. Such trends are a result of inconsistencies between between national policies and on the ground outcomes. This research seeks to understand these paradoxes by critically investigating how irrigation modernization reflects broader decisions about water and energy resource management.