Entre el Estado, la Comunidad y el Abuelo:Agua y Justicia Climática en el Sur del Callejón de Huaylas

Climate changes already represent a lived and experienced reality in the Peruvian highlands. The snowy peaks with their seemingly eternal glaciers have become icons of global warming, and those who live around them have become pioneers of the fundamental transformation of regimes, flows and scarcity of the vital element. However, the populations of the Andes have not produced the emissions that cause the changes. Furthermore, although climate changes are at their root products of physical processes in the atmosphere, their effects are filtered and mediated through institutional arrangements and their historical legacies. This article is a reflection on water justice in the Sierra Ancashina. Taking as analytical axis the dimensions of social justice of distribution and procedure, I narrate the confluence of two intertwined processes: on the one hand, climate changes and how they take root in the territories of peasant communities, and, on the other, the institutional changes to control the flow of water. I show how the control of water is contentiously shared between traditional authorities related to the Andean worldview (the grandfather), current local authorities (the community and the board), and governments and their institutions (the State). Beyond its biophysical qualities, water justice in times of climate change shows that its effects encompass a problem of inequality, poverty and democracy.