Indigenous Knowledge for Integrated Water Resources Management in Latin America

This Seminar aims to identify ways to strengthen water governance and management based on indigenous perspectives and knowledge. Since 2019 is the International Year of Indigenous Languages, it is especially appropriate to place emphasis on the indigenous perspective to inform and reflect on integrated Water Resrouces Management (IWRM) in the region.

Water is ubiquitous in life. For human life in society, water is a material element involved in almost all activities. If we understand humans as biocultural events, water undoubtedly plays a key role as an interface to what we commonly call nature and culture, based on people’s practices and ideologies.

The indigenous peoples of America have been protagonists throughout the centuries of the creation of systems of government and water management that still give answers to the challenges of water security and water as a human right and common good or inspire the search of new technologies and forms of organization for the provision of water in the continent. That said, hydro-social cycles and indigenous-based hydro-politics remain generally invisible, with their values, their spirituality, their normative frameworks, their hydraulic practices and their special form of conflict resolution through water, both within their organizations and societies, as with other state, business and civil society agents. This seminar will contribute to the dissemination of indigenous knowledge about water as part of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the region.