Acequias are communally-run water systems (aqueducts or ditches) in Iberia and Spain's former colonies. They are most notably present in the American Southwest, especially New Mexico. There are some similar forms elsewhere—levadas in Madeira, indigenous technologies (like puquios) in the New World, and more—but I will use acequias as a bit of a proxy term. Their history seems to be tracked to the qanats of Persia, brought to Iberia through Arab expansion, then to the Americas with Spanish colonization.
Acequias are coupled hydrologic-economic-social systems, whereby water, a scarce resource in arid and semi-arid climates, is allocated for agricultural use by communitarian societies. The "water democracies" they are related with historically give voting rights to those who use the water on their land, and enforce management and maintenance duties via social contracts between the acequia corporation members. In drought times, the water scarcity is taken as a collective burden, and water is managed to as to balance collective needs, aquifer recharge and the sustainability of the entire acequia system. They are networked, whereby individual plots cannot necessarily be turned off and on without impacting the integrity of the rest of the system, which helps in upholding a collectivist attitude (ref).
That is the ideal at least. Water in arid places is an impure public good: the systems that carry it can become levers of power which exclude, uphold class divisions, and drive unequal labor practices: they are social systems first, technological systems second. And with any social system, broad strokes governance procedures ignore the messy reality of dealing with specific people and roles in an ever-changing environment, exposing how much effective management by people requires emotional intelligence and trust. Equitable service by and maintenance of the system requires it to have memory of the roles of its constituents, and to respond in reasoned ways to the events that affect them, the social context of exchanges between people, and the lands and ditches themselves. The networked infrastructure must be an active, living assemblage: it dies in the absence of social relationships upholding its value (and maintenance). Both of these papers bring up how critical it is for people to have a shared moral fabric to keep systems sustainable in generational time or longer, which may be religious or familial in nature. For my western social class, it is common that neither religious nor family ties are particularly strong: what social fabrics can be woven today to honor good-faith infrastructure maintenance?
Acequias are coupled hydrologic-economic-social systems, whereby water, a scarce resource in arid and semi-arid climates, is allocated for agricultural use by communitarian societies. The "water democracies" they are related with historically give voting rights to those who use the water on their land, and enforce management and maintenance duties via social contracts between the acequia corporation members. In drought times, the water scarcity is taken as a collective burden, and water is managed to as to balance collective needs, aquifer recharge and the sustainability of the entire acequia system. They are networked, whereby individual plots cannot necessarily be turned off and on without impacting the integrity of the rest of the system, which helps in upholding a collectivist attitude (ref).
That is the ideal at least. Water in arid places is an impure public good: the systems that carry it can become levers of power which exclude, uphold class divisions, and drive unequal labor practices: they are social systems first, technological systems second. And with any social system, broad strokes governance procedures ignore the messy reality of dealing with specific people and roles in an ever-changing environment, exposing how much effective management by people requires emotional intelligence and trust. Equitable service by and maintenance of the system requires it to have memory of the roles of its constituents, and to respond in reasoned ways to the events that affect them, the social context of exchanges between people, and the lands and ditches themselves. The networked infrastructure must be an active, living assemblage: it dies in the absence of social relationships upholding its value (and maintenance). Both of these papers bring up how critical it is for people to have a shared moral fabric to keep systems sustainable in generational time or longer, which may be religious or familial in nature. For my western social class, it is common that neither religious nor family ties are particularly strong: what social fabrics can be woven today to honor good-faith infrastructure maintenance?
"Within the social and cultural domain of qanats, we cannot find a single motivation as a driver for the existence and functionality of qanats. This is because qanats are more than just economical, technical or even agricultural assemblages. Inside the qanat’s social ecosystem the political, religions, technical and socio-cultural institutions have been faithfully linked together." (ref)
I have an enormous slew of questions and thoughts on these kinds of water systems. Mostly curiosity: there is very little information I have found on actual governance patterns of acequias or qanats. Things are so vastly different here in California, where the greatest water infrastructure on earth (?) is completely alienated from its users' daily needs and social fabric. I am somewhat curious if I can find a creative grant program to fund me doing some visits and research on these topics. I wonder how much these deeper-time histories of collective infrastructure governance can inform stuff happening today, whether in environmental economics or crypto. (Or, both?) Time will tell. Thanks to my friends AWS and TA for some conversations around these ideas.
Relatedly, I am giving a Sandbox✦ talk at TRUST next week! It is on Tuesday, November 9th at 11am PST. My talk is called GREEN SPACE AS INFRASTRUCTURE SPACE, here is a blurb:
Pressing material and political incentives are encouraging wider application of environmental economics to ascribe value to environmental processes. By accounting for the “ecosystem services” they provide, more and more landscapes can be valued, celebrated, and maintained as “green infrastructure”. In California, the state’s terraforming project and water infrastructure are nearly one and the same, but water scarcity threatens the abundance mindset. How far can we abstract a landscape into an infrastructural, economic entity?
If you are a member of the TRUST discord, you can tune in easily. I was told there will be a way for guests to join too—if you are interested, respond to this email and I'll try to get you a link. I recommend reading this paper and the essay Islands: The Settlement from Property to Care in this document beforehand.
Precious fluids,
Lukas