Unintended effects of technology on climate change adaptation: an historical analysis of water conflicts below Andean Glaciers

Climate change adaptation measures can generate long-term unintended consequences, as this paper demonstrates through an empirical case study of water conflicts at Lake Parón in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range. This decade-long struggle culminated in 2008 when a coalition of local groups (stakeholders) from the Cruz de Mayo and Caraz communities in the Callejón de Huaylas seized control of the Lake Parón reservoir from a private multinational corporation, Duke Energy. This clash over Parón’s water in the Llullán and Santa River watersheds emerged much earlier than climatic-hydrologic models had predicted, and it occurred, this paper argues, largely because of previously successful climate adaptation measures. The drainage tunnel and floodgates originally installed at Parón in the 1980s to prevent a climate-related outburst flood led to unintended or perverse outcomes because these technological artifacts subsequently allowed a diversity of stakeholders—including rural subsistence farmers, urban residents, national park officials, tourism promoters, the state energy company Electroperú, and Duke Energy—to manage water differently depending on their priorities and the existing governance structures. Neoliberal reforms that altered state-society-environment relations in Peru played a key role in these changing stakeholder power dynamics that were reflected in the management of water infrastructure at Parón. Examining this water conflict that emerged from the unintended effects of climate adaptation demonstrates not only how technology and society are mutually constitutive, but also why the politics of technologies must be considered more carefully in the analysis of social-ecological systems, hydro-social cycles, and climate change adaptation. ► We examine water conflicts at Lake Parón in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca. ► Climate adaptation technologies can change power dynamics and social relations. ► Water conflict was an unintended outcome of successful climate adaptation technology. ► Non-human nature shapes hydro-social cycles and climate change adaptation. ► We bridge previously disparate scholarship on technology, power, climate, and water.