Enacting environmental justice: community-based water research and resistance in highland Ecuador

Abstract

In the highland parish of Pintag, Ecuador, community members face declining water quality and governance failures despite the country's progressive constitutional framework recognizing the Rights of Nature, the human right to water, and the principles of Buen Vivir. This thesis presents a community-based, interdisciplinary research project developed in collaboration with an Indigenous collective in Pintag, to investigate water quality conditions and governance dynamics in the region. Using a mixed-methods approach that combined water sampling, interviews, and participant observation, the research examines both biophysical indicators of water contamination and lived experiences of water access, management, and injustice. Findings reveal that gravel mining and institutional neglect contribute to sedimentation and microbial contamination in waterways. However, many of the most pressing issues stem not from extractive activity alone, but from deeper systemic problems: regulatory gaps, underfunded institutions, and top-down structures that marginalize Indigenous and rural communities, leading to injustices. Despite constitutional protections, state institutions often fail to meaningfully engage with or support local water governance efforts. Community members report persistent procedural and recognitional environmental injustices, including lack of consultation, inaccessible data, and devaluation of Indigenous knowledge and autonomy. In response, communities are reclaiming power over local water governance through grassroots organizing, alternative development models, and resistance to extractivist logics. This thesis contributes to environmental justice literature by highlighting how state failures produce uneven water governance outcomes, and how communities are building decolonial alternatives rooted in reciprocity and self-determination.