My research explores how power relations produce and reproduce socio-ecological change in the global South with implications for the lives, livelihoods, landscapes and identities of low-income and/or marginalised social groups. I’m interested in both the material and discursive dimensions of these dynamics, especially as they relate to processes and discourses of development, as well as how they operate over different spatial and temporal scales.

Much of this work has been pursued through a focus on water politics, management and governance. An important aspect of my work has been to reposition technical approaches to water issues as inherently political, and to elucidate the politics and power relations bound up in patterns of water allocation and use, water infrastructure and technologies, water governance frameworks and debates over water resources and issues.

My work currently comprises three principal themes:

First, I have critically examined the application of ‘neoliberal’ strategies to water management and its implications for low-income groups and local ecologies. I have analysed urban water privatisation in the global South (with Gordon McGranahan from IIED), water rights markets in Chile, and payments for watershed services schemes in the Andean region. I have argued that these market-based approaches are promoted on the basis of more efficient resource management and benefits to the poor by those groups who stand to benefit from them, yet in practice it is the poorest and most marginal water users who are least likely to benefit from these policies.

Second, I am interested in critical approaches to environmental knowledge that draw on debates around social nature from political ecology and science studies. My entry into this area has been through an analysis of the politics of hydrology and its application. I have extended this work to engage in developing, with Jamie Linton (Queen’s University), the concept of the ‘hydrosocial cycle’ to think about how water embeds and reflects power relations, and how water and people shape and reshape each other over space and time. I have also worked on a critique of the society-nature dualism inherent within the dominant conceptualisation of ecosystem services, in collaboration with Margreet Zwarteveen (Wageningen University).

Third, I have examined the implications of the increased demand for water for the expanding mining industry in the Andean region, focusing on the case of Peru. In Peru, meeting growing demand for water for mining is a key challenge and source of conflict, because natural supplies are limited, most existing resources are in use, and some local (Quechua and Aymara) people are strongly opposed to the use of water for mining. However, rather than regarding water solely as a resource that is an input to, or impacted by, mining, I have examined how the social relations of control over water in relation to mineral extraction are reshaping waterscapes in Peru, and in the Andean highlands in particular. Based on qualitative work in Lima and the arid far south of Peru, where several large copper mines are operating, starting production, or being planned, I have analysed how mining influences water (re)allocation and basin transfers, policy and governance arrangements, the construction of large infrastructure, and discourses about water use and management, but also the ways in which water has shaped debates and practices around mining in the country.

In 2011, my research on water and mining in the Andes was featured in an edition of BBC Radio 4’s Costing the Earth programme, entitled ‘Gold of the Conquistadors’.

I am a member of the Water Security Research Centre at UEA and the international Justicia Hídrica (Water Justice) Alliance.


External research funding

NWO/DFID, Collaboration or Conflict in Management of Climate Change Programme, Proposal development workshop grant, Scalar Politics and Wicked Problems: How Climate Change Mediates Conflicts and Solidarities around Hydropower, Water and Development in the Eastern Himalayas, Co-Investigator, Wageningen University, 2012-13.

ESRC First Grant, The Political Ecology of Extractive Industries and Changing Waterscapes in the Andes, Principal Investigator, The Open University / University of Reading, 2010-12.

ESRC/NERC/DFID Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) Programme, Partnership and Project Development Grant, Understanding and Managing Watershed Services in Andean and Amazonian Catchments, Lead Principal Investigator, The Open University and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2010-11.

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, The Political Ecology of Water and Uneven Development in Latin America, University of Manchester, 2006.

ESRC/NERC PhD studentship, The Political Ecology of Water Privatisation in Latin America: Water Rights Markets in Chile, University of Oxford, 2001-2004.
 

Publications

Journal articles

Rodríguez de Francisco, Jean Carlo, Jessica Budds and Rutgerd Boelens (forthcoming) ‘Payment for environmental services and unequal resource control in Pimampiro, Ecuador’, Society and Natural Resources.

Budds, Jessica (in press) ‘Water, power and the production of neoliberalism in Chile, 1973-2005’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

Budds, Jessica and Leonith Hinojosa (2012) ‘Restructuring and rescaling water governance in mining contexts: the co-production of waterscapes in Peru’, Water Alternatives 5(1): 119-137.

Budds, Jessica (2012) ‘La demanda, evaluación y asignación del agua en el contexto de escasez: un análisis del ciclo hydrosocial del valle del río Ligua, Chile’, Revista de Geografía Norte Grande 52(1): 167-184.

Budds, Jessica (2009) ‘Contested H2O: science, policy and politics in water resources management in Chile’, Geoforum 40 (3): 418-430.

Budds, Jessica with Paulo Teixeira and SEHAB (2005) ‘Ensuring the right to the city: pro-poor housing, urban development and tenure legalization in São Paulo, Brazil’, Environment and Urbanization 17 (1): 89-113.

Budds, Jessica (2004) ‘Power, nature and neoliberalism: the political ecology of water in Chile’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 25 (3): 322-342.

Budds, Jessica and Gordon McGranahan (2003) ‘Are the debates on water privatization missing the point? Experiences from Africa, Asia and Latin America’, Environment and Urbanization 15 (2): 87-113.

Budds, Jessica (2003) ‘El acceso a los recursos de agua de los agricultores en el valle de La Ligua, Chile’, Revista de Derecho Administrativo Económico 2: 371-379.

Journal special issues

‘The Hydrosocial Cycle’, Geoforum (forthcoming), organised with Jamie Linton and Rachael McDonnell.

‘Rethinking Political Ecologies of Water and Development’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (in press), organised with Farhana Sultana.

Edited volumes

Budds, Jessica and Cecilia Roa (forthcoming) Agua, Justicia e Equidad, Lima: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

Brown, William, Claudia Aradau and Jessica Budds (2009) Environmental Issues and Responses, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Book chapters

Budds, Jessica (forthcoming) ‘The expansion of mining and changing waterscapes in the southern Peruvian Andes’ in Emma Norman, Christina Cook and Alice Cohen (editors) Negotiating Water Governance: Why the Politics of Scale Matter, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Budds, Jessica and Alex Loftus (in press) ‘Water and hydropolitics’, in Vandana Desai and Robert Potter (editors) The Companion to Development Studies, Third Edition, London: Hodder Education.

Budds, Jessica (in press) ‘Acceso al agua y justicia hídrica: un análisis de las relaciones de poder entre Southern Copper Corporation y comunidades rurales en Moquegua y Tacna, Perú’ in Thomas Perreault (editor) Minería, Agua y Justicia Ambiental en la Región Andina: Experiencias Comparativas de Bolivia y Perú, Lima and La Paz: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos and Plural.

Budds, Jessica (in press) ‘Servicios ambientales y justicia hidrica’ in Aline Arroyo and Rutgerd Boelens (editors) Aguas Robadas: Despojo Hídrico y Movilización Social.

Hinojosa, Leonith and Jessica Budds (in press) ‘Mecanismos de acceso y control del agua en el contexto minero del Sur Peruano’ in Aline Arroyo and Rutgerd Boelens (editors) Aguas Robadas: Despojo Hídrico y Movilización Social.

Budds, Jessica and Leonith Hinojosa (2012) ‘Las industrias extractivas y los paisajes hídricos en transición en los países andinos: análisis de la gobernanza de recursos y formación de territorios en Perú’, in Edgar Isch, Rutgerd Boelens and Francisco Peña (eds.) Agua, Injusticia y Conflictos, Lima: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

Budds, Jessica (2011) ‘Las relaciones sociales de poder y la producción de paisajes hídricos’ in Rutgerd Boelens, Leontien Cremers and Margreet Zwarteveen (editors) Justicia Hídrica: Acumulación, Conflicto y Acción Social, pp. 59-69, Lima: Fondo Editorial.

Budds, Jessica (2011) ‘Hydrological modeling’ in Jordana Dym and Karl Offen (editors) Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Budds, Jessica (2010) ‘Water rights, mining and indigenous groups in Chile’s Atacama’ in Rutgerd Boelens, David Getches and Armando Guevara Gil (editors) Out of the Mainstream: Water Rights, Politics and Identity, pp. 197-211, London: Earthscan.

Budds, Jessica (2009) ‘The 1981 Water Code: the impacts of private tradable water rights on peasant and indigenous communities in Northern Chile’ in William Alexander (editor) Lost in the Long Transition: The Struggle for Social Justice in Neoliberal Chile, pp. 35-56, Lanham: Lexington Books.

Budds, Jessica (2009) ‘Urbanisation: social and environmental inequalities in cities’ in William Brown, Claudia Aradau and Jessica Budds (2009) Environmental Issues and Responses, pp. 99-139), Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Budds, Jessica (2009) ‘Water: natural, social and contested flows’ in William Brown, Claudia Aradau and Jessica Budds (2009) Environmental Issues and Responses, pp. 141-179), Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Budds, Jessica (2008) ‘Whose scarcity? The hydrosocial cycle and the changing waterscape of La Ligua river basin, Chile’ in Michael Goodman, Maxwell Boykoff and Kyle Evered (editors) Contentious Geographies: Environment, Meaning, Scale, pp. 59-68, Aldershot: Ashgate.

United Nations Habitat (2006) Meeting Development Goals in Small Urban Centres: Water and Sanitation in the World’s Cities 2006, London: Earthscan; Chapter 8: ‘Integrated Water Resources Management and the Provision of Water Supply and Sanitation in Small Urban Centres’, pp. 225-244.

United Nations Habitat (2003) Water and Sanitation in the World’s Cities: Local Actions for Global Goals, London: Earthscan; Chapter 5 with Gordon McGranahan: ‘Changing Perspectives and Roles in Urban Water and Sanitation Provision – Privatization and Beyond’, pp. 158-192.

• Latin American Development (DEV-2D42)
• Globalisation, Industrialisation and Development (DEV-M072)
• Water Security: Tools and Policy (DEV-M102) 

I am a core member of the team developing and delivering modules for the new BA (Hons) Geography and International Development starting in autumn 2013. 

Doctoral research supervision

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students with interests in one or more of the following: socio-ecological change, poverty and development, political ecology, water resources, extractive industries, hydroelectric power, urban informal settlements (especially water and sanitation), interdisciplinary social-natural science environmental studies, Latin America. 

I am currently co-supervising two external doctoral candidates: 

Jim McGinlay, ‘Policy and Practice in the Conservation of Floodplain Meadows in England’, Department of Environment, Earth and Ecosystems and Department of Geography, The Open University, 2009- 

Jean Carlo Rodríguez de Francisco, ‘Power, Peasant Livelihoods and Payment for Watershed Environmental Services in the Andes’, Irrigation and Water Engineering Group, Wageningen University, 2009-