Aumento de los Riesgos en la Administración por las Cuentas por Cobrar

Choosing carefully the case study is a vital step to answer the research question in the best possible way. The research question that forms the backbone of this thesis makes it a priority to find a case study where the poor and their water access struggles occupy the centre stage of the analysis while in parallel exploring the transcalar power relations that shape their water governance. Even then, after careful consideration of an illustrative case study, the information gathered will always be partial or incomplete, as its valuable information may not be applicable to the experiences of other poor communities in the country. Nevertheless, by choosing a relevant case study the new knowledge derived from its analysis may provide tentative answers to a research question with more in-depth examples while illuminating matters often obscure or absent from current academic discussions on water governance in El Salvador.

Figure 15: Choosing a case study within El Salvador

Source: Own construction

How does power affect poor people’s access to clean and sustainable water in El Salvador?

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The research made a deliberate and planned choice to find and select an illustrative in- depth case study with particular features. To select the case study methodologically, the research made provisions to make an exploratory visit to El Salvador in January 2011 to carefully gather and contrast information sources about possible case studies and make a critically informed and balanced decision.

During the exploratory field trip, the strategy involved visiting key institutions and social actors in the realm of water governance in El Salvador, including institutions of the state, such as ANDA, the Legislative Assembly or NGOs and communities working on problems of water access, and arranging exploratory interviews with them. The primary objective of the field visit was selecting an ideal case study. However, the exercise also involved gathering information sources to be able to take an informed decision about which collective(s) of poor people could be ideal for an in-depth case study analysis of power and water relations.

The critical choice of the case study followed the criteria that:

 The case study should be paradigmatic and illustrative of the struggles for clean and sustainable water access poor people suffer in El Salvador. In this sense, the case study has to faithfully represent and centre itself on a specific profile of people: a set of poor, marginalised rural communities of people struggling to access clean water. This profile for a case study takes into account that El Salvador is a society of six million people whereby at least 4 out of 10 people are poor, 1 out 10 people are extremely poor and at least 5 out 10 of those people that are poor come from rural areas.

 The case study ought to emerge as an example of ongoing chronic conflicts and clashes between social actors for water access and control, which involve poor people not just locally, but have resonance across different social scales.

 The case study is relevant for the ongoing discussions of water governance in El Salvador as it reflects the backdrop of the wider national and transnational discussions on the politics of water.

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To achieve access to information and be able to connect to key social actors this research benefited from the legacy left by past professional network of contacts from the author of this research. Such professional network was built during a three year professional experience as Political Advocacy Officer for Central America and the Caribbean at Oxfam Solidarity, Belgium (based in El Salvador from 2007-2010) working on projects related to the human right to water. Indeed, this first-hand experience on water issues prompted and motivated this research’s interest on power relations.

Once having chosen the case study, the research included four further field visits to El Salvador between 2010 and 2014. During that period, over 85 interviews with key social actors were undertaken (see annex). In addition, the research included two large community workshops delivered in San José Villanueva and participation as observer in water events across El Salvador. The collection of primary data included two field study visits beyond the geographical scales of El Salvador and the in-depth local case study.

The first field visit aimed to study the power relations and decision-making processes observed in the sixth edition of the World Water Forum held in Marseille, in March 2012. The visit intended to participate in the World Water Forum as an observer and to hold interviews with some of the social actors joining the event in relation to El Salvador’s water governance. The present thesis included the World Water Forum as part of its analysis as it is one of the most important summits organised by hegemonic water actors in the world. In addition, in order to observe and contrast the ongoing power relations the field trip included a visit to the Alternative Water Forum 2012, a parallel event set up as a form of resistance to the WWF-2012 organised by local/global counter-hegemonic actors.

Finally, the research also included a visit to the European Parliament in March 2012 to participate as an observer and interviewer. In this case, the aim of the research field trip was to interview some of the Parliamentarians and social activists upon the contentious issue of threats to the human right to water in El Salvador posed by transnational neoliberal policies. In this case, the interest of the research was to

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observe and analyse the potential commoditisation and privatisation of water through free trade agreements like the Association Agreement signed by El Salvador as part of Central America with the European Union (AA-EU-CA) in 2012.