Gender, water scarcity, and the management of sustainability tradeoffs in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Sustainable governance requires humans to make decisions that strike a balance between environmental, economic, and social resource uses. While recent research has explored the costs and benefits of these sustainability tradeoffs, gender-oriented analyses are often absent from this literature. In particular, we know little about how gendered roles and responsibilities shape how communities make, enforce, and cope with decisions about sustainability tradeoffs. To address this gap, this chapter examines the gendered management of sustainability tradeoffs in a water-scarce community on the outskirts of Cochabamba, Bolivia.