Drought Governance: Issues, Policies and Technical Responses, and Current Agendas in Cuyo and Argentina.

Abstract

In recent decades, droughts have ceased to be isolated meteorological phenomena and have become recurrent events, intensified by the global climate crisis. In Argentina, this process is reflected in both decreasing precipitation and the retreat of Andean snowfall, profoundly reshaping hydrological dynamics. In this context, the dossier proposes an approach to drought that goes beyond hydrometeorological perspectives, incorporating socio-historical, political-institutional, and technical dimensions. It is part of a research project that examines how droughts have been constructed as objects of government and knowledge, organizing the analysis around three axes: the problematization of the phenomenon, the political and technical responses deployed by the state, and the circulation of scientific and academic agendas across different scales.

Within the process of institutionalizing water management in Argentina since the mid-twentieth century, the role of scientific agencies and hydroclimatic bureaucracies stands out in shaping frameworks for understanding and acting upon water scarcity. At the same time, the coexistence of different problem framings across regions and disciplinary fields becomes evident, with a predominance of approaches focused on the Pampas region and agricultural production. In response, the dossier seeks to decentralize this perspective by incorporating the case of the provinces of Cuyo, where dependence on snowmelt and the historical institutionalization of water management configure a specific set of issues.

Finally, by highlighting the limitations of dominant approaches in the face of recent megadrought scenarios—aggravated both by climate change and by political and institutional tensions—the dossier emphasizes that droughts cannot be understood solely as natural deficits, but rather as phenomena shaped by social disputes, territorial inequalities, and productive dynamics. The articles included in the issue, drawing on historical, legal, socio-environmental, and bibliometric perspectives, thus contribute to a broader and more complex understanding of governing droughts.