« The memorial life of a settler community: Susan Slyomovics, ‘A Settler Colonial Memorial Book: The Agricultural School and Museum of Sidi-Bel-Abbès, Algeria’, Diaspora, 23, 2, 2023, pp. 241-260
Settler colonialism targets social reproduction: Elliot Goodell Ugalde, ‘Unveiling the Veiled Narratives: Settler-Colonialism, Matrilineality, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls along the Highway of Tears’, Canadian Journal for the Academic Mind, 2023 »

Settler water ecologies: Sophia Borgias, ‘Drought, Settler Law, and the Los Angeles Aqueduct: The Shifting Political Ecology of Water Scarcity in California’s Eastern Sierra’, Journal of Political Ecology, 2023

18Nov23

Abstract: This article examines how drought intersects with long-standing issues of ecological degradation and social inequity caused by water extraction. I focus on the case of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and its ongoing impacts on the communities and ecosystems in the Owens and Mono basins in the Eastern Sierra region of California. Drawing on ethnographic and policy research, I show how environmental law addressed some of these impacts but reinforced others, perpetuating a settler colonial approach to water management that marginalizes Indigenous communities and naturalizes a level of environmental degradation. Drought has further exacerbated and obscured these issues of degradation and inequity, as Los Angeles has increasingly contested its environmental mitigation obligations and doubled down on the extractive approach that resulted in the need for mitigation in the first place. This research builds upon insights from political ecology and critical legal studies, underscoring how drought exacerbates existing water scarcity but also obscures the role of settler colonial legal frameworks and extractive practices in producing it.


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