El agua local se globaliza: explorando las narrativas del agua más allá de las fronteras | SEI

This briefing by the Stockholm Environment Institute explores the concept of water teleconnections—long-distance interactions between coupled natural and human systems—and argues that relying on a single water management narrative can lead to a misunderstanding of local challenges and the invisibility of water transfers through economic and physical connections.

• The concept of teleconnections refers to long-distance interactions between coupled natural and human systems, which are sustained by societal patterns of production and consumption. In the global water system, these 'invisible flows' create water-related dependencies that extend beyond basin boundaries but are often not explicitly included in water management.
• Relying on a single water management narrative, such as the water-energy-food nexus or integrated water resources management, can result in the misinterpretation of specific local challenges or the denial of how water is transferred across different scales via products or economic and physical connections.
• Case studies in Colombia and Southeast Asia demonstrate how agricultural production exports water as 'virtual water'. In the Campoalegre basin, only 5.3% of produced coffee is consumed within Colombia. In the Songkhram basin, high-quality jasmine rice is exported to nearby provinces and international markets, moving water beyond the basin's limits.
• Conventional basin-based water management and planning may be insufficient because the watershed unit can be too large to analyze small-scale problems affecting ecosystems and communities, or too small to address global and regional factors and cumulative impacts.

APA

Coleoni, C. (2022). El agua local se globaliza: explorando las narrativas del agua más allá de las fronteras | SEI. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/perspectives/agua-local-se-globaliza-narrativas-agua/

Chicago

Coleoni, Cláudia. El agua local se globaliza: explorando las narrativas del agua más allá de las fronteras | SEI. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2022. https://www.sei.org/perspectives/agua-local-se-globaliza-narrativas-agua/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Coleoni |first1=Cláudia |title=El agua local se globaliza: explorando las narrativas del agua más allá de las fronteras | SEI |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=13 February 2022 |url=https://www.sei.org/perspectives/agua-local-se-globaliza-narrativas-agua/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{coleoni2022agua, author = {Coleoni, Cláudia}, title = {{El agua local se globaliza: explorando las narrativas del agua más allá de las fronteras | SEI}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2022}, month = feb, url = {https://www.sei.org/perspectives/agua-local-se-globaliza-narrativas-agua/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }