Contested waters: Hydrosocial territories and power dynamics in the landscape of peri-urban Chiang Mai, Thailand

Abstract

• Landscape fragmentation results from contested socio-political projects. • Power dynamics formed around water influence spatial and ecological changes. • Hydrosocial territorial analysis links multi-scalar landscape dynamics to justice. • Landscape fragmentation can weaken both ecological networks and social cohesion. • Spiritual and cultural factors are integral to local environmental management. The centuries’ old Muang-Fai irrigation systems and their communities in Chiang Mai, Thailand, have undergone rapid landscape changes, mostly from urbanization and uncoordinated development, displacing their traditional land and resource management and creating highly fragmented landscape patterns. While studies have examined these changes, they remain mostly descriptive, overlooking underlying power relations, failing to integrate land use/land cover data, or landscape patterns and the broader ecological consequences for local communities. This paper explains these landscape transformations as struggles between contested hydrosocial territories, where unequal power among human and non-human actors, worldviews, and practices influence infrastructures, ecologies, and livelihoods. Using the lens of Hydrosocial Territory in relation to landscape ecology, this paper examines the Phaya-Kham system as it is variously depicted as (predominantly) an irrigation system, an urban sewage system, a flood control system, or a socio-cultural-spiritual network. Complex social, material, and symbolic dynamics shape the pluriform landscape of the Phaya-Kham network, while certain groups hold more power to materialize their interests, creating profound social-ecological consequences. This paper argues that, rather than merely ecological patchiness or physical changes, landscape fragmentation is a product of contested socio-political projects. Overlay analysis reveals how territories exist as superimposed projects, with conflicting uses and meanings competing for inscription in the same physical space; hereby, infrastructure embeds and enforces territorial claims. By showing how landscape fragmentation in peri-urban Chiang Mai reflects multi-scalar struggles over water, infrastructure, and meaning, the paper reveals the limitations of conventional planning frameworks, transcending their scale-based representations.