Payment for ecosystem services in Lima’s watersheds: power and imaginaries in an urban-rural hydrosocial territory

In Peru, payment for ecosystem services is an increasingly popular mechanism to secure the transfer of water from rural to urban areas. This article analyzes the process of setting up such a scheme in the watersheds of Lima. The concept of hydrosocial territories and a power analysis are used to scrutinize how urban-based imaginaries and top-down approaches result in a disregard of local knowledge, rationalities, history of urban–rural relations and land ownership structures in the highlands. This could result in unintended outcomes of the scheme and in subordinating upstream communities to the city’s needs.