Economic Experiments on Water Governance: SURCO Completes Fieldwork with Wayuu Communities in La Guajira

The SURCO project has recently completed an important phase of fieldwork in La Guajira, Colombia, where researchers conducted a series of economic experiments with Wayuu communities to better understand decision-making around water allocation under conditions of scarcity.

Water scarcity remains one of the most pressing challenges facing the region, making La Guajira a particularly important context for studying how communities cooperate, negotiate, and make collective decisions regarding limited natural resources. Through behavioural economic experiments, the research team explored how participants vote on different mechanisms for distributing water and how cooperation emerges when resources are scarce.

The fieldwork forms part of SURCO's broader research agenda on sustainability, cooperation, and natural resource governance. By combining behavioural economics with real-world sustainability challenges, the project seeks to generate new insights into how communities can collectively manage common resources in the face of climate change and increasing environmental pressures.

The research was carried out through a collaboration involving Juliane Koch, César Mantilla Ribero, and Sebastián Suárez Lee. A key component of the fieldwork was the close collaboration with local partners and students whose knowledge of the region and engagement with participating communities were instrumental throughout the research process. This included Juan Quintero, Nelson Rojas, Fabrizio Gomez, and Wilcar Tren from Universidad de La Guajira, as well as Francisca Pushaina and Adalci Uriana from the Licenciatura en Pedagogía de la Madre Tierra at Universidad de Antioquia.

At SURCO, we believe that understanding sustainability challenges requires working directly with the communities most affected by them. The fieldwork in La Guajira represents an important step toward developing a deeper understanding of cooperation, resource governance, and climate adaptation in contexts of environmental scarcity.

We look forward to sharing the results of this research in the coming months.