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Suspended infrastructure of megaprojects marks Latin American landscapes. However, little research has attended to the social-environmental and political-ecological processes of such infrastructure. Moreover, while social conflict often accompanies infrastructure development, our research emphasizes citizen contestation of the suspension and dynamic spatial unevenness as a claim on the state to complete the project. This study examines Colombia’s largest suspended irrigation infrastructure, the Tolima Triangle Irrigation District, through a combined political ecology and social-ecological systems framework. Results of integrated analysis show how the suspension drives differentiation in resource use and the social responses of individuals and communities to deepening disparities. In turn, public contestation of suspended infrastructure drives future prospects for the Tolima megaproject. Data is drawn from field research conducted for one year in 2018-2019. Mixed methods included semi-structured interviews, environmental assessment techniques, household surveys, and ethnographic participant observation. The research demonstrates that suspended infrastructure is neither a politically neutral, merely passive backdrop nor void of transformation but rather is comprised of contested processes rooted in the expanding social-environmental and political-ecological unevenness of development. Our findings contribute to the research on infrastructure suspension and development, and they are set within a broader body of scholarship on irrigation and political ecology of Latin American countries. 

Coastal communities are among the most rapidly changing, institutionally complex, and culturally diverse in the world, and they are among the most vulnerable to anthropogenic change. While being a driver of anthropogenic change, tourism can also provide socio-economic alternatives to declining natural resource-based livelihoods for coastal residents. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of small-scale cruise tourism on coastal community resiliency in Petersburg, Alaska. Exploring these impacts through resiliency theory’s lens of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, we employed ethnographic research methods that emphasize emic viewpoints to determine how residents see this form of tourism affecting the resiliency of valued community culture, institutions, and traditional livelihoods. Findings indicate that with purposeful engagement in niche cruise tourism involving boats with 250 passengers or less, and an active rejection of the large cruise ship industry, Petersburg exhibits increased adaptive capacity to promote the resilience of valued community institutions and heritage. This work draws needed recognition to the diversity of activities that fall under the label of cruise tourism, including the distinct implications of smaller-scale, niche cruise tourism for the resilience of coastal communities. It also highlights the need to capture emic perspectives to understand the politics of community resiliency.