Despite high temperatures and rainfall variability, a constant supply of water from the Andes highlands and adaptive and strategic schemes of long-term traditional knowledge, have allowed Atacameño (Lickanantai) people to settle in the Salar de Atacama for thousands of years. Nevertheless, in the last decades, some relevant biophysical and social changes have been reshaping the particular socio-ecological setting where these water societies have built their identity. From a political ecological perspective, understanding changing conditions from both global and local social constructions of the natural world becomes particularly relevant to analyse current processes of adaptation in a region where encounters between different modalities of knowledge systems and practices are occurring. In this sense, I argue that local representations around climate variability are far more complex than ‘the global change discourse' claims because they are interwoven with the social-cultural conditions where nature is constructed. At the same time, I suggest that culturally-acquired livelihood strategies applied to adapt to an unpredictable and variable environment such as that of the Atacama Desert remain crucial, not only for the continuity of Lickanantai cohesion and identity but also for the sustainability of the socioecological system on which they depend.