Reparación simbólica: tensiones entre el paradigma de los derechos humanos y

While there is reasonable agreement on the dimensions of the drinking water problem, authors are sharply divided on its nature and causes, the arguments coalescing around two paradigmatic positions. The hegemonic neoliberal view, articulated most

persistently by international institutions and authors associated with them, is that treating water as a ‘free’ public good is at the heart of the current problems. Water, being a critical biological need and increasingly scarce resource, has significant economic value. Though geographical variations in water availability and increasing competition over available resources lead to scarcity in some locations, authors in this discourse contend that the supply-demand gaps are equally the result of inadequate incentives for efficient conservation and use. The problem is therefore perceived to be rooted in both natural and institutional circumstances, with the persistence of state- centered approaches, policies and institutional frameworks of the erstwhile ‘surplus’ era being the central issue. In traditional models, it is argued, water was treated as a ‘free’ public good, the state was perceived to be responsible for provision and

centralized, bureaucratic allocation and management systems were developed. Such an approach has not only failed in creating universal coverage, but state systems have accumulated huge losses and lack resources to develop further supplies and

distribution systems: a problem that also stems from the absence of appropriate pricing

least, the dissipation of or sheer inadequacy of central resources as they are transferred through administrative layers. Decentralized governance that enables involvement of local citizens in decision- making is expected to counter these deficiencies and therefore yield more effective outcomes. See Saleth and Dinar (1999) and Bakker 2003 for a detailed exposition of the issues, and the counter- constructions.

95 of water and recovery of costs from users.124

Articulators of this neoliberal discourse prescribe decentralizing water provision to private entities to enable allocation though market transactions, with a system of tradable water rights and appropriate charges for water use – in essence, treating water as a priced, private commodity instead of a free public good. State responsibilities should be limited to regulation and monitoring, infrastructure development and management must be shifted to the private sector (alone or in partnership

arrangements), decision-making professionalized and decentralized to the operating agencies, and stakeholders included in corporate governance processes. Also, in recognition of the interconnected nature of water resources within river basins,

‘integrated water resource management’ (IWRM) approaches must be used to map and manage flows and uses within watersheds and river basins.

The revised neoliberal version of this is communitarian, advocating participation of local governments, private enterprises, users and local civil society organizations in water management systems. Multi-stakeholder partnerships are the privileged governance model, and seen as key to effective provision and sustainable use. The involvement of women is particularly emphasized, as they are in almost all locations responsible for collection and use of domestic water, and therefore have the most detailed understanding of local sources and use patterns. Since they most acutely experience the hardships of inadequate, unreliable and inconvenient access, they are also most likely to look after sources and installed supply systems, and ensure their sustainability.125 The involvement of community groups, or marginalized sections

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Among others, Saleth and Dinar (1998, 1999, 2000), Pitman (2002), ADB (1999), FAO (1996), IUCN (2000), WWC (2003), Rosegrant and Biswanger (1994), Briscoe (1997) and Cosgrove and Rijsberman (2000); but see also Bakker (2000).

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such as women, is however, fully instrumental, for there is little mention of transferring ownership or property rights to local populations. Ostrom (2000:34) points out that this ill-guided strategy of devolution to user groups lacks theoretical and empirical foundation.

It is one thing to self-organize to create your own property and slowly develop the rules of association that enable a group to benefit from the long-term management of the resource. It is quite something else to have a government tell you that now you have to manage something that the government can no longer handle itself. Especially after you have been told that it is the government’s responsibility to do this for you”(Ostrom 2000:34).

In contrast, the more progressive communitarian discourse, articulated by political ecologists and activists, rejects the singular, utilitarian approach to water evident in neoliberal formulations, and questions the tenability of viewing water primarily as an economic good.126 For authors in this discourse, its multifaceted existence and importance – ecological, social, political, economic and cultural – and the diverse values it carries in addition to use-values, including symbolic, aesthetic, religious and ethical, invalidates a reductionist conception of water as a primarily economic

resource. The very ethicality of the neoliberal, singular conceptualization is questioned by many analysts, as it devalues and/or elides other understandings of water that are central to human existence in many cultures and the construction of different social- cultural identities. In this opposing discourse, water is more than a basic need; it is a common global heritage to which all life – human, plant, animal – has a natural right not only to quantities and kinds that are required biologically or economically, but more pervasively, to water in all its various forms, natural and social. Its

commoditization is therefore strongly opposed, as it privileges economic use, buying

126

For example, Petrella (2001); Bakker (2003); Barlow and Clarke (2002); Shiva (2002); also illustrated in the cases contained in Donahue and Johnston (1998).

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power and ‘technical’ knowledge, and supports ownership and control by those with financial/economic power and techno-managerial expertise. Such control is perceived to reproduce and aggravate social, economic and political disparities and the

ecological and environmental devastations that are emblematic of industrialized production. Some (Jairath 2003; Regmi 2003) even object to the very language and concepts used in the dominant formulations, which they observe to be perpetuating the problem of unavailability and distributional inequities.

Authors in this contesting discourse explain the problem of scarcity and lack of access differently. First, scarcity is demonstrated to be a function of socio-economic position, incident more on the poor and marginalized, rather than a natural phenomenon.

Second, the roots of the ‘water crisis’ faced by these groups are not seen as primarily natural, material and hydrological, but to lie in the large-scale appropriation of water by the state, its primary allocation to industrialized production, and the extensive environmental alteration in the course of modernization127. Scarcity is therefore seen to be socio-historically and discursively constructed within modern social and political relations of production, with the state as primary interlocutor of elite interests. The erosion of customary community control over local resources and lack of ‘voice’ of the socially and politically marginalized in modern governance processes is perceived to be a major part of the problem (Mehta 2001, 2003, 2007; Petrella 2001, Bakker 2003).

Progressive communitarians also suggest decentralization to communities, premised on a locally-differentiated, ecologically situated approach that values universal rights,

127

These critics also question the state-centered paradigm of water management, observing it to be equally implicated in the capitalist modernization processes that have degraded the environment.

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collective ownership and sustainable use128. They propose that resource relationships be reordered for decentralized management based on local knowledge and community needs and practices, with fully participatory and democratic decision-making

processes and multi-level networking across watersheds. Authors within this discourse are ambivalent on the role of the state, though some see it as the site for political contestation and progressive change because of its differentiated nature. For others, the local state is as susceptible to capture by local elites, and only governance by universal membership-based user associations can work. Further democratization through measures that enable greater voice and participation by currently marginalized groups are central to this position. Despite these differences, the suggestion in essence is to decentralize political authority, decision-making and control over water to local communities, for management by those directly dependant on local sources and ecologies would lead to conservation and stewardship. This would also resolve the issue of scarcity, which they argue is a product of over-exploitation of water in capitalist modes of production.

Both the dominant and the opposing formulations rest on undeniable realities – the inability of state-run systems to provide universal access; inefficiencies, waste and high costs of such arrangements; large financial losses accumulated by state-run systems of water provision; and lack of resources to expand coverage or

maintain/upgrade existing systems. On the other hand, it is equally evident that it is the poor and marginalized in the global south that constitute an overwhelming proportion of those lacking adequate and safe water, and who are generally not

128

For example, Petrella (2001) and Shiva (2002), but see also Bakker (2003). There is little advocacy for a state-centered paradigm among these authors – the state is seen as the interlocutor of elite and capital interests and equally implicated in the historical construction of scarcity and ecological degradation. Mostly, attitudes to public/state management are rather ambivalent, though individual positions vary.

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connected to public systems (WHO-UNICEF 2004; Gleick 1993, 1998). Proposals for reform fully resonate with those in the larger discourses on decentralizing governance. Though an extensive literature critically re-examines the propositions noted above, to extend, refine or suggest suitable operationalization129, the relative merit of different kinds of institutional re-arrangements in specific locations has not been considered. Comparative investigation of the performance of different kinds of reform

arrangements for domestic water provision therefore provides an excellent lens to investigate answers to the question of reform efficacy.

Despite the uncertain success of any kind of decentralization, as in other sectors, reforms spanning the gamut of normative institutional propositions have been instituted in many countries, including divestment of public utilities, privatization to national or multinational corporations, devolution to communities, user-groups and/or local governments, and delegation to NGOs or local enterprises. I discuss the

empirical literature on these experiences below, to develop a picture of the successes and failures, and the reasons for or conditions under which these emerged.

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Without challenging the theoretical and conceptual framework, Savenije (2001) discusses why water cannot easily be treated as an economic good and Perry et al (1997) raise the difficulty of relegating its allocation to competitive market pricing, in the face of its many roles such as basic human and

environmental need, merit good, social and economic resource. Other characteristics such as its fugitive nature, indivisibility, bulkiness, non-substitutability and complex flow patterns cause externalities and high transaction costs that lead to market failures (see Bauer 1997). Arguing the difficulty of

establishing well-functioning markets in particular geographical contexts with pre-existing communal arrangements, Trawick (2003) suggests a context-specific composite system incorporating elements of both. Critiquing the effectiveness of urban privatized water supply, Hukka and Katko (2003) argue for partnership arrangements where core operations are retained in the public sector. Identifying problems of equity in reformed arrangements, van Koppen (1998) suggests institutional design changes in devolving water allocation to irrigators, and Meinzen-Dick (1997) and Zwarteveen (1997) argue for extending water rights to women.

100 1.2. EXPERIENCE OF WATER REFORMS

The nature of water – its flow characteristics, bulky properties and fugitive nature – makes its provision the ideal “natural monopoly” of economic texts. The required infrastructure is costly and specialized, and duplication by potential competitors would be prohibitive. Thus one cannot count on competition of the usual sort to maintain reasonable prices and levels of service. Despite this, in Europe, Kallis and de Groot (2003) report that

“[there has been]…a general trend towards State retreat from the regulation and provision of water, the liberalization and privatization of water services and, more generally, increased emphasis upon market-assigned values (e.g. prices or cost-benefit evaluations) as opposed to political activity in the allocation and management of water and its services…….Economic efficiency is prioritized in private or public utilities and the pricing mechanism is freed from public control, increasingly aiming to recover the full—capital and operational—cost of the service. An increasingly large part of the activities in the urban hydrocycle is subcontracted or financed by private enterprise (e.g. hydraulic infrastructure in Spain). Water utilities are privatized (London), are in the process of being privatized (Athens), or increasingly use market principles in their operation as publicly owned organizations (Amsterdam). There are also plans for the introduction of water-trading markets (Spain and England). (Kallis and de Groot 2003:224-225)

Marketization, particularly through privatization, has also been undertaken across Latin America, in Chile (Bauer 1997), Bolivia (Finnegan 2002, Assies 2003), Columbia, Costa Rica and El Salvador (Haglund and Gomez 2006), Peru (Trawick 2003) and in Guinea in Africa (Clarke et al 2002). Privatization of water services has also been widely applied in the US (see Bel and Warner 2008), and is being initiated in India (Sharma 2005, Urs and Whittell 2009)

Devolution or delegation of responsibility for water supply and management has also been undertaken in countries across Africa – in Honduras (Pierce-Oroz 2003), South

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Africa (Wester et al 2003, Wijesekara and Sansom 2003), Malawi (Ferguson and Miulwafe 2004). In Latin America, though privatization is more extensive, devolution has been initiated in some countries, for example in Mexico (Tortajada 2006, Wester et al 2003) and Brazil (Tortajada 2006). Water provision has also been devolved to local governments in India.

The outcomes of privatization of water provision have been almost uniformly discouraging, either in terms of conservation, extending coverage or reducing costs. This is not surprising, for as Kallis and de Groot point out, “given the supremacy of marketization, ‘rational’ in practice translates to ‘cost-beneficial’, and conservation is pursued as far as it produces benefit.” (Kallis and de Groot 2003). Kallis and

Coscossis (2001) report increased water use in Athens and Barcelona despite a policy to control demand, for there is an inbuilt incentive for the water utility to expand the system.130 Castro et al. (2003) and Bakker (2000), analyzing the cases of privatization in London and Yorkshire respectively, find that it is not an instrument to deal with water scarcity, but a political ideological project producing scarcity, as is been contended by those who oppose neoliberal prescriptions. They also show that under the new regulatory regime of London’s privatized water suppliers, both environmental standards and/or social fairness in terms of the affordability of water service for the poor have been sacrificed in the pursuance of profits.

The issues of redistribution, the rising cost of water and externalities of environmental policies such as price-based demand management are major ones that have plagued

130

For, as the authors note, water use is an outcome of the way water supply is managed and the incentives available to the private provider. The cost-benefit calculus of reducing wastage is affected by the regulatory regime, subsidies and the profit-focus of the operator. Central to this process is the fact that the market is not a ‘friction-free’ ideal but an institution that is modulated by prevalent regimes of rights and duties, which allows Athens to externalize the cost of increasing water use to the

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privatization, and generated extensive social conflicts in various countries and cities.131 Howe (2000) reports that in Chile, the agricultural sector and cities had to pay exorbitant prices for added water supplies, when the sudden privatization of water resources led to greater monopolization of water supply by the national hydroelectric generating companies. He also reports that in the UK, there has been 100 percent to 200 percent increase in water charges, and the number of service shutoffs has increased dramatically, raising great concern. Owners and shareholders, however, have been able to appropriate profits: company directors’ salaries are much higher than in other utilities, as are their returns from the large numbers of company shares they hold.

Very few instances of success surface in the literature on privatization, but Clarke et al (2002) show that in Guinea, private sector participation benefited all constituents, in spite of a difficult institutional environment. Bauer (1997) finds that in Chile, the privatization of water rights reduced state administration, but attempts to stimulate a free market in water rights have had mixed and uneven results, indicating that setting up water markets is harder and more complicated than it may seem. While such reform has had little positive impact except for private companies, transferring governance models from industrialized to developing countries is even more problematic, as Haglund and Gomez (2006) show in their study of Costa Rica, Columbia and El

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In the city of Barcelona, in the so-called water tax revolt, some 80,000 families in the poorer neighbourhoods of the city refused to pay the part of their increased water charges corresponding to a tax for wastewater treatment. The privatization of water supply in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to the multinational Bechtel elicited massive protests and riots till the arrangement was reversed (Finnegan 2002, Assies 2003). The World Bank promotion of privatization in Peru as a solution to the problems commonly afflicting irrigation and water management has led to strong protest among peasant farmers throughout the Andes (Trawick 2003). Howe (2000) reports that in the UK, there has been strong public discontent with the private companies. Fears of enormous tariff increases resulting from privatization of the Delhi water supply, and reduced water unavailability for the poor and marginalized has generated concern and protest in India (Sharma 2005, Urs and Whittel 2009). Bennett (1995, 1998) reports protests in Mexico.

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Salvador. There they find that success depends on “pre-existing state structures and social relations in determinate ways” (abstract). Even within the same country, Bakker (2001) points out that the economies of scale required to attract private sector

investment only occurs in urban areas, where the vast majority of private sector

participation contracts in water and sewerage currently operate, and replicating similar approaches in rural areas involves different technical and institutional challenges. Bakker (2003a) also points out that in both rural and urban areas, privatization redraws the hydro-social landscape.

Devolution of water provision and management to communities and groups, in line to neoliberal prescriptions, does not seem to have delivered better results, though the issues are different. In Honduras Pierce-Oroz (2003) compares the performance of water supply systems that were transferred to municipalities with others that are still centralized. He finds that extent of coverage and rationing was the same, but water treatment was not even across the devolved cases in contrast to the centralized

systems. There was also no metering of production, but tariff collections stood at 90% on average. Tariffs were also as regressive as before devolution, and where subsidies existed, they benefited the high-income households most. In South Africa, where water provision has been devolved to local governments and contracting to private or community-based organizatons has been permitted, the experience appears to be equally mixed (Wijesekara and Sansom, 2003). Local governments have little

capacity, slim resources and inadequate authority, therefore provision suffers on many counts.

Sustainability of installed systems has not improved either. For example, in the Malawi rural piped scheme program studied by Kleeimer (2000), which exemplified

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the participatory approach to rural drinking water supply, only the smallest and newest schemes are performing well, but about half the schemes perform poorly, and a third of these are functioning abysmally. Fergusson and Mulwafe (2004) also point out that users were aware that the call for construction and maintenance of infrastructure and other ownership responsibilities to be handed over to villages, user groups,