Suchergebnisse

Focusing on how to provide clean water for all - one of the key Millennium Development Goals, this book integrates technical and social perspectives. A broad, international range of case studies are provided, from developed, middle income and developing countries, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas

Este texto, inédito en español, se basa en la tesis doctoral del autor defendida en 1998: Castro, Water, Power and Citizenship. Contemporary Social Struggles in the Valley of Mexico: a long-term perspective. Una versión sucinta de la tesis en inglés fue publicada como: Castro, Water, Power, and Citizenship. Social Struggle in the Basin of Mexico ; 69 p. ; El trabajo adopta un enfoque socio-histórico de largo plazo para examinar algunos aspectos clave de las relaciones entre los procesos de control social del agua y formación de poder estatal, tomando como ejemplo el caso de México. A partir de algunas de las sugerencias conceptuales del sociólogo alemán Norbert Elias, en particular la noción de ―proceso de monopolización‖, el texto explora el carácter sui generis de las formas de control social del agua, que, a diferencia del caso de la tenencia de la tierra, han tendido hacia la concentración del poder formal sobre este bien común en instituciones de carácter público. El trabajo también discute la aplicación del concepto de ―régimen socio-ecológico‖, en este caso aplicado a los ―regímenes hidráulicos‖, o formas de control del agua en mayor o menor medida institucionalizadas, que pueden identificarse en el caso mexicano, en perspectiva histórica. Además de los aportes de Norbert Elias, el trabajo dialoga con autores ya clásicos en la literatura sobre aspectos sociales, legales y políticos del agua, la historia ambiental y económica, la antropología, y la rica tradición de trabajos sobre historia de la tecnología del agua, con énfasis en el caso mexicano. Este texto forma parte de una investigación que examinó la formación de derechos de ciudadanía, parte constitutiva del proceso de formación estatal, observando las interrelaciones entre la sociogénesis del poder estatal y el desarrollo de los derechos ciudadanos en México. Este tema es de alta relevancia, ya que el control del agua y los debates en torno al estatus del agua (¿es el agua un bien común? ¿un bien público? ¿una mercancía? ¿debe existir un derecho al ...

This book addresses different aspects of the topic of water politics in Latin America published in Portuguese and Spanish, from the perspective of a sociology-grounded political ecology.

Final Report, Project "Barriers and Conditions for the Involvement of Private Capital and Enterprise in Water Supply and Sanitation in Latin America and Africa: Seeking Economic, Social, and Environmental Sustainability (PRINWASS)" (www.prinwass.org). Published as: WATERLAT-GOBACIT Working Papers, Vol. 3, No 3, 2014. http://waterlat.org/publications/working-papers-series/

Final Report from the UE funded Project DESAFIO (Democratisation of Water and Sanitation Governance by Means of Socio-Technical Innovation), 2013-2015. www.desafioglobal.org. Published as WATERLAT-GOBACIT Working Papers, Vol. 2, No 16 (http://waterlat.org/WPapers/WPSPIDES216.pdf). Contains three articles: Article 1. Socio-technical solutions for the provision of safe water and sanitation services in vulnerable communities: a synthesis Article 2. National, regional and EU policy guidelines for the provision of innovative WSS Article 3. Recommendations for Future Research

Report from the UE funded Project DESAFIO (Democratisation of Water and Sanitation Governance by Means of Socio-Technical Innovation), 2013-2015. www.desafioglobal.org. Published as WATERLAT-GOBACIT Working Papers, Vol. 2, No 14 (http://waterlat.org/WPapers/WPSPIDES214.pdf). Contains: Article 1 Governance and active citizenship: linkages between economic and social development, and access to essential water and sanitation services Article 2 DESAFIO's Theoretical and Methodological Framework

Castro, J. E. (2015), "Cross Comparative Analysis of Country Practices within the Latin American context", WATERLAT-GOBACIT Working Papers, DESAFIO Project Series SPIDES, Vol. 2, No 15, pp. 90-141.

This paper examines key aspects of the policies promoting the expansion of private multinational monopolies as the main tool to solve the problems affecting water and sanitation services in less developed countries. It is based on recent findings from research carried out on the impact of these policies in nine countries of Africa, Europe, and Latin America. The article argues that the main claims put forward to justify these policies, that private sector participation provides the financial resources needed to improve the situation in developing countries and that these policies contribute to reduce social inequality in these countries, are not supported by the empirical evidence. The findings suggest that the international community cannot rely on private sector participation for achieving the development goals for water and sanitation, particularly in the poorer countries. The paper concludes that there is a need to learn from the past, when developed countries managed to achieve the universalization of essential services thanks to the convergence of a wide range of social and political forces, including free-market liberals, who accepted that essential services cannot be organized purely on market principles. It suggests that achieving similar success in LDCs will also require the amalgamation of a similarly broad and universalistic ensemble of social forces.

It is widely ackowledged that the world water crisis is mainly a crisis of governance. However, there is no shared understanding of what "governance" means, how it works, who are its actors. The prevailing conceptions of governance in mainstream water policy documents tend to be instrumental and idealistic. Perhaps the most important consequence of instrumental and idealistic understandings of governance is the rhetorical depoliticization of what is, paradoxically, a political process. The main mechanism of this "depoliticization" of governance" is the exclusion of the ends and values informing water policy from the debate. Instrumental and idealistic understandings of governance constitute a major obstacle for the scientific understanding of the process and for achieving success in policy interventions directed at tackling the water crisis. The paper argues for the development of a balance between the techno-scientific, socio-economic, political, and cultural aspects of water management activities, which may help in superseding the artificial separation of water research and practice in disciplinary and corporatist feuds.