Suchergebnisse

In this issue we feature five articles focused on experiences from Bolivia, Chile, France, and Spain, presenting research results, some originated in doctoral dissertations. Article 1 was authored by Christelle Pezon, from the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts (CNAM), at the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Action-oriented Sciences (LIRSA), Paris, France. The paper presents a synthetic historical overview of the changing institutional arrangements for the provision of water and sanitation services in France. The focus is on the expected far-reaching impacts of the 2015 NOTRe Law, which prompted a historical reform by transferring the responsibility over water services from 36,600 municipalities to 2,000 urban and rural communities. The author argues that the reform presents unprecedented challenges for rural areas and small towns but may also end the long-standing dichotomic choice between public and private management of water services facing local governments since the 19th century and induce the development of more complex arrangements dependent on political negotiations between local authorities, service providers, and users. Article 2 was written by Cristian Flores Fernandez from the Integrative Institute of Research on Transformations of Human-Environmental Systems (IRI THESys), and Department of Geography, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. The paper addresses the Chilean model of privatized urban water and sanitation services, and presents a critical assessment aimed at exposing the "myths" associated with this experience. The author provides a historical overview of the Chilean model of privatization and uses the 2019 sanitary crisis that affected over 140 thousand people in the city of Osorno as an empirical example of the failures and risks associated with the privatization of essential water and sanitation services. The Chilean case is also the object of Article 3, by Melissa Bayer, from the Institute of Geography, University of Münster, Germany. The author examines the situation ...

This is the second issue developed by members of the WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network's Thematic Area 10, Water and Violence. Research done by members of this TA focuses on how violence, whether systemic-structural, subjective, symbolic, or in any other of its many forms, has become the key mechanism through which the relations between human beings, and between humans and Nature, are de-structured and reconfigured, and new kinds of relations are created, producing new forms of territorial, social and political power and domination. TA10 aims to explore, examine, and contribute to a better understanding of the often-traumatic experiences emerging from these processes of social reordering, whose consequences of socio-ecological dispossession can be observed in the form of environmental deterioration and destruction of the material basis of life, and most notably in the case of water sources. Its objective is to also contribute towards the development of conceptual and methodological frameworks that place the emphasis on understanding and explaining how the use of violence as a mechanism has an impact in the evolving forms of water politics and management currently being implemented worldwide, particularly looking at the consequences of these processes, as well as at the potential alternatives to confront the rapid increase of inhuman and anti-democratic practices and discourses in the processes of water control and accumulation. Within this framework, the present issue, organized by Dr Karina Kloster, from the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM), includes four articles that are the result of ongoing research covering experiences of water-related violences and injustices identified in Brazil, Guatemala, and Mexico. Many of these events are the result of criminal activities carried out by governments' security forces, illegal groups, and other violent actors, often working jointly to impose the appropriation of land, water, and other resources belonging to rural, indigenous and peasant communities. The issue is an ...

This publication belongs to the WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network Working Papers Series (http://waterlat.org/publications/working-papers-series/), Vol. 6, No 3. This issue was developed by members of the WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network's Thematic Area 7 (TA7), Art, Communication, Culture, and Education. This is the second issue of the TA7 Series. It features three articles presenting research results from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Article 1, by Ximena I. Cabral, is a long piece developed in a format close to that of a photographic essay, as the author seeks to capture and analyse the "expressive resources" used by the actors during a cycle of social protests against inequality and injustice related to water Politics and management in the Province of Cordoba, Argentina, between 2005 and 2007. The article examines in detail the conflicts arising from the privatization of Cordoba's water and sanitation utility in 1997, when the government granted a 30-year long concession to a private consortium led by a multinational water company to deliver these services. After the large-scale crisis that affected the country in 2001, caused by a decade of highly destructive neoliberal policies implemented during the 1990s, Argentina's currency was heavily devaluated, prompting a renegotiation of the contract that in practice amounted to a dollarization of the tariff, which was strongly rejected by the population. This triggered a long cycle of popular protests that faced a very determined alliance between politicians and local and international businesses, which would eventually impose its conditions through different means, including repression. In Article 2, Zenaida Luisa Lauda-Rodríguez examines a successful case of "precautionary" social struggle against a mining project in the State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. The local community, in alliance with other actors, succeeded in preventing the implementation of the mining project through a campaign based on a demand to apply the "precautionary principle", which passed the burden of ...

This edited book presents eleven chapters addressing the politics of water in Latin America. It brings together contributions from members of the WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network (www.waterlat.org) from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. In addition to academics, the contributors also include members of public sector and civil society organizations engaged in debates and activities connected with the democratisation of water politics. The title of the book reflects a concern with the historical processes of appropriation, control, distribution, etc., of water and water-based services, which can be examined as processes of water territorialization, which includes the territorialization of the production of knowledge about water. The chapters cover a range of empirical examples, from the impacts of large-scale water infrastructures and extractivist activities (mining, agribusinesses), the (mis)management of water-related risks and disasters, the complex and conflictive character of water management in metropolitan areas, the social and political struggles featuring social movements and other actors confronting powerful public and private interests in their quest to democratise water politics and management, among other issues.