Globalized Water

In environmental economics’ literature, water resources are marked by the tension between commodification—extension of the market sphere to water—and a more collective management process based on the notion of common patrimony. Reconciling these two logics—market and patrimonial—is nonetheless difficult to perform from a theoretical perspective. Main lessons from these two trends highlight the need to go beyond the neoclassical economic approach, which alone proves to be insufficient for understanding the patrimonialization processes. These processes refer to social constructions aimed at identifying material or immaterial objects, inherited from the past, which have to be protected, managed, and transmitted to future generations. Patrimonial management and patrimonial economics propose a new analytical framework for environmental analysis. French water policy, which has been progressively rooted in the so-called patrimonial approach, provides a case study for this new framework.

The 2000 Water Framework Directive (WFD) creates a legal framework for the protection and restoration of clean waters across the European Union (EU) and sets ambitious objectives for all EU member states to achieve good water status by 2015. Putting the WFD into practice, however, raises a number of questions about the organizational and territorial processes governing the management of water in Europe, particularly in France. The territorialization process oscillates between the need to take into account local specificities and the requirement to respect a national and European framework. Attempts to find a balance between these two poles may result in the emergence of management principles that run counter to the kind of global, integrated management approach that the WFD is supposed to introduce. Although the ambitious objectives concerning the “good status” of water are defined at a European level, they are almost exclusively implemented by local authorities at the local level. Local authorities receive political support but are, financially speaking, highly fragmented and extremely vulnerable due to the obligatory costs associated with their areas of competence. Ultimately, the implementation of this environmental policy propels the local and regional actors and scales onto the field of water governance.

Two French groups dominate the worldwide water and wastewater market: Veolia Environnement and Suez Environnement. The domination by these groups, the so-called majors, stems from the specific history of the development of this sector in France, the implementation of offensive strategies of horizontal, vertical, and environmental integration, and the development of progressive internationalization. The companies became multi-service groups and form an oligopoly that structures the water market in France. However, the growing tendency of people to view water issues as an essential good and public service brings increasing demands for public control and regulation that can reduce the majors’ room to maneuver and force difficult strategic redeployments.

Technology and innovation play an essential role in the dynamic of the water sector and over time constitute an advantage for the development of firms. This point, rarely underlined in the literature, represents a fundamental problem in the regulation of public-private partnerships (PPPs) worldwide. The concept of technological rent—the income procured by the competitive advantage of owning a unique technological resource—can be used to explain how, in France, technology has become a key variable in wastewater treatment PPPs. The current wastewater technological approach, guided by the logic of treating water pollution, is called into question under integrated water management that is focused on resource conservation. Integrated water management has scientific and organizational implications, thus offering a historical chance for public authorities to establish a new kind of public-private relationship.

Unlike energy, telecommunications, railways, and other national public utilities, local public utilities like water rarely have been the object of any explicit European liberalization policy. This status quo could evolve, however, under the influence of the European Commission (EC). Since 2004, the EC’s discussions on public-private partnerships have called into question the French principle of intuitu personae, in which the mayor—the head of a municipality—is free to choose any operator in the franchise bidding procedure (the so-called delegation procedure). France differs from other European countries in this respect. The water sector in France is a hybrid model; the operation of utilities can be either private or public, while at the same time the delegation procedure is based on trust relationships. In the context of liberalization, future European regulations could lead to the emergence of new private operators or public firms, emancipated from municipal supervision. However, increasing competition could also lead to the abandonment of some less profitable market segments, notably in rural areas. There is a need for regulation regarding fair competition and the operational performance of water services. Due to the international market share of French private operators, the emergence of new actors in France and the evolution of bidding procedures in Europe could impact the water market in other parts of the world.

The term “French model,” which was often used in the 1990s when the largest French private operators succeeded in obtaining important international contracts in the water sector, was gradually replaced during the 2000s by “public-private partnership” (PPP). PPPs are contractual agreements between a national, regional, or local public agency and one or more private companies for the delivery of a service or the construction of infrastructure. In fact, it would be more accurate to speak of the emergence of a “global model” of public services management, which has been developed particularly in the water sector and used by the largest French water operators worldwide, rather than the internationalization of a given French model.

In the 1990s Argentina was the testing ground for the privatization of water and sanitation services by international consortia. Touted as the solution to economic woes and poor service, three major concession contracts, Aguas Argentinas S.A., in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region—the largest concession in the world—and Aguas del Aconquija in Tucumán and Azurix in the province of Buenos Aires together became a global reference model both for management and financing. Yet all three were terminated prematurely, with companies and the government each blaming the other. A detailed analysis of external and internal factors delves into the complex dynamics at work in each of the privatizations to explain what led to the failure of the model.

The canonical model of networked universal service is considered to have resolved, in different historical and regional contexts, the issue of social and territorial equality of access to an essential commodity. In Lebanese towns and towns of the former East Germany, this all-networked ideal has fractured due to war and demographic and economic changes in shrinking cities, respectively. These urban examples of water in the “post-network era” highlight contemporary urban water paradoxes and the emergence of a new technical paradigm, the all-flexible model.

France established river contracts in 1981 to control pollution and flooding, manage hydraulic structures, and raise stakeholder awareness. Greater decentralization in the country, followed by European Union (EU) water obligations, has encouraged contractual arrangements of this kind. River contracts include 5-year study and works programs that allow towns, industrial companies, and farmers to pool their resources and set common objectives at the watershed scale. The state subsidizes some of the projects, thereby encouraging local players to commit themselves more to managing water resources. The results, however, fall short of the environmental objectives initially targeted by public authorities, suggesting that river contracts never replace fines and other coercive instruments.

The history and activities of the traditional nineteenth century landowner associations, called authorized union associations (assocations syndicales autorisées, or ASAs) provide a dynamic example of local water governance in the French Mediterranean region of Languedoc-Roussillon. These associations provide fertile ground for testing the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), which calls for decisions to be made “at a level as close as possible to the place in which water is used.” ASAs own their infrastructure, hold collective water rights, and are responsible for maintaining gravity-based irrigation systems. Still largely made up of farmers concerned with water for agriculture, the ASAs gradually are expanding to provide services to the community to meet the demands of population growth and urban development. This multi-functionality gives the associations a role as legitimate stakeholders in integrated water management at the watershed level.

With rising global awareness of the need for sound governance of water resources, the issue of dams has resurfaced with fresh vitality, now associated with the idea of clean, environmentally friendly energy. Long criticized for their irreversible impact on landscapes and communities, big dams now appear to be enjoying fresh consideration, at least when their effects on the planet are compared with nuclear power stations and other potentially more dangerous and polluting methods of energy production. The case of the Alqueva Dam in southeast Portugal lies in a particularly interesting theoretical interval: it simultaneously is an heir to the civilizing traditions of state development through access to water, a forerunner of the application of measures of public consultation and participation of the mid-1990s, and one of the most modern constructions for the storage and management of water in the early twenty-first century. However, some 8 years after its inauguration, the economic and social benefits of this extremely costly superstructure are far from convincing.

Semiarid and drought-prone Spain has managed to meet ever-increasing water demands for more than 50 years through the construction of publicly funded hydraulic infrastructure. Interbasin water transfers are the most expensive and complex supply-side tool used. They are also the most controversial, often associated with such unintended consequences as deteriorating freshwater ecosystems, disappearing recreational opportunities provided by aquatic ecosystems, and the loss of development opportunities for downstream communities. This situation has become increasingly unstable over the past decade due to the scarcity of new supply augmentation alternatives, political changes involving European Union (EU) environmental legislation, new political power in upstream regions, and the appearance of new stakeholders at the decision-making table. As a result, competing demands over available resources and interregional conflicts are delaying water planning efforts, signaling the end of an era and demanding a shift from a competitive “using water” toward a “sharing water” risk and trade-off governance approach.

The recently planned reforms in the city of Mumbai are emblematic of the ongoing changes in the water supply sector in urban India. Though these changes introduce commercial principles along with social engineering interventions to provide round-the-clock water, the water sector is mostly seen as a sector in need of an institutional fix. Proposals to reform Mumbai’s water supply typically support technological and financial mechanisms to find solutions to social and spatial equity issues. However, in situations where the service is provided via non-institutionalized arrangements, often mediated by the political arena, providing water becomes an object of political debate. In Mumbai, a city rife with political competition between parties with varying political ideologies, this situation leads to a contentious debate on the right to the city of many urban dwellers deprived of urban services. As such, Mumbai highlights the embedded nature of the question of water reform, urban politics, and rights.

Water reflects inequality and segregation in Latin American cities, with access to drinking water varying in terms of quantity and quality according to social status. Many reforms have been introduced to reduce the number of people with no access to drinking water and sanitation systems, but the results vary widely from one country to another and have generated disciplinary and institutional controversies. Water management not only depends on the technical, financial, and political choices of managers, but also, and more fundamentally, on global social choices made by a variety of actors linked to each other by power relations. This literature review, through a social geography lens, shows how the equitable distribution of water among all members of society is at the heart of the water issue.

In January 2007, the Bolivian government transformed the consortium Aguas del Illimani, which was responsible for the La Paz-El Alto water services concession, into a public and social enterprise company with the aim of reducing inequalities plaguing unequipped areas. This case study helps illuminate the ruptures and continuities that exist in the organization of the current water supply network. The urban governance of the new municipal company faces both a process of metropolitization, which may lead to conflicts between municipalities, and the antagonistic logics between the municipal utility provider and the surrounding rural communities, which are traversed by the network as it channels water to urban areas. Integrating indigenous populations into public policies is characterized by logics of conflict rather than a genuine attempt to accommodate their “right to water,” even though that right is promulgated by the Bolivian government.

Participatory water resources management and planning have become a main feature of water governance processes. A review of the evolution of decision support systems for water resources planning and management through today demonstrates that stakeholder participation through science-fed collaborative planning processes is an essential factor for integrative science to be perceived as credible, relevant, transparent, and thus acceptable in the public eye to inform and guide decision making. Two case studies from the American Southwest—the Rio Grande in New Mexico and the San Pedro in Arizona—illustrate how a strong scientific contribution that includes an integrated modeling approach can form the foundation for participatory planning processes and the collaborative development of decision support tools. Based on conflict resolution concepts, this approach will not only lead to agreed-upon management solutions, but also to a well informed and educated stakeholder community in the basin, ensuring a sustainable and resilient water governance system.

Over the last decade the concept of “water security” has emerged from the policy literature linked to international security and hydropolitics, rapidly becoming discursively hegemonic. Indeed, in some quarters it seems even to be supplanting the hegemonic position hitherto occupied by the concept of “sustainable water.” Analytical reviews of the literature suggest that water security emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first century to articulate both long-standing concerns with the geopolitical implications of water’s variable geography, emergent concerns with the global environmental crisis, and the realization that water is implicated in many of life’s most basic requirements. Yet the use of the term “security,” rather than some alternative such as “supply,” “resources,” or “balance,” implies a paradigmatic shift in thinking, in some quarters at least, about how adequate water supply is to be realized and maintained. The emergence of water security as a hegemonic paradigm bears all the hallmarks of a new form of environmental governmentality. For the water security concept to help achieve maximum benefit for all citizens of the world, including the non-human ones, it must be seen to be linked to new forms of civil organization and democratic action and not merely to the machinations of state or parastatal organizations.