Background: De-privatization of water, the great promise to constituents in Chile’s new constitution

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Rosalba Quiróz, a descendant of a family of small cattle ranchers in Petorca, a rural town in central Chile, lives in her small house on the banks of a dry riverbed. When she turns on the faucet, hardly any water comes out, and counting the time she spends in the shower became an imperative several years ago.

This scenario is increasingly frequent in the country, where thousands of homes do not have running water, allegedly due to the privatization of the resource, an issue that has emerged with the constituent elections of May 15 and 16, in which hundreds of candidates seek to “free water from private hands and guarantee it as a human right”.

“The big farmers take the little water that is left, they take everything from us, but we don’t want to leave the countryside because it is our life,” lamented the woman, who receives 50 liters of water a day in a tanker truck, an amount that has made her forgo growing crops or raising animals.

Her daughter, Pascuala, 13, has the sweet face of a child but has become an established environmental leader like the rest of the villagers. She says she has been living the paradox of “a fruit receiving more water than a human being” since she was born.

Agribusiness, which is largely managed by family consortiums of business people or politicians, has meant that more than 3,200 houses in this municipality have no water, Carolina Vilches, candidate for constituent and coordinator of the Office of Water and Environmental Affairs of Petorca, explained to Efe.

“It cannot be that a large producer can dig wells and keep everything. They are exterminating the peasant heritage, it is inhumane,” she claimed.

This is how this place, through which once flowed a mighty river, has become “a land of contrasts”: in the midst of a desolate landscape, typical of the desert, lush avocado forests are erected, cultivated with the water that the community’s own inhabitants do not have.

“RELEASE THE WATER”

Of the 1,373 total postulants to the constituent elections, 539 endorsed the “Release the Water” initiative, promoted by Greenpeace Chile, by which they commit to reviewing the model of ownership of this resource in the new Constitution, a clamor that became popular during the social crisis that hit the country in 2019.

Chile is one of the countries with the highest level of water privatization in the world: it is estimated that 80% of the country’s water resources belong to private owners, mostly agricultural, mining and energy companies.

“Access to water is one of the great inequalities in this country. That it be guaranteed for human consumption is the greatest constitutional challenge,” Matías Asun, director of the NGO, told Efe.

It was precisely the current Magna Carta, together with the Water Code, both inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), which granted free and perpetual rights of use to private individuals, which are now bought and sold on the free market.

Later, already in democracy, the so-called sanitation companies were also privatized in charge of water supply.

According to a study by the Aquae Foundation, the model does not prioritize water for human consumption, contrary to UN recommendations, and prices are the highest in the region: seven of the ten Latin American cities with the most expensive water are in Chile.

“As of today, 33% of aquifers have more rights sold than the amount of liquid flowing through their basin. They are draining all the country’s groundwater,” lamented Asun.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), water governance is one of the main origins of Chile’s water crisis and is putting small farmers “in a situation of vulnerability”.

In contrast, a report by the think tank Libertad y Desarrollo points out that the fact that water rights are freely traded has allowed their more efficient use in mining, the country’s main industry.

THE WORST DROUGHT IN DECADES

Chile is experiencing the worst drought in the entire American continent, affecting 76% of the Chilean population and, according to a study by the University of Chile, will reduce water reserves by half in the central and northern areas by 2060.

This phenomenon has further aggravated the heterogeneous distribution of water. For some experts, it is the cause of the failure of the current model, which should result in a scenario of abundance of the resource.

“In Petorca, there is 30% less rainfall, and this place is like a time machine, here you can see the future that awaits the rest of the country. We need the state to respond,” Petorca’s mayor, Gustavo Valdenegro, told Efe.

To deal with the shortage, the government announced in March a project to create a Ministry of Public Works and Water Resources and announced an investment of US$340 million.

Alejandro Sepúlveda, an engineer and promoter of the Smart Meter water initiative, told Efe that it is essential to “develop infrastructure and a plan to deal with the drought” and incorporating the right to water in the Magna Carta is “a good start”.

“The new Constitution is our hope,” concluded Quiróz, “and it is the opportunity for the richest to give water back to the land and the people.”

Source: efe