Bakker, Karen (2013). Neoliberal Versus Postneoliberal Water: Geographies of Privatization and Resistance, Annals of the Associaton of the American Geographers. 103(2), 253-260.
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3&sid=7934ae76-dd21-4bd9-b42d-766d78a90bb3%40sessionmgr104&hid=108&bdata=JmxvZ2luLmFzcCZzaXRlPWVob3N0LWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=85797429
Water is understood by the United Nations to be a basic human right. Still, much of the world's population lacks access to potable water supplies. In some places, the public sector supplies this utility at subsidized costs to citizens. However, in many developing states, there are inadequate and/or corrupted public funds which inhibit the supply of potable water to all citizens. Kathryn Bakker draws on numerous sources from World Bank data to a wide array of published authors to describe the process of water privatization since the 1980s.
Private management of water supply was rare in the 1980s, but by the 1990s it was increasingly popular and concentrated in cities. In developing countries, the rise of privatized water coincided with conditional lending policies set forth by the bilateral lending agencies and multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank.
Privatization proponets justified their work by parading the need to provide water to the poor. Specifically, a common trend was the tendancy for upper and middle class neighborhoods to receive public water supplies at a lower cost and greater supply than lower class neighborhoods. Private suppliers were championed to fill the gap of this systematic exclusion.
In time, it became apparent that the actual execution of privatized water reinforced the resource gap. A key point to this reality was that companies faced a majority low income population which lacked the ability to pay for the water. Additionally, political risks assosiated with privatizing water deterred many private investors.
Finally, in 2005 the World Bank admitted it was adventagous for the majority of the world's water supply to remain publicly, rather than privately, owned. At the same time, the number of private water companies and their customers increased world wide.
Spatial maps of these trends confirm that private water companies are concentrated in middle to upper income urban neighborhoods, while being vacant or scarecly represented in the areas that need water most, such as Sub-Saharran Africa. Bakker asserts this spatial variegation leads to cherry picking specialized water markets an an intensification or mutation of neoliberalism.
I think that case studies such as this are where the GIS technology is especially effective. Where there is clearly a relationship and disparity between regions that people have studied and recognized, but is never quite as clear as when it is represented like on the spatial analysis above.
ReplyDeleteThat really put words to what I wanted to say Kendall. I'm wondering how the incidence of the conditional lending and privatization (this happened in India along with dams, right?) interact with the creation of water bubbles (under-pricing/valuing along with overuse in the past leading up to nearing "bankruptcy" now). So, the conditional lending and privatization funded the use of water in these places that contributed to the bubbles; as the price of water rises will the interest these countries pay be based on the huge price spikes that water will undergo in the future (I know nothing about economics or this specific arrangement)? Also, did the privatization allow for the World Bank/1st tier/developed countries to "ration" the use of water in these countries because they controlled the infrastructure, potentially siphoning it off for their own uses? Or something in that vein?
ReplyDeleteI think this could be a really great GIS project, the map above only illustrates so much. It is interesting to think about the statement issued from the U.S. govt about the next world war being about water in relation to this article. What are the problems and consequences with privitizing water, and allowing the developed countries to ration out the water to the developing countries that need it the most?
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