Water, State and the City

A. Ioris

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137468673
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The book investigates the complexity of the Latin American mega cities and the multiple commitments of the apparatus of the state with a focus on the failures of the public water sector. It offers an innovative interpretation of large-scale urbanization, one of the most challenging questions affecting Latin American governments and society.

1

State, Water and the Production of the Latin American City

Abstract: The introductory chapter situates the debate on the Latin American city in the wider historical and geographical perspective of colonisation, nation building, economic development and neoliberal reforms. Because Latin America is a diversified and dynamic region, a critical assessment of large-scale urbanisation offers a helpful entry point into its socioeconomic and environmental complexity. Particularly the achievements and failures of public water services reveal a great deal about the organisation, functioning and politicisation of metropolitan areas, as well as about the commitments and limitations of the state. The chapter finally explains the structure and innovation of the book, especially regarding the nexus between Latin American megacities and the evolving apparatus of the state using the dilemmas of the water sector as a critical category of analysis.

Ioris, Antonio A. R. Water, State and the City. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137468673.0005.

It borders a cliché to proclaim that the five centuries of Latin America’s existence have been an intriguing mixture of feelings like ambition, obsession and violence blended together with elements of hope, excitement and creativity. At first sight, Latin America appears as a continent rich in wealth and opportunities, and yet wrought with excesses and contradictions. The region’s territorial resources – silver, gold, timber, etc. – were the engine of the colonial economy, as much as the export to primary commodities – guano, copper, oil, etc. – and import substitution industries have sustained the post-colonial countries. Yet, vast terrains, containing opulent ecosystems and exotic species, turn up to be also the perfect stage for heroic tragedies enacted by almost implausible characters (from caudillos and generals to left-wing leaders and religious fanatics). The uniqueness of the Latin American peoples and the vitality of their national identities look as the necessary outcome of unparalleled economic exploitation and capricious social encounters. From this perspective, its epic and colourful history seems to saturate every part of the region and is always better interpreted with the help of the extravagant narratives of authors such as García Marquez, Alejo Carpentier or Guimarães Rosa.

However, the elements included in the previous paragraph represent nothing else than an easy and distasteful stereotype. There is no reason to ditch Latin America in a mist of mythology and incomprehension. Simple generalisations can be quite misleading, but it is evident that the Latin American continent is the result of multiple processes of interaction, work and conflict that took place in specific circumstances and in response to local and international pressures. To understand them, it is necessary to engage in context-contingent and comparative analyses that connect scales and encompass both the human and material dimensions with the more-than-human and symbolic or rhetorical components of a highly politicised reality. As any other part of the world, Latin America is a lived space with a long history and dynamic geography. In the extreme, it could even be argued that Latin America doesn’t even exist as an area with fixed boundaries and well-defined characteristics. There are certainly numerous countries, catchments and biomes extending from the southern to the northern hemisphere in this westernmost continent, but Latin America lacks clear-cut boundaries, has no precise end or beginning. The space, time and scale of Latin America are blurred in complex constructions that transgress linear explanations. Its history incorporated the pre-American past of European civilisations and of (so-called) Amerindian nations. Likewise, there is no simple border dividing North and Latin America, given that the latter extends, at least, to the south of the United States or spreads to higher northern latitudes (even to Canada).

There are some elements typical of Latin America that help to shape its individuality and make evident its historical and geographical phenomena. One of the most crucial ontological features of the region is its geopolitical role as an adjunct of the growth and renovation of different phases of global capitalism. The Latin American space has taken shape, for more than 500 years, through the brutal occupation of land (by Europeans of different classes and by different groups of forced Africans forced into labour), the appropriation of resources and wealth, and the selective exclusion or displacement of the locals. The continent, with its intricate dynamics, was inaugurated during the mercantilist expansion put in place by Portugal and Spain, and soon followed by other European powers. It was the main test ground for the affirmation of capitalism as the curtains of the Middle Ages were coming down, as much as it served the neo-colonial interests of industrial capitalism as a source of raw materials and agriculture goods. In the second half of the 20th century, with the apparent crisis of Keynesian economic policies (which was caused by a combination of local and global processes), Latin America became the privileged region for the implementation, since the 1970s, of some of the most radical neoliberal experiments. The present-day mechanics of transnational capitalism means that the exploitation of the workforce can now happen in the core Western nations and in Japan, as more and more areas are now occupied by Latin American migrants.

Therefore, the resulting Latin America’s landscape is the long, and still intensively unfolding, dialectics of expansion and constraints, military conquest and political subordination, increasing production and controlled consumption, hegemonies happening at different scales and surprising ingenuities in a singular (but not totally different) convergence of achievements, frustrations and unfulfilled hopes. Latin America is all those things together which meet to form rich cultures, give room for political disputes and the forging of multiple social identities. The past and the present of the continent have been determined by an idiosyncratic amalgamation of global demands and regional drivers of change. Evidently, national developmentalism, neoliberalism and the transition to something vaguely defined as post-neoliberal economy need to be considered by taking into account the local specificities of the Latin American region and of each country or city. Neoliberalisation is a variegated process of regulatory restructuring that evolves in successive waves without a predetermined direction and with uneven effects (Brenner et al., 2010). The movement towards neoliberalism since the 1970s was not a wholesale brake with developmentalism, as much as the partial and incomplete progress towards post-neoliberalism maintains many of the key features of the two previous regimes of capitalist accumulation. It is important, therefore, to avoid any binary analytical approach, but consider the local contingencies and multiple forms of domination and reaction (Yates and Bakker, 2014).

For sure, neoliberalism has been a very traumatic experience in Latin America (not least in terms of rising prices of residential properties and the privatisation of water utilities) and there is an increasing grassroots attempt to regain control of the markets, pay more attention to social concerns and revitalise citizenship through participation and cross-sector alliances. This emerging agenda of post-neoliberalism combines ideological claims with on-the-ground processes and a range of hybrid mobilisation practices. It is possible to verify adjustments and new policy experiences in Brazil since 2003, in Peru since 2011 and in Mexico since 2000. Both the neoliberal and the post-neoliberal phases are fraught with contradictions, continuities and confusion. Pro-market advocacy and anti-market radicalism were never fully implemented, despite colourful discourses and policy shifts. The compensatory policies of the post-neoliberal governments, including higher minimum wage and conditional cash transfers (as the celebrated Bolsa Família in Brazil) have coexisted with the blackmail imposed by neo-extractivism industries and agribusiness (as in Argentina, Brazil and Peru). Also popular reactions have reflected the political vacuum created by the election of left-wing parties put in charge of the administration of perverse legacies and novel mechanisms of capital circulation and asymmetric distribution of opportunities.

The uneven and variegated process of neoliberalisation has become deeply ingrained in the reality of each nation around the world and gradually subverted any easy separation between national policies and international interdependencies. As put by Robinson (2008: 42) the “class relations of global capitalism are now so deeply internalised within every nation-state that the classic image of imperialism as a relation of external domination is outdated.” One of the most perverse consequences of the reformulation and regeneration of neoliberal globalisation in the last quarter of the century has been the worldwide escalation of income inequality. Market globalisation, regulatory adjustments and liberalisation are key contributing factors to mounting global inequality. The richest 8% of the world’s population now earn half of the total income whereas the remaining 92% are left with the other half (UNDP, 2013). The world economy has never been so rich, but still more than 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty, which is the case not only in southern countries but also in many areas of core capitalist nations. There are economic and non-economic aspects of global unfairness (such as unequal access to health, education, employment and opportunities for political participation) that are both caused and serve to exacerbate poverty. Inequality and poverty lead to tension, spatial marginalisation, violence and social disintegration, especially because these are not only ethically and politically unacceptable, but have also detrimental impacts on economic growth and poverty reduction.

When considering the regional experience, it is interesting to notice that, in a matter of a few years, the neoliberal project had to be adjusted in many Latin American countries, due to a combination of weak performance and grassroots protests, with the introduction of policies and programmes aimed at the mitigation of social misfortunes (e.g. cash transfer schemes, higher minimal wage and better coverage of health services). The result was a transitory decline in the level of income inequality in Latin America between the early 1990s and the early 2000s (e.g. regional Gini index reduced 5% in the period, cf. UNDP, 2013). The countries that attempted to distance more from orthodox radical policies achieved better results, as Brazil produced significant increases in the real value of minimal wages, whereas Peru secured marginal improvement and real wages in Mexico declined. The main question left unanswered by statistics such as these is the viability of such assistentialist policies and the long-term prospects of the existing political and economic situation in those countries (for instance, in 2014 it was possible to see the fast deterioration of the macroeconomic performance of many countries, such as Argentina, and the disturbing weakening of democracy in Brazil, Peru and Paraguay).

The large metropolitan areas in Latin America are key entry points into this overarching complexity. As in other parts of the world under fast politico-economic and sociological transformation (as the currently unfolding events in northern Africa, Middle East and Eastern Europe) those interactions are particularly evident in the urban context. Land inequality has always been an important driver of conflict, but in recent years clashes related to the gross asymmetries taking place in urban areas have also become common and have had major impacts on national political games. In conceptual terms, the urban questions are right at the centre of the contemporary debate about society, nature and the economy. The ‘urban’ has become the main sphere of social activity and capital accumulation, but at the expense of an increased division between the different segments of the population and the workforce (Scott, 2008). The urban, as a central analytical category, can be described as an arena of disputes, creativity and confrontation (vide the revolts in the Muslim world in the early months of 2011 and in many other countries in the following years). Especially in Latin America, there are pockets of urban wealth and ostensible affluence amid vast areas of deprivation, overcrowding, pollution and multiple forms of violence (Jones, 2006). This uneven pattern of urbanisation is, ultimately, the result of several decades of national development subordinated to the narrow interests of the middle classes and the small governing elites (Swyngedouw, 1995). Most of all, its large cities encapsulate the key challenges of social cohesion, national politics and the insertion of Latin American countries in the globalised economy. The problems of the vast metropolitan areas have their origin in the long trend of exploitation and negligence perpetrated against society and the rest of nature since colonial times. Current urban inequalities also echo the historical disparities between the rural inland and the fast growing cities. At the same time, the everyday life in the large cities contains manifold types of reaction and strategies to cope with the lack of spatial and social opportunities.

The uniqueness and politicisation of the urban phenomena in Latin America can be further demonstrated by the failures, accomplishments and promises related to public water services. That is recognised even by agencies such as the World Bank (2013), which have invested significant sums of money and sponsored numerous projects and initiatives in the region with limited results. One of the Millennium Development Goals aimed at halving the proportion of the global population without sustainable access to safe water and sanitation. Since 1990, 2.1 billion people have gained access to improved drinking water (which exceeded the official target) and 1.9 billion to basic sanitation, but localised problems and asymmetries across the world remain high (United Nations, 2013). Similarly, the proportion of slum dwellers is declining in the developing world – from 29% to 24% between 2000 and 2012 in Latin America and the Caribbean – but number of slum dwellers continues to grow (in absolute terms), due in part to the fast pace of urbanisation and the failure of urban planning. The problems of urban water management condense past legacies, present demands and future expectations created by government authorities, particularly through the introduction of new legislation and the facilitated involvement of private companies since the early 1990s (Jouravlev, 2004).

Water management in a Latin American city is one of the best translations of pending domestic needs, questionable management of public funds and the ideological mystification of technologies, projects and strategies. Water circulates and changes through the city, and such movement serves to transgress boundaries between urban locations and to bring more closely together groups and agendas happening in different scales. The distressing and controversial situation of water scarcity in São Paulo in 2014, when the main reservoir ran out of water due to a combination of low rainfall, bad management and lack of planning, is a good example of the politicisation of urban water and the contested formulation of alternatives. Dealing with such major urban problem in the middle of the campaign for re-election meant that São Paulo’s Governor Geraldo Alckmin had to square the circle of promoting water savings by the population without attracting additional criticism for the bad handling of water supply services by the state utility (SABESP).

The various concepts and statements included earlier will be extensively analysed in the next chapters. What is being called here the ‘urban question’ – manifested in multiple forms of inequality related to the distribution of land, economic opportunities and public services, as vividly in the case of water – cannot be properly understood only in terms of insufficient resources or bad planning and administration. There are certainly more disturbing factors behind the apparent lack of public money and insufficient investments. The urban problems persist in time and intensify in space in Latin America because of the perverse, highly contingent synergies between the pattern of development (i.e. the overall socioeconomic structure) and the violent, alienated interpersonal relations and mechanisms of political exclusion (i.e. personal and group agency). As argued by critical social science authors, agency and structure are mutually determined and are both conditioned by, and have an impact on, interdependent factors. Urban evolution and the transformation of water services are both a cause and a consequence of class-based conflicts, but their primary motivations take place at the local level and reflect politico-economic disputes.

The decisive intervention of the state in the field of water management and conservation happens at the intersection between those different scales of interaction (macro and micro). The state is neither detached from the daily, localised lives nor operates independent of the pressure of hegemonic groups and classes. The state is an integral player in urban processes, an interpreter and translator of new formulas and theorisations, and also a receiver of the impacts of conflicts and interactions. One of the main claims of this book, therefore, is that the urban question, including many water-related issues, is not just a problem of the state but it is a problem because of the state.

The problems of urbanisation are obviously well known by human geographers, economists and regional planners, among other scholars, but most research has so far focused on tackling urban exclusion and malfunctioning through a largely technocratic, apolitical and superficial investigation. So, what is new and what can be done in relation to such challenging, almost overwhelming, questions? The answer is that this book is an attempt to re-discuss the nexus between Latin American megacities and the evolving apparatus of the state using the dilemmas of the water sector as a critical category of analysis. The intention here is not to be geographically or thematically comprehensive, but simply contribute to the wider debate on the prospects and the politics of urbanisation in the region. That will be done through a combination of a theoretical elaboration and empirical evidences from an increasingly urbanised continent. The main academic affiliation of the study is with the political economy of national and urban development, as well as with urban political ecology and environmental justice. The objective is to offer a reinterpretation of various increasingly important issues, including not only several aspects of the political economy of urban water management, but also an indirect reference to other problematic areas such as housin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  State, Water and the Production of the Latin American City
• 2  The Exclusionary City, Political Statehood and a Thirsty Population
• 3  National Development and Urban Water Demands through the Mexican Capital City
• 4  The Urbanisation of Lima, Neoliberal Reforms and Water-Related Tensions
• 5  Water Problems and Conflicting Water Values in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region
• 6  About the City, Water and the State: The Way Forward
• Index