The Politics of Water Rights: Scarcity, Sovereignty and Security

This article shows how geo-legal devices created to deal with environmental crisis situations make access to drinking water precarious and contribute to the overexploitation and contamination of water resources. It relies on qualitative methods (interviews, observations, archive work) to identify and analyse two geo-legal devices applied in the case study of the Elqui Valley in Chile. The first device, generated by the Declaration of Water Scarcity, allows private sanitation companies to concentrate water rights and extend their supply network, thus producing an overexploitation of water resources. In the context of mining pollution, the second device is structured around the implementation of the Rural Drinking Water Programme and the distribution of water by tankers, which has made access to drinking water more precarious for the population and does nothing to prevent pollution.

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Exploring ethno-racial policy for the Garinagu in Central America: making the case for Black Indigeneity

AlterNative An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples ◽

10.1177/1177180120979000 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 117718012097900

Author(s):

Sheryl Felecia Means

Keyword(s):

Central America ◽

Cultural Policy ◽

Policy Making ◽

Water Rights ◽

Central American ◽

Language Attrition ◽

Political Autonomy ◽

Collective Rights ◽

Land And Water Rights ◽

Racial Policy

Across the Central American region, several groups received political autonomy by the end of the 20th century. By granting autonomy to these groups, countries like Nicaragua acknowledged certain populations as members of distinct ethnic groups. This was not the case for every country or group in the region, and the lack of effective ethno-racial policy-making considerations across Central America has led to language attrition, loss of land and water rights, and commodification of historic communities. This article focuses on Honduras and Belize as unique sites of ethno-racial and socio-cultural policy making, group identity making and unmaking, and group rights for the Garinagu. Specifically, this work forwards a re-examination of national ethno-racial policy and a critical assessment of political models based on ethno-cultural collective rights intended to combat racial discrimination.

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Analyzing the Effect of Mandatory Water Restrictions on Water Usage

The B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy ◽

10.1515/bejeap-2019-0137 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Trey Dronyk-Trosper ◽

Brandli Stitzel

Keyword(s):

Water Use ◽

Water Consumption ◽

Water Rights ◽

Water Usage ◽

Total Water ◽

Water Restriction ◽

Way Of Life ◽

Total Water Consumption ◽

Water Restrictions

AbstractAs water rights and water usage become an ever more important part of municipalities’ and states’ way of life, it becomes important to understand what policies can be effective for encouraging conservation of water. One method that has been employed at various times and throughout numerous communities is to limit outdoor watering days. We use a dataset with over 3 million property-month observations during the 2007–2015 period in Norman, Oklahoma, to identify whether the periodic implementation of mandatory water restrictions reduces water usage. Our data allow us to exploit variance in the timing of these water restriction programs. Our findings indicate that this policy reduces water consumption by 0.7 % of total water consumption. Additionally, we use home assessment prices to identify heterogeneity in this response, finding that high priced homes are more responsive to water use restrictions.

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Indigenous Water Rights in Comparative Law

Transnational Environmental Law ◽

10.1017/s2047102520000291 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (3) ◽

pp. 393-402

Author(s):

Elizabeth Macpherson

Keyword(s):

Human Population ◽

Global Financial Crisis ◽

Water Rights ◽

The United States ◽

Wall Street ◽

Award Winning ◽

The Subject ◽

Academy Award ◽

Increasing Demand ◽

Poor Management

At the end of the 2015 Academy Award-winning film The Big Short, which explores the origins of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, a caption notes that the Wall Street investor protagonist of the film who predicted the collapse of the United States (US) housing market would now be ‘focused on one commodity: water’. Water is sometimes described in popular culture as ‘the new oil’ or ‘more valuable than gold’. It is predicted to be the subject of increasing uncertainty, competition, conflict, and even war, as increasing demand from a growing human population and development meets reduced supply as a result of poor management, overuse, and climate change.

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