Decentralized governance of water resources is a centerpiece of Mexico’s neoliberal reform strategy. We analyze decentralization based on urban/rural case studies in distinct geographical regions to ascertain whether it is linked to more efficient water management or sustainable use of water resources, and to examine its development implications. We assess whether or not private sector management is related to a more efficient, sustainable, and accountable management of water variety of municipal and private management arrangement in four urban areas. We find that it has not resulted in efficiency or sustainability gains. For agricultural water management, irrigation districts in two case studies benefited from the more democratic participatory management by water users under Mexico’s “transference” strategy, but did not result in greater equity, efficiency or sustainability of water use. We argue that decentralization in the Mexican water sector is context specific, and marked by limited benefits. Privatization is less an instrument aimed at improving efficiency than a channel for preferred treatment for capital accumulation by private entities as well as a legitimized way for the state to transfer the burden of water management to non-state institutions. The creation of new forms of water institutions requires not the retrenchment of the state but rather its involvement to ensure accountability, transparency, equity, and sustainability.
The political economy of Mexico has been dramatically transformed over the last dozen years by neoliberal restructuring of state responsibilities and economic processes.1 One of the most salient features of the shift has been decentralization of critical state functions to municipalities, private corporations, and user associations. Mexico’s traditional strong state control of virtually all sectors of the economy and civil society, called by Fox (1992, p. 6) “one of the most powerful and interventionist in Latin America,” has been replaced by a reduced state apparatus that has ostensibly disengaged from its operational, developmental role and assumed strategic policymaking, and oversight functions. Environmental governance is one of the areas most affected by decentralization, as evidenced by broad changes introduced in water, agricultural, and general environmental legislation since 1992. The paradoxes of decentralization2 in the water sector and the impacts on urban and rural water users in Mexico’s most dynamic regions are the focus of this paper.
The decentralization process implemented in recent years in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America has been presented by international funding organizations, national governments, and other proponents as a key component of a successful water reform strategy. It is argued that decentralization allows for a more efficient provision of service by local authorities, private companies and water users, and for a more efficient and equitable allocation and use of the resource as well (Asad et al., 1999 and Garn, 1998). The World Bank and others maintain that decentralization leads to improved accountability, empowerment of local communities, and benefits for the management of natural resources (Briscoe et al., 1998 and Thobani, 1997). Neoliberal conceptions of water inscribed in international water agreements and national water governance strategies that focus on its economic value collide with constructions of water as a “free” good provided by nature, with traditional valuations of water as a religious/cultural symbol, and with constructions of water as a necessary part of the ecosystem whose needs also must be satisfied, equally with those of other “users” (Garn, 1998 and Gleick and Wolff, 2002).
Decentralized governance of water resources is a centerpiece of Mexico’s neoliberal reform strategy. We analyze decentralization based on urban/rural case studies in distinct geographical regions to ascertain whether it is linked to more efficient water management or sustainable use of water resources, and to examine its development implications. We assess whether or not private sector management is related to a more efficient, sustainable, and accountable management of water variety of municipal and private management arrangement in four urban areas. We find that it has not resulted in efficiency or sustainability gains. For agricultural water management, irrigation districts in two case studies benefited from the more democratic participatory management by water users under Mexico’s “transference” strategy, but did not result in greater equity, efficiency or sustainability of water use. We argue that decentralization in the Mexican water sector is context specific, and marked by limited benefits. Privatization is less an instrument aimed at improving efficiency than a channel for preferred treatment for capital accumulation by private entities as well as a legitimized way for the state to transfer the burden of water management to non-state institutions. The creation of new forms of water institutions requires not the retrenchment of the state but rather its involvement to ensure accountability, transparency, equity, and sustainability.
