A global debate on water: current approaches and case studies

Abstract

The certainty that water —and particularly, freshwater— is a cross-curricular element to all aspects of human life means that global anxiety has been building in the last decades, and because of the transcendental geopolitical, economic, socio-cultural or normative aspects of the situation, with growing international concern over access to water, its uses, the right to its exploitation, its capacity for renewal and its sustainable use, and even around the very nature of the element. The coordinators of this publication have wanted to contribute modestly in this dossier —number 45 of the Relaciones Internacionales Journal— to focus on the debate around water —particularly, although not exclusively, on freshwater—, and to address a multiplicity of approaches —most of them with a marked critical perspective— the phenomena and circumstances that surround this fundamental element for life on Earth.

In spite of the abundance of water that exists on the Earth, scarcely 0.3% is apt for human consumption, and from this global provision of fresh water, the largest part is found in the poles and in the atmosphere. Thus, it is less than a fifth of these reserves that corresponds with the underground aquifers, the lakes and rivers of the planet; it is in these geographic spaces where both human beings and animals extract the necessary quantities of water to live and produce energy or food. The production systems of capitalist development and the growing global demographic have placed this natural element in a compromising situation, and we affirm that currently water is situated at the epicentre of some of the largest debates in international relations of the 21st Century, specifically those that take place around discussions about the condition and category of natural resources and their uses.

It is also evident that the contemporary global economic processes have exacerbated the problems of water; all production processes base some of their stages on the use of water, which added to the massive extraction or accumulation systems of this resource are generating local and global tensions in many ways —political, social, economic, ideological, cultural, discursive or identity—, generated as much by the excess extractions of water as by the consequences of it in the ecosystems where it is found this element. In this way, the problems of environmental pollution —of water or the surroundings of the productive and extraction bases—, the inadequate or discriminatory political management of the resource —phenomenon aggravated in the regions with a weak consolidation of democratic procedures—, or the unequal distribution of the economic benefits of it —which harden the global disparity between enriched international actors and those subalterns of the capitalist system—, represent the possibility of latent conflicts and pose a series of dilemmas and contradictions that must be addressed urgently, and they must be approached —in addition— in a specific direction: in favour of the global collective benefit, with a balanced, ecological, sustainable character and respectful of local traditional uses and cultures.

Starting from the basic consideration of water as an element available in nature, it is however evident that in the contemporary capitalist society, multiple conceptions of this element coexist different perspectives on its uses and even contradictory approaches about the future of its socio-political nature. This dossier contemplates a political problematization of the element, thus facing a more than necessary interdisciplinary debate on the global geopolitics of water, with a theoretical discussion around the perspectives, tensions, conflicts and opportunities raised by the confluence of interests, values, worldviews and water considerations in the international system.