Water Policy and Management in Chile (original) (raw)

Encyclopedia of Water: Science, Technology, and Society, 2020

Abstract

Pro-market models for natural resources management rely on the argument that markets would allocate resources apolitically, ensuring individual freedom, directing them towards highest economic value uses and, thus, ensuring both efficient allocation and maximization of total social welfare within the contexts of scarcity. In the mid-1970s, the Chilean dictatorship initiated a comprehensive neoliberal reform to economic and social policies that followed this axiom. Because water is a critical resource for Chile’s economic development, the military government reformed the previous centralized system and imposed in 1981 a new Water Code known as a textbook example of a free market system for managing water resources. Since the 1990s, international development agencies, such as the World Bank, promoted market mechanisms and water privatization arguing that this strategy will ensure greater efficiency of water use, thereby stimulating social and environmental benefits. Within this context, water experts from these agencies have presented the ChileanWater Code as a successful model for water reforms. The goal of this entry is to provide the reader a general reference work about the main features of this model. In what follows, we briefly describe the imposition of Chile’s 1981 Water Code and its main characteristics, whereas in continuation we summarize the main arguments for and against it. Finally, we illustrate how the Chilean water model has operated on the ground by presenting four cases: two case-specific examples (The Loa River basin and the Copiapó case) and two general cases (hydropower and desalination). Final remarks are presented in the conclusions.

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