Water in Chile, from private property to human rights in the new Constitution

80 km from Santiago, in Tiltil, more than half of the inhabitants have no water. “If the truck didn’t arrive, how would I give my animals water?” asks Luz Rojas, a native of this Chilean city marked by drought and excessive use of water.

The current Constitution, adopted under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), privatized water through state supply permanent concessions.

Instead, it establishes the Magna Carta project which will be submitted to a plebiscite next Sunday 4 the “universal right to water”.

Along with a drought that has lasted for more than a decade in the central area of ​​the country, eThe “water market” has reduced the possibility of access to liquid in places like Tiltil.

Rights

Rivers and underground wells in the area have dried up due to lack of rain, but also by the presence of mining companies and farms that exploit it excessively.

“In our territory, the situation of water shortage is alarming”, warns the local mayor, Luis Valenzuela to the AFP.

Companies “what they do is very simple: I have water rights, I build a well, I extract water, I dry the water table, I go to another aquifer and so on, endlessly, because they have the right to exploit, “he explains.

Therefore, 60% of the 20,000 inhabitants of Tiltil today do not have access to the conveyed water e they must be refueled by tankers They distribute around 360,000 liters per day for free along narrow, dusty dirt roads in the hills.

Here, “seeing the rain fall is almost a miracle,” says Luz Rojas, who receives water once a week.

Mayor Valenzuela supports the “I approve” option in Sunday’s plebiscite, among other things because Article 140 of the draft Constitution states that “The exercise of the human right to water will always prevail, recovery and balance of ecosystems “.

The current Chilean Constitution provides that “the rights of people to water, recognized or constituted in accordance with the law, grant their owners ownership over them”.

This regulation “it gave operators access not only to exploit water but to manage infrastructurewhich is unique, because in other countries there are limits, ”Darío Soto, executive director of the Global Alliance for Water, told AFP.

“These water rights they were given freely and assigned in perpetuity“, in a way that” has benefited industry, has generated employment and productivity, but above all access to water “, he adds.

Over the past 12 years, Chile’s Directorate-General of Waters has granted 47,758 such rights to private entities across the country, mainly to mining and agri-food companies.

right use

Echoing one of the main concerns of Chileans, especially after years of drought, the proposal for a new Constitution changes the model of use of the liquid and “recognizes this aspiration that water is a human and essential right for the ecosystem “Soto says.

Furthermore, the text orders the state to guarantee “a reasonable use of water”.

It also modifies the property rights for use permits “which will be granted by the National Water Agency, of a non-commercial nature, granted on the basis of the actual availability of water, and (which) will oblige the owner to use it which justifies the concession. “

Rodrigo Mundaca, governor of the Valparaíso region and one of the main activists for the universal right to water, believes that the new text “ends up with the stock market looking around for natural assets.”

In Chile, he points out, 1% of the holders of water used for agriculture and mining contain about 80% rights.

“What the (new) Constitution will do is put an end to the water market,” the governor said.

But a group of rights-holder organizations, opponents of the new constitutional text, stated in a public statement that the planned change of model constitutes “open discrimination to the detriment of productive uses of water“.

They believe that the new definitions will affect “in equal measure small, medium and large water users, and indirectly the country as a whole, questioning the certainty of the law” that characterizes Chile.

AFP agency

PB