Defence of Right to Water Drives Call for Land Reform in Chile
By Orlando Milesi
Small-scale farmers from Samo Alto, in northern Chile, are forced to share the scarce water
of the Hurtado River with large agro-exporters, who benefit from a dam built downstream.
In this country, water is a private good, granted in perpetuity to the concessionaires.
Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS
SANTIAGO, May 18 2017 (IPS) - Water at high prices, sold as a market good, and small farmers almost a species in extinction, replaced by seasonal workers, are the visible effects of the crisis in rural Chile, 50 years after a land reform which postulated that “the land is for those who work it.”
To tackle the crisis, environmental and social activists are proposing a new land reform to reclaim water as a public good, at a time when a persistent drought is affecting much of Chile, making it necessary to use tanker trucks to distribute water in some low-income neighbourhoods in cities around the country.
Last year the number of villages, small towns and neighbourhoods that were left without water and were supplied by tanker trucks also doubled in relation to 2015, said water department director Carlos Estévez.
“In Chile, water has become a capital good, left to the discretion of speculators and separated from the land, while international jurisprudence indicates that it should be available for the preservation of life and food production, and only after that, for other economic activities,” expert and activist Rodrigo Mundaca told IPS.
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/05/defence-of-right-to-water-drives-call-for-land-reform-in-chile/
Environment & Energy:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127110556
