Ecuador: lawmakers fail to reach water bill deal

Ecuadorean lawmakers on Thursday [12 May 2010] failed to reach a deal on suspending debate of a contested water bill that has sparked protests by indigenous groups who fear it threatens their rights to natural resources.

President Rafael Correa says the bill will better regulate the water system. But the failure by lawmakers to agree over the bill opens the way for more indigenous protests over an issue that is a political headache for his leftist government.

Lawmakers were ruling on a motion by Congress President Fernando Cordero to postpone debate over the bill for six months while indigenous communities were consulted over the impact of the proposal on their territories.

Opposition and some pro-government lawmakers blocked an attempt to reach a deal on postponement.

“The water law will be voted on the day we can have the consultations,” Cordero said after the vote though no date was set to resume debate on the proposal.

While Ecuador’s indigenous groups were instrumental in toppling previous governments, analysts say Correa has a solid grip on power and indigenous leaders are more splintered than in past protests when thousands descended on Quito.

Indigenous leaders say the water bill will pave the way for privatizations of natural resources and impact their farming and small-scale mining industries. Correa dismisses the protesters as “liars.”

“The government is irresponsible and is playing with the Ecuadorean people,” said Marlon Santi, head of the Indigenous Confederation of Ecuador or CONAIE. “The protests will continue for now.”

Earlier this month police used tear gas to break up protests outside the Congress building and some demonstrators broke into the building but were ejected by security forces.

Correa, a U.S.-trained former finance minister, came to power in 2007 with broad indigenous support after promising to challenge the political old guard many Ecuadoreans blamed for years of instability in the world’s largest banana exporter.

Correa still has more political capital than predecessors after introducing measures such as increased welfare spending for the poor and striking out at foreign investors. But he has seen his popularity wane as the OPEC nation’s economy flagged during the global economic crisis.

Source: Santiago Silva, Reuters, 13 May 2010

Mexico, Sinaloa: Conagua opens water bank

Mexico’s national water authority Conagua has opened a water bank in Sinaloa state. The bank is the fourth in the country, and aims to regulate the acquisition and transfer of water rights in the state.

Read the full article on: BNamericas.com [subscription site], 27 Nov 2009

Chile: Supreme Court recognizes ancestral water rights

For the first time since the government of Chile recognized the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 on the rights of indigenous landowners, a high court has invoked it. After 14 years of litigation, a group of Aymara Indians in Chusmiza-Usmagama, Tarapaca Region, won their battle to bar a water-bottling firm from using their groundwater. A lawsuit was brought against Agua Mineral Chusmiza by native attorneys, Chile’s Directorate General of Waters, and the National Indigenous Development Board (CONADI) in the 1990s, but got nowhere under Chile’s 1981 Water Code, a relic of the Pinochet dictatorship. Luis Carvajal, head of the Aymara community, called the High Court’s ruling “an enormous precedent for other communities,” while Nancy Yanez, a lawyer for the Observatorio Ciudadano and an expert on indigenous water rights, hailed it as “a great triumph.”
[Summary by Louise Shaler, SAHRA News Watch]

Source: Antonio Valencia, La Nacion [in Spanish], 27 Nov 2009

Chile: Senators present bill to modify water concessions

A group of Chilean senators, led by Ricardo Núñez of the socialist party, has presented a bill to eliminate full and perpetual ownership of water concessions and mining resources, as well as special contracts for hydrocarbons, among others.

The bill proposes a 30-year limit on concessions, which can be extended for another 15 years but only with senate approval. The length of current concessions, including water rights, would be counted from the day the bill is passed, a senate release said.

Núñez said the way the state currently grants water concessions is generating an unprecedented crisis as it is carried out in an “irregular, absolutely irrational and poorly supervised” fashion.

The proposal, according to Núñez, does not mean the re-nationalization of water but rather a new way of supervising concessions which would require a modification to the country’s water law.

Source: BNamericas.com [subscription site], 10 Sep 2009

Chile: town withers in free market for water

During the past four decades here in Quillagua, a town in the record books as the driest place on earth, residents have sometimes seen glimpses of raindrops above the foothills in the distance. They never reach the ground, evaporating like a mirage while still in the air.

What the town did have was a river, feeding an oasis in the Atacama desert. But mining companies have polluted and bought up so much of the water, residents say, that for months each year the river is little more than a trickle — and an unusable one at that.

Quillagua is among many small towns that are being swallowed up in the country’s intensifying water wars. Nowhere is the system for buying and selling water more permissive than here in Chile, experts say, where water rights are private property, not a public resource, and can be traded like commodities with little government oversight or safeguards for the environment.

Private ownership is so concentrated in some areas that a single electricity company from Spain, Endesa, has bought up 80 percent of the water rights in a huge region in the south, causing an uproar. In the north, agricultural producers are competing with mining companies to siphon off rivers and tap scarce water supplies, leaving towns like this one bone dry and withering.

Read more: Alexei Barrionuevo, New York Times, 15 Mar 2009

Costa Rica: Congress resumes talks on bill to keep water resources under public domain

The plenary of the Costa Rican congress has resumed talks on bill 14,757,  modifying article 121 of the constitution, aimed at keeping water resources under public domain. The bill would allow congress to decree the confiscation of resources and to use them for the public’s benefit. Additionally, the initiative defines water as a nonrenewable and finite resource administered by the state. The bill also affirms that any public or private benefit the resources may produce on Costa Rican territory will be regulated by law.  

[New legislation was needed to cope with pressures on water resources as a result of] uncontrolled urban growth, construction in protected areas, the expansion of the industrial sector and contamination due to the discharge of untreated wastewater, among other factors.

Source: BNamericas [subscription site], 08 May 2009

Bolivia, Chile: officials conclude Silala water use proposal, to be approved by authorities

Bolivian and Chilean government officials have finalized the text of an agreement regarding the use of the Silala waters, Bolivia’s foreign relations ministry reported in a release. The document will now be analyzed by authorities for their consideration and approval. [T]he document establishes compensation to Bolivia for Chile’s use of the Silala waters. The real value of these waters has increased tremendously over the last few years, as they have become vital for mining companies operating in the Chilean north.

Chilean authorities claim Silala is an international river [and its use is] regulated by international law. Bolivia says the waters originate from 94 springs in its territory, which is not governed by international law [and] that if the water was not artificially channeled, it would naturally flow towards Potosí, which does not have enough water for human consumption or industrial use.

Source: BNamericas [subscription site], 19 May 2009