Agua y pobreza en Santiago de Chile: Morfología de la inequidad en la distribución del consumo domiciliario de agua potable

Abstract

issn impreso 0250-7161 | issn digital vol 41 | n o 124 | septiembre 2015 | pp. 225-246 | artículos | ©EURE Agua y pobreza en Santiago de Chile.Morfología de la inequidad en la distribución del consumo domiciliario de agua potable Gustavo Durán. flacso (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales-Sede Ecuador), Departamento de Asuntos Públicos, Quito, Ecuador.resumen | En la trayectoria temporal de la relación entre agua y pobreza en Santiago de Chile, el "acceso" como indicador ha sufrido, para los estudios urbanos, una suerte de desgaste, y en la actualidad no representa un dato significativo para medir las condiciones de inequidad en esta sociedad urbana. De otra parte, el "consumo" sobresale como un indicador con mayor capacidad de revelar las circunstancias de vida de los pobres en esa ciudad, que si bien les ofrece posibilidades de inserción en términos de acceso a las redes físicas del sistema, los excluye a través de mecanismos de mercado, como un sistema tarifario en permanente proceso de crecimiento y el desbalance de este respecto del ingreso familiar. Este proceso sostenido de contracción del consumo domiciliario de agua potable que se viene registrando a partir de la privatización, se produce en el marco de un claro proceso de "mercantilización" (Winpenny, 1994, p.110) de un bien básico, como lo es el agua en la ciudad.palabras clave | pobreza, servicios urbanos, consumo. of "commodification" (Winpenny, 1994, p.110) of a good, such as water in the city.

Power, Conflicts, and Environmental Communication in the Struggles for Water Justice in Rural Chile: Insights from the Epistemologies of the South and the Anthropology of Power

“…In this regard, Chilean water legislation is known as one of the most neoliberal water regulation policies in the world, as it ensures private property rights to water resources, and markets and private actors can act in the water markets with few public regulations (Bauer, 2015). In addition, privatization of water is deeply linked to inequal distribution of the now scarce water resources in the city of Santiago (Durán, 2015).…”

Adaptive Capacity as Local Sustainable Development: Contextualizing and Comparing Risks and Resilience in Two Chilean Regions

“…With rights to access surface water suspended due to decreasing availability, the reliance on groundwater (and falling water tables) has increased the gap between water security in urban versus rural areas. In terms of resilience, the connection to a mains water system, with a subsidy available for the lowest income households [154], ensures access to this basic need. However, rural livelihoods have become more precarious due to the constant need to bore deeper for water, or simply boreholes drying up and requiring emergency supply from municipal or private water tankers [155].…”

Water: consumption, usage patterns, and residential infrastructure. A comparative analysis of three regions in the Lima metropolitan area

“…The economic factors include two internal components of the household economy: purchasing power or income per capita (Sánchez García & Blanco Jiménez, 2012) and income level (Cubillo et al, 2008) or family budget (Durán, 2015); however, this does not include the water price (an external factor). Moreover, income and consumption should be distinguished.…”

“…The price of water is an effective and highly influential external factor, one of the most common mechanisms to reduce consumption (Durán, 2015;Sánchez García & Blanco Jiménez, 2012;Grafton et al, 2011;Peña-Guzman et al, 2016;Shan et al, 2015). But some authors have concluded that consumption tends to be rigid in terms of price (Domene & Saurí, 2006), while others have seen a negative relationship between price and consumption (Grafton et al, 2011) or that small households adapt best to price variation, reducing their consumption (Barberán & Salvador, 2010).…”