Privatizing Water, Producing Scarcity: The Yorkshire Drought of 1995 *

Abstract

The Yorkshire drought of 1995 was the most extreme climate event faced by the English and Welsh water industry since its privatization in 1989. As an emblem of crisis in privatized water management, and as a potential signal of climate change, the 1995 drought has motivated change in water regulation and management. In this paper I challenge conventional interpretations of the 1995 water supply crisis as a natural hazard or as a result of managerial ineptitude. Drought is conceptualized as the production of scarcity, an outcome of three interrelated practices: meteorological modeling, demand forecasting, and corporate restructuring and the regulatory "game." These practices are situated within an analysis of the context of the regulatory implications of the privatization of the water industry in 1989. I explore the simultaneously natural, social, and discursive elements of water scarcity and situate them within an analysis of privatization as reregulation, rather than deregulation. This analysis brings insights developed in debates over "real" regulation and regulation theory to bear on nature-society analysis, while extending this debate through theorizing regulation as, in part, a discursive practice. The ensuing rereading of drought challenges conventional interpretations of environmental crisis, raises questions about the implications of water industry privatization, and emphasizes the need to account for the role of the state and the intricacies of "real" regulation in analyses of resource management.

The “Commons” Versus the “Commodity”: Alter‐Globalization, Anti‐Privatization and the Human Right to Water in the Global South

“…Much of the literature on "neoliberalizing nature" is concerned with the creation of private property rights for resources previously governed as common pool resources. 3 Of particular interest have been the impacts of "neoliberalism" on specific resources (Bakker 2000(Bakker , 2001Bradshaw 2004;Bridge 2004;Bridge and Jonas 2002;Bridge, McManus and Marsden 2003;Gibbs and Jonas 2000;Johnston 2003;Maddock 2004;Mansfield 2004aMansfield , 2004bMcAfee 2003;Robertson 2004;Smith 2004;Walker et al 2000). As Noel Castree notes in his review of this literature (Castree 2005), much of this work has emphasized case-specific analyses of very different types of processes broadly grouped under the rather nebulous banner of neoliberalization: privatization, marketization, deregulation, reregulation, commercialization, and corporatization, to name just a few.…”

Resource-Sensitive Global Production Networks: Reconfigured Geographies of Timber and Acoustic Guitar Manufacturing

“…As a produced rather than natural circumstance (Bakker 2000), resource scarcity induces rearrangement of GPNs, firm tactics, and geographies of resource extraction. Shaping adaptation to resource scarcity are the interplay of the material qualities of raw materials and their specific geographies of availability, and the accompanying geopolitical dynamics of resource scarcity and regulatory response (cf.…”

“…In so doing we engage with, and further contribute to, antecedent work by Gavin Bridge and others theorizing resource GPNs. Importantly, resource scarcity is a produced circumstance-an outcome of regulatory and corporate machinations (Bakker 2000;Bridge 2009;Labban 2010). Scarcity and abundance are constructed through regulation, futures trading, and commodity markets (Cronon 1991).…”

Políticas públicas del agua en el Perú: vicisitudes para la creación del consejo de recursos hídricos de la cuenca Ica-Huancavelica.

“…En resumen, las relaciones entre la sociedad y el agua están influidas por las relaciones de poder (Wittfogel, 1957) y, viceversa, las relaciones sociales influyen en el agua y las características de ésta influyen en las relaciones sociales en forma material, pero también en forma de discurso (Bakker, 2000;Swygendouw, 2004).…”

“…In sum, the relationships between society and water are influenced by power relations (Wittfogel, 1957), and, vice versa, social relationships influence water and its characteristics influence social relationships in a material manner, but also in terms of discourse (Bakker, 2000;Swygendouw, 2004).…”