State, market or community failure? Untangling the determinants of groundwater depletion in Copiapó (Chile)

Abstract

This paper analyses the factors that explain why groundwater can be overexploited despite the existence of sophisticated water laws, institutions and effective state agencies responsible for water management. The analysis is based on a case study conducted in the Copiapó Valley in Northern Chile. Based on an analysis of water use data, policy documents and interviews with a variety of stakeholders, the paper highlights the state's failure to perform some of its key missions and the ineffectiveness of groundwater users' associations in water management despite a very supportive legal framework. The paper concludes with some recommendations on how ensure long-term sustainable groundwater use.

Groundwater Management Lessons from Chile

“…Additionally, groundwater users are relatively reluctant to create and participate in GUCs, since most of them still consider GUCs as more restrictive in terms of water abstraction than surface associations and they tend to view the process as state controlled (Rinaudo and Donoso, 2018). Moreover, user participation is poor, and this is particularly true of small-scale users since votes are proportional to their allocation of WR.…”

“…The possibility of exercising the power to resolve conflicts by the administration of a GUC is affected by the low participation and legitimacy of the directory before its users. Thus, in general, the performance of GUCs is poor (Rinaudo and Donoso, 2018;Vergara and Rivera, 2018). This can be explained by the fact that GUCs do not fully satisfy Ostrom's 8 principles for an effective collective groundwater management (Ostrom, 2000).…”

“…This can be explained by the fact that GUCs do not fully satisfy Ostrom's 8 principles for an effective collective groundwater management (Ostrom, 2000). The main difficulties that limit GUC's effective water management are (Rinaudo and Donoso, 2018;Vergara et al, 2013): i) Legal and administrative obstacles in the determination of their statutes and rules of operation. ii) Lack of adequate professional management.…”

“…3, DGA continued granting GWR after the declaration of prohibition. Rinaudo and Donoso (2018) point out that this occurred, on one hand, due to a judicial sentence that required the DGA to process user's applications that had been submitted prior to the publication of the prohibition. On the other hand, expecting the DGA to declare prohibition, recognized customary groundwater users (historic usages) requested the regularization of their GWR following the procedures of the transitory second article of the WC81.…”

“…3). Rinaudo and Donoso, 2018) In 2001 . At present, agriculture is the main GWR owner representing 73% of total granted GWR flows.…”