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Urbanizing the water supply of Barcelona and Madrid through the 20th and 21st centuriesFrom the local to the global
Hug March, PhD, Geography Department, UAB
David Saurí, Prof., Geography Department, UAB
International conference on Environmental Conflicts and Justice, Barcelona, July 2010
THE MULTIPLE MEANINGS OF WATER
Water as life, human right,
commons
Water as a sacred and
cultural flow
Water as power and control
Water as 2 Hidrogens and 1
Oxigen
“Aguas de Barcelona: Una apuesta por el petróleo del siglo XXI” [Aguas de Barcelona:
a good bet for the oil of the 21st century] (Expansión (economic journal) 2009)
“The environment is no longer a simple concern of proactive governments. It has become a global economic issue”, Suez
Environment (http://www.suez-environnement.com/en/profile/about-
us/challenges/challenges/)
Water as a commodity, money,
economic power
“El Canal de Isabel II retoma su plan para sacar a bolsa el 49% del capital” [The Canal de Isabel II retakes its plan to float 49% of its capital in the stock exchange”
Expansión, 18/2/10
Público, 12/10/08
La Vanguardia, 22/10/2009
“Esperanza Aguirre S.A. La gran privatizadora”
“Suez Environment se hace con la mayoría del capital del Grupo Agbar” [Suez Environment to take over most of the capital of the Agbar group”]
Changing choreographies of
power
Neoliberalization of environmental governance
Capital flows through the
hydrosocial cycle
Historical urban political
ecology
To analyse convergences and divergences in the modern urbanization
of water in Madrid and Barcelona
Domestication of the water flows
KEY CONCEPT: URBANIZATION
Urbanization as “a process by which new and more complex relationships of society and nature are created” (Keil 2003:729)
Urbanization of the water supply: the process of mobilization of water resources to keep pace with urban growth.
Ecological projects are always socio-political projects, and viceversa (Harvey 1996)
“to trace the flow of water through cities is to illuminate the functioning of modern societies in all their complexity” (Gandy 2002:22)
“the history of cities can be read as a history of water” (Gandy 2002:22)
City landscapes are “sculped into life-sustaining circulatory system through the interaction of the flow of water and the flow of money” (Gandy 2002:23)
SOME PREMISES…
“If we were to capture some of the metabolized flows that weave together the urban fabric and excavate the networks that brought them there, we would pass with continuity from the local to
the global, from the human to the non-human. These flows would narrate many
interrelated tales of the city […[ They would make up the (hi)story of a city of flows” (Kaika 2005:25)
Neoliberalism: a paradigm that seeks to naturalize the market as a mean for assessing and distributing life’s necessities and luxuries.
Neoliberalism arrives in different places in different ways, articulates with other political projects, takes multiple material forms, and can give rise to unexpected outcomes (Larner 2003:511): hybridity
Castree (2006): perplexing amorphousness of neoliberal reforms in environmental governance
Path specificity: Important to consider the specific array of historically contingent social and political forces
NEOLIBERALISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT
(TYPICAL) STAGES IN THE URBANIZATION OF WATER SUPPLY
1) Early 19th century: supremacy of private delivery
2) Late 19th and early 20th centuries: municipalization wave
3) Mid 20th century: increase in the role of the state (even nationalization)
4) Late 20th: private participation in the urban water supply
Neither MADRID nor especially BARCELONA followed exactly such steps
BARCELONA AND MADRIDCase studies
PRE-MODERN WATER SUPPLY AND URBAN GROWTH IN THE 19TH CENTURY
Rec Comtal City wells and other
ephemeral streams
Cerdà’s eixample: termination of the Rec Comtal model
Viajes del Agua: groundwater
Water vendors
Castro’s Ensanche: rupture of the historical urban limits
Barcelona Madrid
19th century Urban growth (Modern Urban Planning): key factor in the search for
new resources
THE ROAD TO MODERNITY
Second half 19th century: public and private initiatives
Groundwater Opposition of
landowners and industrialists to expand the water system
1848: Real Orden: projects to water Madrid
Surface water: Lozoya river
Debate public/private Failed private
initiative Public undertaking
Barcelona Madrid
Barcelona: production of scarcityMadrid: public initiative
From atomized suppliers to the private monopoly of water supply: Sociedad General de Aguas de Barcelona (French and Belgian capital)
1851: the Canal de Isabel II is created. State initiative
Lack of credit: privatizationfailed
Barcelona Madrid
THE CREATION OF CENTRALIZED SUPPLIERS
Diverging political projets, diverging socio-ecological projects
1899, 1905 and 1910: tenders to enlarge supply
State Commission: proposal of municipalization
Political change+typhus +WWI: municipalization failed
Economic crises and attempt of privatizationfailed
State-owned company (but different configurations)
Debate around the need to municipalize the CYII
Barcelona Madrid
EARLY 20TH CENTURY: FAILING MUNICIPALIZATION
Failed attempts to change the nature of the supplier
SGAB: “there is no need to search for more water”, “citizens consume little”, lack of hygienic habits
Metering generalized Maluquer (1920): high
priceslow consumption
1900-1930: important urban growth of Madrid
Water supply kept pace with urban growth
Metering generalized, water cheaper than Barcelona. High consumption.
Barcelona Madrid
CREATION OF SCARCITY VS. CREATION OF ABUNDANCE
Barcelona: production of scarcityMadrid: important mobilization of
resources
Important economic reforms in Catalunya
July 1936: Aguas de Barcelona Empresa Colectivizada
Unification of price
Reforms not as important as Barcelona
Canales del Lozoya Participation of
workers in the Board Improvement in labour
conditions
Barcelona Madrid
Important reforms at the social level but also at the economical level
A UTOPIAN BREAK: (BRIEF) COLLECTIVIZATION
FRANCO’S RULE: MASSIVE MOBILIZATION OF RESOURCES
Dramatic population growth (internal migration) Recurrent water problems and shortages
Barcelona Madrid
Scarcity concerns, population growth and political will triggers the incorporation of new
water flows
1950s: concession to the SGAB Llobregat
1960s: Ter transfer
1950s: Total regulation of the Lozoya river.
1960s: New rivers into the system
Source: Toran (1964). Las Grandes presas en España. Revista de Obras Públicas 2988:9-16
1934
97 Dams
1964
344 Dams
Francoist Spain:
Mobilization water resources for economic purposes and territorial articulation
DEMOCRACY, EUROPE, ECONOMIC CRISIS
Droughts hit hard. 1973: project to transfer water from the Ebro
Democracy+economic dowturn: Ebro transfer halted
Efforts continued to enlarge Madrid water supply system
Barcelona Madrid
Estabilization of water demand in the late 1970s and early 1980s due to the economic
downturnMultiple and multi-scalar layers of water
management
1990S: A CONFLICTUAL DECADE
Quality concerns Water wars in Barcelona
in the 1990s New proposals to bring
water from the Ebro: high contestation (2001)
Old projects of dams are revived for the Jarama and Sorbe rivers
Barcelona Madrid
Drought alarms European legislation sharply influencing water
policies
Socio-Environmental conflicts around water provision explode, especially in Barcelona
Both Madrid and Barcelona (cities) stop growing and even lose population from the 1980s onwards
Suburban growth in low density patterns: urban sprawl Swimming pools and lawns as new consumpiton
devices Uneven domestic water consumption, ranging from
100 to over 400 lpcd
Barcelona Madrid
WATER METABOLISM AND SUBURBANIZATION
Late 20th and early 21st century: Suburbanization of water scarcity
DROUGHT IN THE 2000S
The Tajo river as the new source
Creation of water markets?
Barcelona Madrid
Incorporation of resources from far beyond the territorial limitsDisplacement of the conflicts?
Desalination: a cornucopia?
Transfers back again: Rhone, Ebro
2000s: Severe and recurrent drought Mediatization of drought
The crises opens up the possibility to obtain water from further away
19th century: french capital; early 20th century: spanish capital
Spanish expansion (1960s and 1970s)
1980s: French capital Diversification and
internationalization (from 1980s)
1970s: early diversification (Hidráulica Santillana)
1990s: corporatization 2000s:
internationalization
Barcelona (SGAB, Agbar) Madrid (Canal de Isabel II)
THE ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY OF WATER SUPPLYOR HOW WATER LUBRICATES THE CIRCULATION OF CAPITAL (SWYNGEDOUW 1997)
From local/regional suppliers to multinational water companies
12 M people supplied >1200 municipalities >50% share Spanish
private water market
6 M people supplied (whole region of Madrid)
Expansion beyond Madrid
Agbar (Barcelona) Canal de Isabel II (Madrid)
Cáceres, 93,000
CAM >6M
INTERNATIONALIZATION AGBAR
Argentina starting point and main failure
Barcelona: AGBAR
INTERNATIONALIZATION CYII
1990s: some tenders in Latin America
World Bank (2001): CYII as a model to export
Colombia, Ecuador, República Dominicana
China as the new frontier
Madrid: Canal de Isabel II
DIVERSIFICATION: BEYOND THE WATER CYCLE
Bottled water Certification and
environmental control Waste management Health Other business
Energy Mobile
communications Environment
Barcelona Madrid
Many activities related to the Environment: new spheres/frontiers of capital accumulation
NEW CHOREOGRAPHIES OF POWER
“Foreignization” of the company (SUEZ) Blurring of the public-private frontier
Barcelona
NEW CHOREOGRAPHIES OF POWER
Context: neoliberal turn in urban governance in Madrid Rationale:
- Need of capital to cope with environmental needs and droughts
- Freedom of choice, popular capitalism Law approved to convert the CYII into a PLC Contestation and legal problems Process in a standstill, 2010 definitive privatization?
Madrid. Privatization of the Canal de Isabel II
HISTORY OF THE URBANIZATION OF WATER
Different ecological projectsDifference due to geographical reasons, to political reasons, and to the nature of the supplier
Madrid: key role of State intervention; status of Spanish capital city
Barcelona: continuous tension (but also close collaboration) between the public and the private sphere
Complex web of intricate power choreographies dialectical relation between State and Capital
Mediatization of the drought: the environment as an arena of power and spectacle (Brú 1997)
Resource scarcity: main argument for the expansion of the infrastructure, the creation of markets and the accumulation of capital
Old Hydraulic structuralism: water transfers and dams
New water structuralism: desalination (ecological modernization) but still water transfers (now more sophisticated through water markets)
DROUGHT: KEY ELEMENT IN THE ARTICULATION OF WATER POLITICS AND POLICIES
NEOLIBERALIZATION OF WATER SUPPLY (1)
Privatization: Public-Private Partnerships as a key element. Increase of private participation in the management of the resource.
Corporatization: New Private Management: the State emulates private practices and private ethosstep to ensure that a service remains public or prior step to privatization?
Commercialization: users as individual customers, redesign of institutions according to market principles
NEOLIBERALIZATION OF WATER SUPPLY (2)
Marketization: creation of water markets in both Madrid and Barcelona
Reregulation: the State plays a key role in rescripting the new choreographiesKarl Polany (2001[1944]:205): “no market economy separated from the political sphere is possible”
Commodification: incomplete commodification, fictitious commodity.
CRISIS AND NEOLIBERALIZATION
SCARCITY
DROUGHT
(Quantity)
More INFRASTRUCTURE
More efficiency in the consumption (increase prices)
Interconnect the water networks COMMODIFICATION
COMMERCIALIZATION
PRIVATIZATION
CORPORATIZATION
DE/RE-REGULATION
MARKETIZATION
FINANCIAL CRISIS of the public provider / regulator
SANITATION
ENV. QUAL.
(Quality)
More efficiency in the distribution (private management)
Social
Physical
More infrastructure
Increase the taxes on water
PRIVATIZATION
FUTURE PROSPECTS
The Great Transformation of the water supply in Madrid and Barcelona?
Barcelona Madrid
Agbar controlled by Suez
Desalination definitely controlled by private capital? Bulk water supply?
Total privatization of the Canal de Isabel II? Water markets in the Tajo?