Writings on water democracy Public policies and community water management in Latin America

In Latin America, people developed complex hydraulic systems and a rich hydrosocial culture. European conquest and colonization brought dispossession and the hoarding of land and water by haciendas established by settlers. Research on water management during colonial rule allows us to glimpse a panorama of conflict, struggle and pragmatism, with the constant renegotiation of terms in relation to the distribution and access to water.3,4

Throughout the nineteenth century, liberal reforms undermined the foundations of communal land ownership, individualizing it on the basis of ‘legally protected ownership’. This process resulted in large land grabs.5

 Today‘s community water management system is the heir to a long lineage of organizational approaches – many based in uses and customs that resisted colonial and republican dispossessions.

In the second half of the twentieth century, Latin American states began to set up institutions for water management. In the 1960s, nation states initiated a range of public policies towards centralized water governance. Government institutions were created to manage water, along with some state-owned companies. This expansion of basic services was mainly driven by multilateral organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank and the ‘Alliance for Progress’ which, promoted by the United States, was part of a strategy of continental geopolitical control against the spectre of communism. However, given the challenges of centralizing services, government strategies were to regulate and standardize self-management. It was during this period that OCSAs took on a greater role in public management.

In the 1980s and 1990s, structural adjustment programmes, dictated by multilateral financial organizations, promoted the decentralization of state management and private participation6,7 with the aim of privatizing public services. One of the most emblematic cases was Chile, whose Water Law (approved in 1981) defined water as a commodity, and privatized groundwater and other water sources. 

But there were also examples of successful resistance, where community organizations played a key role in providing water services without the profit motives of the private sector. The best known fight happened in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where a ‘Water War’ broke out in 2000 in response to the privatization of the city's municipal water supply company. It ended in victory, with the US-based multinational Bechtel ousted and the commitment to treat water as a human right not as a commodity, marking the defeat of policies imposed on the country by the World Bank.

Such struggles have underpinned a now thriving movement of grassroots- and Indigenous-led water services. According to UNESCO, as of 2022, there were around 180,000 OCSAs in Latin America and the Caribbean, providing water services to 80 million people.8 These services understand a community of people to be the public, and seek to cement this form of communal public ownership into water systems across Latin America.

For many people in Latin America, access to water is precarious and, in many cases, left to the individual to manage. Having to carry water from distant sources and buying water from water trucks are common. This means high costs in money and time and the risks of source contamination and insufficient consumption. 

In addition, water-related labour is often feminized. Within the division of roles imposed by patriarchal capitalism, tasks related to care (of children and elderly people, etc.) and household maintenance (food, water, cleaning, etc.) are assigned to women of all ages, so the provision of water is almost exclusively the responsibility of women and children. 

We can observe this reality in different cases throughout Latin America. For example, prior to the establishment of the locally managed system called the Asociación Comunal de Agua Potable las Mesas y Sálamo (ACAMESAL) in El Salvador, women and children had to walk more than two kilometres to fetch water. Meanwhile in the case of the Pilancho Drinking Water and Sanitation Committee in the province of Carrasco, or the Lomas del Pagador grassroots organization in the city of Cochabamba, both in Bolivia, the lack of water means greater obligations and duties for women. For this reason, women have been at the forefront of planning and building community water systems (OCSAs), including managing the material and political processes to execute them.

The OCSAs spring from the will to seek collective paths to solve a specific need. The main tool for this task is the assembly. This enables people to jointly decide on shared priorities, through deliberation and agreed forms of participation and collective work.9 Thus, the OCSAs become meeting and production centres for political decision-making over and above the management of water. However, just as the assembly is the main tool and space for community management, its sustenance is one of the greatest challenges. The ability to withstand the wear and tear of social life can be decisive for the existence of a community system.

The Junta de Aguas (water board) General Farfán is a clear example of the impact of water-related organizations. This community system is located on the border between Colombia and Ecuador and has become a space of meeting, inclusion and unity around the need for water. There, migrants and locals produce the commons around water through community associative networks and decisions on how to manage, distribute and live with it. The water board is a point of confluence and good neighbourliness among the inhabitants of this border area, once a place of military conflict between the two countries and currently, like all border areas, a place of transit and informal commerce.10

At the technical level, community systems have two main roles: financial administration (payments, fines, cuts) and repair of defects or extension of networks (plumbing). Both are essential for the system to function, requiring constant updates. 

Regarding the construction of infrastructure, in the vast majority of cases, community work is essential to be able to access solidarity financing that allows the acquisition of equipment and materials. The organization of the tasks is diverse and is generally based on shift systems, where family representatives must attend and collaborate, as is seen in the Phalta Orko committee and the Lomas del Pagador grassroots organization in Bolivia. Again, the work of supporting the assemblies, organising community activities and managing the administration is mainly done by women.

Federal associations of OCSAs are another essential component of community management. They form an important part of the water management ecosystem and contribute to its defence and support. Individual OCSAs supervise and improve the care of river basins, and generate community synergies to improve technical and administrative management, sometimes also involving the local public authorities. At a more political level, the networked entities articulate and channel the demands and problems of grassroots organizations, pooling shared problems and promoting joint solutions. In this sense, they act as representatives to the state in the event of conflicts.

One of the main tensions in the field of water management is the contradictory relationship between the defence of autonomy and the controlling force of the state. The second half of the twentieth century saw many attempts to centralize water management by absorbing the autonomous community water organizations and, where that was not possible, to impose norms, controls and demands on them. At the same time, the neoliberal turn towards decentralization also attempted to privatize public and community management. This dual pressure makes ‘the public’ a complex concept.11

In several instances, processes to municipalize community systems have been resisted and rejected by the populations. For example, in the Province of Sucumbios, Ecuador, the 7 de Julio Water and Sanitation Administrative Board, belonging to the 7 de Julio Parish, functioned as part of the local municipality. This made it dependent on the authorities in power and in this instance led to poor administration. In response, the community fought for the Water Board to become administratively independent. In 2005, this was achieved with very good results. The community management is now more transparent and efficient, which has allowed it to grow its area of coverage and the corresponding income. 

The General Farfán Water Board faced a similar situation. Its success attracted the attention of the municipal government, which tried to take it over. The local authorities started a smear campaign to convince families that the system should be handed to the local authorities. However, doubts emerged concerning the new management model and social participation within it, and the municipal co-option was rejected and the Board's autonomy retained. 

In Cochabamba, Bolivia, the municipal department proposed the Misicuni dam as a solution to the water shortages. The project faced challenges with building regulations and distribution infrastructure in a context of heterogeneous forms of water management. The proposal was to create large municipal companies to receive the water flow. Cooperatives and water committees rejected this option because it would imply the absorption and loss of their systems. In addition, the communities feared price imposition and the destruction of their organizational forms.12

Control and monitoring by states and their institutions pose another problem for OCSAs. The proposed regulations often do not respect the OCSAs’ reality or their non-commercial and community nature, but are based entirely on public management as a matter of ‘’efficiency’. 

In El Salvador, the Asociación Comunal de Agua Potable de las Comunidades Tihuapa Norte y Tlacuxtli (ASCATLI) water board has made significant technical advances, such as using free software technologies to collect data on water consumption, map the terrain, and manage billing. However, they fear  the new Water Resources Law, which prohibits the privatization of water, will ‘bureaucratize’ community management by requiring new permits and licences that are virtually impossible to obtain.13

In Chile, despite water privatization, support mechanisms for and legal recognition of the ‘APR’ (rural drinking water) organisations were maintained through the Ministry of Public Works. However, until the approval of a new law in 2020, small community associations did not qualify for this institutional support because they did not meet the ‘social profitability’ criteria.14 This applied to the El Manzano drinking water supplier, in the commune of Petorca. As it was unable to receive support through official channels, it was assisted by the Rural Drinking Water Union of the Petorca River Basin, together with the Water Affairs Office of the municipality of Petorca. The collaboration of these organizations (a community alliance and an allied public institution) has been key to overcoming the regulatory barriers that denied the community association support.

Despite the challenges of co-option outlined above, as with the El Manzano example, there are many successful experiences of public–community models. Legal and financial support from municipal entities to OCSAs is an important factor in many models of community water management in Latin America. For example, OCSAs Phalta Orko, Olimpo or 3 de Noviembre in Bolivia, and the Asociación Comunitaria Unida por el Agua y la Agricultura (ACUA) water board in El Salvador count on multiple forms of municipal support. Including the construction of infrastructure, logistical or accounting support and in some cases the creation of an institutional umbrella under which projects can operate. These collaborations facilitate the creation of a public–community articulation in the division of labour, administration and supervision. 

Public-community collaborations also take the form of co-management. Take the Bajo San Miguel Water Board in Ecuador, which transformed a failed municipal initiative into an autonomous organization supported by the municipality. In Bolivia, following conflicts and negotiations, grassroots organization La Vertiente achieved co-management of municipal water distribution in the city of Cochabamba.

Despite these good examples, the state does not always respond to the needs of water management communities. In many cases, centralization is a problem because it overlooks the ethical and political dimensions of community organizations, which are too complex to fit a simplified notion of ‘administration’. It is also evident that when public–community initiatives respect collective decision-making, and develop new ways of working and coordination that respect existing functions, the collaboration can work well and strengthen institutional life and water management.

The climate crisis is accelerating and ecosystems are collapsing at a global level while Latin American governments persist in seeing the ‘commodity consensus’15 as the main path to economic development. 

In some cases, there is a direct relationship between extractivism, climate change and the establishment of community water systems. In Bolivia, the ‘Pajpani Centro’ Drinking Water and Sanitation Committee emerged in response to the collapse of the municipal system. The system had collapsed due to the depletion of its wells, itself a result of rising temperatures.

In El Salvador, the San Blas Communal Drinking Water Association was created by a community displaced by Tropical Storm Ida in 2009. The construction of the new settlement gave rise to organizing around water.

The El Manzano Committee in Chile was born as a result of the severe water shortage in its commune, Petorca, in the Valparaíso region. This tragedy was caused by mining and the indiscriminate use of water by the agricultural industry.16 The depletion of wells forced many drinking water organizations like El Manzano to develop alternatives, including solidarity financing and seeking support from community water parent organizations.

Community struggles against extractive attacks and to protect water sources are evident in many Latin American countries. Unlike many public management systems, which tend to distance consumers from their socio-environmental realities, OCSAs are aware and active in defending them.

In Ecuador, the Jaguar 2 water board played a fundamental role in environmental care, through environmental conservation and afforestation. It also opposed hydrocarbon activities near its sources. Similarly, in response to the threat of water contamination by local industrial projects, the Tepeagua Canton Potable Water Management Board in El Salvador filed two lawsuits with the Environmental Court to stop the stone extraction permits.17 In the Association of Community Members of the Carrizal Rural Aqueduct in the Dominican Republic, water systems also served as a way to defend agricultural lands, natural parks and water recharge areas. Likewise, in Colombia, the Aguas Cristalinas Los Soches Aqueduct was established to protect the Los Soches ‘Agropark’, maintaining its agricultural character in an urbanized area. 

These experiences show the harsh reality in which community water management is carried out. Disadvantageous legislation, voracious extractive activities and increasing climate-related challenges combined create a hostile context in which community management persists and struggles to survive thanks to its organizational capacity and people’s inalienable need for water.

In recent years, there have been important regulatory initiatives by community organizations in pursuit of recognition and better cooperation between the public and community spheres. The legal battles surrounding water constitute a contentious space, with multiple interests at stake. Let’s take a look.

El Salvador

Water boards in El Salvador have been fighting a long struggle. In general, and for decades, the behaviour of the state has had a detrimental impact on rural communities. Neoliberal policies concerning decentralization and private investment have often worsened conditions for OCSAs. In addition, due to the lack of institutional support for rural and community water management, along with the civil war (1979–1992), the state is gravely indebted to the Salvadoran population for not upholding its human right responsibilities in relation to public services.

Social movements have been integral to legislative wins in El Salvador. For more than 15 years communities were demanding a general water law.18 Successful campaigning led to the introduction of the General Water Resources Law, sanctioned in December 2021. This law recognizes water as a human right and bans privatization. Despite the progress made, some organizations consider it insufficient and its regulation and application are still the subject of dispute. 

The first point of conflict was the – so far unsuccessful – attempt to impose a basic charge for water on both companies and OCSAs, without differentiating between the type of use. Currently, social organizations such as the National Network of Water Boards and the Water Forum say that the requirements to be recognized as an OCSA are costly and difficult to comply with.19 There is even fear that the formalization process will challenge the already complicated land titling scenario, in which a formal record is being created of who owns the land and what rights they have over it – an issue facing numerous Water Boards. f the more than 2,500 OCSAs in El Salvador, only 439 are registered, according to the El Salvador Water Forum.20 

In addition, although water is recognized as a fundamental right and its privatization is prohibited, the law establishes that 15-year concessions can be awarded to those who use large volumes, such as companies and industries.21 Finally, there is also a problem of institutional representation, as the Salvadoran Water Authority is made up of 14 members, of which only one is a representative of civil society.

Chile 

In Chile, Law No. 20998, issued in 2017, provides a legal framework for rural health services. Discussions on the law started in 2008 and its implementation began in 2020.22 Despite these years of debate, the implementation of the law has shown major deficiencies and needs reform. 

The main points of concern for rural water organizations in Chile are the requirement to register their OCSAs and the forms of oversight. Rural drinking water organizations are formalized through the Ministry of Public Works, which has a number of roles, including technical and financial oversight. In many cases, the proposed standards are not only costly and difficult to meet, but failure to comply with them could endanger the organization itself, risking intervention and takeover by third parties. Thus, poor application of the law could erode the community service ethos, replacing it with a business approach.23 

In response, community organizations united by Chile’s national APRs association proposed modifying Law 20998. The progressive government of Gabriel Boric initiated the National Single Roundtable dialogue of institutional and community actors to bring the law ‘closer to rural realities and to respect the identity of community management’.24 To date, the dialogues have managed to draft the amended Law No. 21520, in which regulatory adjustments are made to make it more viable and to better reflect the actual situation in which community rural water managers find themselves. 

Ecuador

In Ecuador, the 2008 Constitution, under the progressive government of Rafael Correa, recognized Mother Nature as having rights, water as non-privatizable, and the need for strict public or community management (articles 314–318). On this basis, a new water law called the ‘Intercultural Organic Law on the Use, Management and Protection of Water Resources’ has been under discussion for years. Negotiations have reopened the potential for improving the relationship between community systems and public entities. In 2022, meetings were held between the national government (through the Ministry of the Environment) and organizations linked to water management to discuss the new law.

The Network of Social and Community Organizations in Water Management in Ecuador  recommended modifications that benefit the OCSAs: technical and financial support, subsidies for electricity, soft credit lines, reversion of concessions on water recharge areas (where surface water infiltrates the ground and replenishes aquifers), creation of a public investment fund for drinking water, and recognition of community water associations and federations.25

Additionally, in 2023, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador presented its own version of the law, which highlights the fair distribution of water and the care of the ecosystems, sources and basins on which the hydrosocial cycle depends. By proposing that a Plurinational Intercultural Water Council should be the head of the Single Water Authority (art. 64), they hope to ensure active participation by society. This proposal also highlights, in the declaration of principles (art. 7), self-organization and self-management, legal pluralism and interculturality, which emphasizes respect and care for the symbolic dimension and the spiritual connection between Indigenous communities and the bodies of water in their territories.26 

Colombia

In Colombia, unlike the countries mentioned above, the current struggle is not for a general water law, but for a specific law for community systems. The National Network of Community Aqueducts of Colombia has been working on this proposal since 2011, through assemblies, workshops and meetings. In 2024, a meeting was held between representatives of the OCSAs and members of the Senate to discuss the proposal.

This law proposes a legal framework for community water management. The general objective is to guarantee the ‘fundamental and collective rights of organized communities’ around water. The proposal calls for fair, effective and real participation in water policies to democratize water management and to value community management and its real contribution to the country’s hydrosocial cycles.

It is proposed to be part of ‘the policies related to the conservation and restoration of ecosystems essential to the water cycle.’ The bill also enables public support through programmes to strengthen community systems at municipal levels, respect for the autonomy of organizations, co-participation in managing micro-basins, and active participation in the conservation and restoration of ecosystems inherent to the water cycle.27

Bolivia

In the 16 years of Plurinational Bolivia (2009–2024), laws, reforms and programmes were approved that sought to approach and strengthen urban and rural community water systems.28 But new debates and conflict scenarios have also opened.

The current law, the Water Law of 1906, is outdated, ineffective and out of line with the new legal systems. Since 2011, organizations gathering at the National Water Summit promoted the ‘Water for Life Framework Law Project’.29 However, this proposal was rejected and its discussion is still stalled by the Plurinational Legislative Assembly. The delay may be due to the interests at stake related to how the new law would affect water concessions for industrial and extractive activities, as well as the environmental regulations that could be created as a result of the policy.

The experiences and reflections presented in this article on the paths taken by OCSAs across Latin America show the complex relationship between states and community water management. In the first place, the states’ water policies are enacted under pressure from multilateral financial entities, extractive industries and unfair international markets. Secondly, the historical impossibility of centralizing water management has given way to an unequal situation where the state acts more as an overseer than as a supporting and coordinating entity. 

Public policies have long approached community management as a problem to be solved in the future and not as a sustainable solution to ongoing water problems. However, thanks to the continued struggle of water justice organizations, OCSAs have become more relevant and vocal in defending their interests through legal battles to reorient and broaden states' community management frameworks. 

Despite government programmes, institutional frameworks and regulations, OCSAs continue to have an important presence in Latin America. OCSAs are stewards of the human right to water, often in adverse contexts of poverty, war, displacement and drought. The fact that OCSAs continue to respond to the need for water in spite of sometimes hostile contexts is a testament to their autonomy that demands respect. This is why OCSAs challenge the top-down governance that tends to contribute to these contexts.

The participation of women in the organization, defense and construction of community systems stands out, while women also take charge when water is lacking. However, this is the result of the feminization of reproductive tasks. There is a need for greater democratization of and equity in water work, alongside the other work required to sustain human life, including childcare, education, healthcare and domestic tasks.

Today, a combination of climate crisis, caused and worsened by unbridled extractivism, has huge impacts on community water management. The reduction of water resources, the result of overexploitation and drought, is already a cause of conflict between communities, public systems and private entities.

Federated community water organizations are playing a fundamental role in the development of legal proposals from the grassroots that reflect the reality of the OCSAs. These associations recognize the important role that OCSAs play in local water provision, contribute to their technical and administrative improvement, and, above all, enable political participation in decision-making.

OCSAs are a response to the need for water and they demand that their organizational autonomy must be maintained, understanding that water management is also part of the political life of the communities and their territories, especially in rural areas.

The notion of ‘legal pluralism’ invites reflection on a rights-based approach in terms of how the human right to water is socially and institutionally interpreted. If the state is understood to be the guarantor of human rights, local communities run risks related to the ownership of sources. Moreover, the possible centralization of water management could generate new conflicts of interest between community systems and state entities.

Thus, legal pluralism raises the consideration of uses and customs in water management, that is, forms based on pragmatism, tradition, mutual support and the constant establishment of agreements (and disagreements). Such practices establish water as a commons, the social and political link with the environment, between the human and non-human. Community water management as we know it is heir to these forms. The intervention of the state, as a consequence of its duty over water, can thus hinder hydrosocial cycles that respond to their own cultural dynamics.30

As stated in the proposal for a new community water law in Colombia: ‘The human right to water is defended and recreated from a multidimensional conception that includes the individual right to water — which we have always associated with the right to life — to dignity; but also the right to self-management and the collective right to the protection, conservation and restoration of ecosystems essential to the water cycle’.31

Who owns the water? Who makes decisions about it? Community water organizations in Latin America seek to answer these questions by democratizing decision-making, respecting autonomy, working hard in adverse situations, and constantly fighting against impositions, dispossession, and climate change.