Legislators: you carry a significant debt. More than thirteen years ago, his predecessors modified Article 4 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States to recognize in our maximum normative document the human right to water, specifically so that every person has “the right to access, disposal and sanitation of water for personal and domestic consumption in a sufficient, healthy, acceptable and affordable manner.”
Likewise, the added paragraph established that “the State will guarantee this right and the law will define the bases, supports and modalities for the equitable and sustainable access and use of water resources, establishing the participation of the Federation, the federal entities and the municipalities, as well as the participation of citizens to achieve these goals” (the added emphases are mine. I will return to them).
This constitutional reform also ordered the legislative branch to issue the aforementioned law within 360 days. That was almost fourteen years ago, that is, more than two six-year terms and four federal legislatures ago.
Despite the water crisis that is being experienced in Mexico and around the world, which is manifested in extreme phenomena such as prolonged droughts and floods – such as those that have recently cost us dozens of lives in the country; in the lack of access to vital liquid, especially in popular neighborhoods, indigenous, Afro-Mexican and rural communities; in overcrowded conditions and lack of drinking water for migrants; in the contamination of around 60 to 70% of the water bodies of the national territory; in the over-extraction of aquifers, the privatization of services and drinking water; among many other problems related to water that make this human right an aspiration not yet realized in our country; Despite all this, the legislative power has still not enacted the necessary and urgent general water law.
Why has such a vital issue, on which health (human, animal, geoecosystems), healthy eating, work, decent housing, cultural and recreational activities, and even aesthetic enjoyment depend, has not been addressed by legislators?
It is not that only the Constitution has mandated the promulgation of a law that lays the foundations to guarantee the human right to water in February 2012. Since then, tens of thousands of Mexican citizens, coming from indigenous and peasant communities, civil society organizations, universities and research centers, small and medium-sized businesses, human rights organizations, have demanded that the legislative branch comply with its constitutional mandate to enact said law. law. Even the national coordinator Agua para tod@s, Agua para la vida, has already done the work of developing a Citizen Initiative for the General Water Law that collects expert, local and traditional knowledge about water throughout the country, the product of hundreds of forums and which is supported by more than 200 thousand signatories.
Furthermore, in January 2022, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation declared that the omission made by the Congress of the Union by not having issued the General Water Law referred to in Article 4 of the Constitution is unconstitutional, and ordered the legislature to issue said law.
So, why hasn’t the legislature enacted the General Water Law? The most obvious answer is that a law that lays the foundations for the equitable and sustainable access and use of water resources—as mandated by the Constitution—would go against the interests of large water users, those 2% of concessionaires who monopolize around 70% of the country’s concessioned water. Likewise, because it would go against a scenario of impunity in which, under the principle of “the polluter pays”, large industries discharge their wastewater into rivers, lakes, highly vulnerable karst soils – such as the Yucatecan soils – and other bodies of the nation without a greater cost, not only because of the low fines, but, above all, due to the lack of surveillance and inspection by Conagua which, due to due to constant budget cuts and cases of corruption, it does not have the capacity to perform these functions throughout the national territory.
And this last scenario has been legally possible, to a large extent, thanks to the National Water Law (LAN) enacted in 1992, regulating the also modified Article 27, within the framework of neoliberal reforms – such as the agrarian and mining laws – and trade liberalization that laid the legal foundations for large industries to monopolize the nation’s assets (land, minerals, waters), with little or no environmental regulation, and which deepened both inequality in Mexican society and environmental pollution and devastation.
Therefore, it is nonsense to approve the proposal sent by the presidency of the republic on October 2, which consists of minor reforms to the LAN and the presentation of a General Water Law that includes very little of the work that citizens have done in more than 10 years.
Certainly, the proposed modification of LAN prohibits the transmission of concessions between individuals, proposes the recovery and reallocation of water volumes, increases administrative sanctions for those who fail to comply with the law and defines “water crimes”, includes provisions on rainwater harvesting, among other elements. However, as Agua para tod@s has observed, it leaves neoliberal foundations intact such as favoring concessionaires over the public interest (Article 29 bis); the “privatizing scheme of municipal systems and federal works” remains; maintains “the Basin Councils, where governments and large concessionaires have a say” (where the participation of local communities and people affected by the water crisis is very limited); “the self-regulated system of payment of ‘pollution fees’ that has poisoned the country’s waters” is preserved (instead of establishing the principle of “he who deteriorates restores”); “the water market remains through the purchase and sale, ‘reassignment’, of concessions, authorized by Conagua, without transparency,” and the destruction of aquifers by gas extraction continues to be “allowed” through fracking, among other problems. If these elements persist, the human right to water cannot be guaranteed.
It is unviable that, on the one hand, with one law, limited bases are established for the human right to water and, with another law, the bases that violate said right are maintained. It is like when an environment ministry promotes agroecological actions and tree planting while the economy, agriculture and other ministries promote and distribute highly dangerous pesticides and projects that deforest hundreds of hectares. The little that one hand does, the other undoes.
For these reasons, federal legislators of Yucatán, the repeal of the LAN and the approval of the General Water Law is urgent, particularly of the Citizen Initiative, which, in addition, has been fueled by intense participatory work by citizens of the entire country, including Yucatán, where the current Autonomous Comptroller of Water of Yucatán has held forums on the subject in the three states of the peninsula in which it has collected the main proposals of communities affected by their violation of the human right to water.
Thus, in the Citizen Initiative, specific provisions are included on cenotes and karst areas such as those that characterize Yucatán, until now ignored by the current LAN and the proposals sent by the federal government, despite their high vulnerability to pollution, overextraction, collapses, among other problems. Various specialists, civil and community organizations have warned of the serious contamination of the karst aquifers of the Yucatan Peninsula due to the lack of regulation of concessions for groundwater extraction and wastewater discharge in these very vulnerable territories. Let us remember that, last month, Profepa closed the Santa María Chí pig farm, among other reasons, for directly discharging its wastewater without permission to do so. Just like this, there are hundreds of production centers, since current legislation separates the process of granting water extraction from the discharge permit. It is urgent to stop this situation.
Legislators: today you have the opportunity to endorse and defend the Citizen Initiative of the General Water Law, a product of citizen participation, as mandated by our Constitution, and contribute to a true transformation of the country, laying the legal foundations so that the entire Mexican society – and, especially, the most vulnerable groups – no longer only aspires to the human right to water, but to live it as a reality.
If you want to support the water law that Mexico needs, I invite you to read this brief statement and sign it: Mérida, Yucatán
rodrigo.llanes.s@gmail.com
Researcher at Cephcis-UNAM
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