The Governance Crisis in Urban Water Management in Mexico

Abstract

In Mexico, political, social and technical analyses clearly show that the bureaucracies charged with the public management of the water sector have not only proved deficient in achieving their assigned goals but, even worse, have heightened the contradictions in society as a result of incorrect technical diagnoses, poorly informed processes for designing and constructing infrastructure and allocating water resources, and corrupt mechanisms for implementing policy. The chapter examines more than a half-century of the activities of the water bureaucracy, from the creation of the Ministry of Water Resources up to the present time with the emergence of the National Water Commission, to show that Mexico’s highly-regarded technical capacity for engineering in the water sector has left a heritage of environmental destruction and administrative incompetence and corruption that has imposed an unacceptable cost on the nation, a nation that should be well-placed to face the multiple challenges of operating a national ecosystem programme to promote social welfare, economic development, and sustainable environmental management in an era when socio-economic crisis and climate change threaten the country’s very foundations. The analysis ends by pointing up the role in today’s society of organizations drawn from civil society.