Corporatization and the Right to Water in Colombia: Conflicts, Citizenship and Social Inequality

This book explores how conflicts around  access to water shape cities, citizenship and infrastructures by tracing  how water is commodified and controlled by the Public Enterprises of  Medellín (EPM), one of the most successful publicly owned utility  companies in the global South.

Why  are water inequalities dramatically increasing in Medellín, a city that  is located in an area of bountiful water resources and owns a  successful, established utility company? This book explains this  paradoxical situation by weaving together two central threads. The first  is a critical historical analysis of the political, economic and  ecological conditions that enabled the city’s utility company to grow  and expand internationally, and the second is a rich account of the  everyday practices and struggles of residents in low-income areas to  secure access to water and demand citizenship rights. The EPM is a case  of global significance as the company continues to expand its commercial  operations in the Latin American services market by taking over the  utilities in Panama, El Salvador and Guatemala, Mexico and Chile.  Although its successful international expansion has been a source of  pride and admiration for many Colombians, the implementation of  market-oriented operating principles in all activities of the utility  company raises important and complex questions about its public  character and responsibility in the provision of basic services, which  has much wider implications given how it is poised to be a model for  other for-profit municipal service operations in other Latin American  countries. This book advances the empirical knowledge of corporatized  utilities, with a globally significant case, as well as providing new  theoretical insights with which to understand the limits, challenges and  opportunities faced by public utility companies to provide affordable  and equal access to water in cities.

This  book will be of great interest to students and scholars of water  resource management, corporatization, privatisation and commodification  of natural resources, urban studies, citizenship and human rights,  environmental sociology and Latin American studies.