Water, the primordial element of life on Earth… Filling rivers, seas, streams, lakes and much more with energy, this liquid is the vital key to the existence of everything on the planet. Due to its great presence on the blue globe, we take its inexhaustible existence for granted. However, despite the fact that it covers 70% of the surface, only 2.5% of it is suitable for human consumption.
But, even that 2% has been able to be at our disposal to make the organism of billions of people in the world work, or at least of the vast majority.
In Mexico, water scarcity easily embeds itself into daily life. As of today, the country has around 112, 336, 538 million inhabitants and they all require water, but how many actually have access to it?
Statistics of the water crisis in Mexico
For decades Mexican society has experienced a gradual loss of water. Whether due to contamination, a deficient water network or overexploitation, around 12 million people do not have access to this vital liquid.
The obstacles in its management are diverse, but the main one seems to be the great demand for water resources. The drying up of bodies of water increases year after year, the rivers that once crossed the country have dried up, piped or belong to private companies.
Susan Montoya Bryan/AP
In Mexico City, the capital of the country, there are thousands of inhabitants without a good water service. Leaks in infrastructure plus the exploitation of groundwater translate into looting that exceeds the capacity of aquifers and people without water.
Of the 757 hydrological basins in the country, 649 are available, but 105 are under a condition of overexploitation. In addition to this, 8 of the 13 hydrological regions of the country suffer from water stress and more than 70% of the rivers, lakes and dams have a significant degree of contamination.
According to the National Water Commission (Conagua), 57% of the water consumed by the country is lost through evaporation, which is caused by the inefficient infrastructure of the network. But, in the rest of the country, there is also commercial looting of water and the privatization of public or community wells.
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Around the water and its obstacles
The main questions now are: what happens to the water? Why are there polluted waters? Why are they fighting over the vital liquid? The answers are unclear, although at this point they have become self-evident.
In Mexico, around 70% of the water is used in agriculture. The rest is divided into industrial, public and energy use. The problem is that, although the use of water is externally identified, this country does not have a water reform that allows good administration of the resource.
The results of this mismanagement translate into contamination, exploitation and commodification of water resources throughout the country. In the midst of a situation determined as «water crisis», Mexico is one of the main countries in consumption of bottled water.
It is not a coincidence that there is a lucrative market of some 10 billion dollars that is concentrated in three companies: Danone (Bonafont), Coca-Cola (Ciel) and PepsiCo (E-pura). With 38%, 25% and 19% correspondingly, these three brands capture 82% of the entire bottled water market. But how do these companies get their water?
Also in Ecoosphere: In Mexico, the processed food industry receives more water than society
The hoarding of water in Mexico
The report «Water millionaires, an approach to the hoarding of water in Mexico» It is an analysis that every inhabitant of Mexico should know. Conducted by Wilfrido Gómez Arias and Andrea Moctezuma for the UAM magazine Argumentos, the researchers analyze the regime of concessions granted by Conagua in the country.
In a nutshell, the study reveals water rights in Mexico. The investigation details that around 6,427 users have concessions to extract close to one million cubic meters of water.
Among the users with concessions are breweries, mining companies, bottlers, agribusiness and even Petróleos Mexicanos and the CFE. Only the largest steel company in the world, ArcelorMittal extracts 100 and a half Azteca states every year and is just one of the bunch.
Considering all these industries and their actions, the «water millionaires» end up drying up, contaminating and exploiting rivers and springs in Veracruz, Querétaro, Michoacán, Yucatán and many more. On balance, the Conagua has granted from 1993 to January 2020 a total of 514 thousand 684 titles and permits to extract water.
swamps
From this point of view, things are quite clear: water in Mexico does not run out… it is looted. There are the millionaires who can pay to extract the liquid and on the other side are the inhabitants who do not have access to a basic service. This is without counting the agreements between the United States and Mexico to grant water to the American country.
From looting to mismanagement
Water management in Mexico is going through a vicious cycle. We know that water is there, because thousands of companies use it to create their products every day. However, water does not reach everyone.
The beginning of this toxic chain begins for a simple reason: the supply is insufficient, irregular and of low quality, even unsafe for health. Simply put, water management is lousy.
The water network in the country is unsustainable and obsolete. Currently, the water supply in Mexico is distributed among three main routes: public service, bottled water and tanker trucks. The reason why bottled water is the second route of supply is because the operating systems are simply not reliable.
It is logical that the bottled water industry inflates when 81% of the population of Mexico does not trust its supply network. It is impossible to stop a commercial looting when the basic service by law does not exist. From this vision it is clear that from the political bowels it is more lucrative to commodify water instead of restructuring the national water network. It is true, we all have to take care of the water, but before that we should have access to it or… is the water just for a few?
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