| Abstrakt: |
Neoliberal approaches to water governance, pioneered in Chile in the 1980s, are reappearing today on the centerstage of the water policy debate. While advocates claim that strong property rights, limits on government authority, and water markets can enhance environmental sustainability, efficiency, neutrality, and equity in the distribution of water rights, limited empirical evidence exists on whether neoliberal policies have delivered on these key promises. In this paper, we combine hydrological analysis with a nationwide data set on government water rights allocations between 1981 and 2021 to determine when and where water has been allocated beyond sustainable limits. We then integrate water market transaction and agricultural data to assess how allocations and scarcity conditions relate to spatial and temporal patterns in irrigation, crop distribution, and water market activity. Our results indicate that 30% of catchments are overallocated, and that continued government allocations of water rights during scarcity exacerbate already‐high inequalities in the distribution of water. We find no evidence that scarcity or water markets induced improvements in numerous efficiency metrics. Overall, our results support growing claims that the neoliberal water model fails to fulfill its key promises, notably to the detriment of nature and marginalized rural communities. Plain Language Summary: In this paper, we assess how and to what extent the neoliberal model for water policy‐as manifested through Chile's 1981 Water Code‐has delivered on its promises of environmental sustainability, efficiency, neutrality, and equity. We integrate hydrological analysis with a data set of nationwide water rights allocations between 1981 and 2021 to determine which catchments have been overallocated beyond sustainable limits. We then bring in novel data sets of water market transactions, crop distribution, and irrigation patterns to investigate how these overallocations relate to water market activity, various metrics of water efficiency, and equity in the distribution of water rights. Our findings of widespread overallocation, high inequality in water ownership, and lack of market‐induced efficiency improvements contributes to growing claims that the neoliberal model has failed to fulfill its key promises. Key Points: The free‐market water model in Chile has largely failed to deliver on its key promisesWater scarcity conditions create new opportunities for uneven water rights accumulationThe State plays a crucial role in distributing water‐even when and where markets should theoretically dominate [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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