Chile’s Constitutional Convention: Water for All?

Chile is in a reform process that will change the country in the long term. A constituent assembly discusses the question: Should water continue to be privately owned or should it be a public good in the future?

When Harry Jürgensen walks past his stables, he is at peace with himself. The 79-year-old has 900 cows, thanks to which his farm produces milk, butter and margarine. For the lucrative production, which Jürgensen has built up over many years, a lot of water is required: “My two wells pump it up – one from 80 meters depth, the other from 130 meters.”

The German-born Jürgensen has had the water rights for this for a long time, more precisely since the early 1980s. At that time, Chile’s dictator Augusto Pinochet had enforced an economically liberal constitution that defined water as private property. This constitutional principle still applies today. At that time, Jürgensen drilled the wells on his own and has since then been pumping the water up without having to pay anything for it. He can withdraw 19 liters per second.

Constitution from the time of the dictatorship

These private water rights could soon be over. Because a constituent assembly is currently negotiating a new Basic Law for Chile. 155 freely elected members are to initiate a fundamental change in the Andean republic. Harry Jürgensen is also one of them.

The current constitution dates from the time of the Pinochet dictatorship and is considered to be particularly business-friendly. Environmental protection does not play a major role in this and water is defined as private property. “We have to recognize what the previous constitution has brought,” says Juergensen. “Chile has become the most developed country in South America.”

Drought in the Atacama Desert

Other members of the Constitutional Convention see it completely differently: In the future, they want water to be codified as a public good that does not benefit industry first, but rather people. The biologist Cristina Dorador – also a member of the constituent assembly – knows from her own experience how scarce water is in northern Chile.

In their Antofagasta region lies the Atacama Desert, where there is hardly any water left, also because numerous mining companies have private water rights. Above all, copper and lithium mines pump it out in a laborious manner. At the same time, in many poor areas there is a lack of access to clean drinking water. There is no pipe network and the groundwater is often contaminated with arsenic, she says.

“Finding a New Balance”

The protests of 2019, when 1.5 million people took to the streets for more social policies, also called for fairer access to clean drinking water. The government then established the constituent assembly. “I am convinced that our future constitution will enshrine the right to water,” explains Dorador at an event in a desert community. It gives hope to many people who feel neglected by the state.

Farmer Harry Jürgensen now also believes that the state must give every inhabitant access to drinking water. So far, this has not been the case. “It can no longer be the case that agriculture and mines have priority over people when it comes to water. We have to find a new balance,” he says. They still have eight months to do this. Then the new constitution text must be ready.

You can see these and other reports on Sunday, November 21, 2021 at 7:20 pm in the “Weltspiegel”.