Corporatization and the Right to Water in Colombia

This path-breaking book provides an in-depth look at the way that a publicly-owned and operated utility has increasingly come to behave like private utility. It also outlines a alternative ways to think about public services, highlighting how struggles by low-income residents for decommodification can shape public utilities in progressive and democratic ways. This highly readable book is a must read for anyone concerned about the future of public services in the global South with lessons for the global North as well. Susan Spronk, Associate Professor, School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa. Canada. Lopez offers a penetrating assessment of one of the most confounding debates in public services today: corporatized utilities. Public Enterprises of Medellin (EPM) is widely considered to be the most successful publicly-owned utility in Latin America, but paradoxes abound. From widespread service cutoffs to the manic development of environmentally destructive infrastructure, EPM operates as a Janus-faced symbol of 'public', illustrating how marketized forms of corporatization can strip public utilities of their potential for equitable and sustainable forms of public services. But Lopez avoids simplistic conceptualizations, seeking to disrupt an often-polarized debate while introducing concrete suggestions for more democratic public reforms. Lessons for Colombia, and lessons for the world. David McDonald, Director, Municipal Services Project, and Professor of Global Development Studies, Queen's University, Canada. Corporatization and the Right to Water in Colombia is fascinating detailed research that addresses how a state-owned company implements a complex relationship of infrastructures-citizenship based on the notion of water as public service for consumers. Marcela Lopez's book is a rigorous analysis from the perspective of political ecology of water that unveils how infrastructures supported by new technical-political processes, and ideals of environmental development and progress produce inequalities in access to water. But at the same time, it shows in a critical way the emergence of local struggles and daily practices over access to public water and demands of rights that allow reconfigurations of citizenship' rights. The book becomes an outstanding contribution that encourages us to rethink water as a common, and new insights to rights to water with urban contexts of inequality. Astrid Ulloa, Professor of Geography, National University of Colombia