[LUM#16] Waters and Debates
While water is a major global issue, water policies remain largely absent from public debate and are often unknown to the public. What are the underlying principles shaping these policies, and what power dynamics shape them? An explanation from Sylvain Barone and Pierre-Louis Mayaux, political science researchers at G-EAU* and authors of the book *Water Policies*.
With the presidential election just a few months away, what role do you think water plays in public and political discourse in France?
S.B: Arelatively minor one… The only political parties that have made it a real campaign issue are La France insoumise, from the perspective of the common good, and Europe Ecologie Les Verts, from the perspective of environmental protection.
How do you explain why this issue generates so little public interest?
P.L.M: We saw with the water shortages in São Paulo in 2015 and in Cape Town in 2017 that public debate erupts immediately when drinking water becomes scarce. That is not yet the case in France. Furthermore, water represents a much smaller budget item than energy or telecommunications, even for businesses. But this observation of low political engagement must be put into perspective: all across France, organizations are fighting to preserve this resource, and the issue of agricultural water, in particular, is beginning to garner widespread attention, as seen in the opposition to water retention basins in the Deux-Sèvres department.
The debate often centers on drinking water, even though water policies actually cover a much broader spectrum. Why is that?
S.B: Drinking water and sanitation—what’s known as the small water cycle—are the aspects of water policy that the public is most familiar with. The large cycle, or natural cycle—which involves waterways, natural environments, and groundwater—sparks less debate. One reason is that the small cycle often has a more direct impact on daily life.
But aren’t we talking about integrated water resources management (IWRM)?
P.L.M: Yes, water policy in France still follows the IWRM framework that became the international standard in the 1990s. This approach seeks to balance all water uses at the scale of a large watershed or a major river. From the outset, this movement was based on the idea that users and businesses must participate in water management and not leave the state solely responsible for water policies.
And how does this user involvement play out?
S.B: France has been a pioneer in this field, establishing river basin committees as early as the 1960s to cover major river basins. These are deliberative bodies that bring together elected officials, government agencies, and representatives of water users. They play a major role in shaping water policy. But this type of mechanism, which also exists at the local level, should not obscure the existence of much more discreet negotiation strategies between certain stakeholders.
In recent years, it seems that citizens are calling for more public services and less private ones…
P.L.M.: Yes, we’ve seen a real trend toward bringing services back under public management since Grenoble’s pioneering initiative in the early 2000s: Paris, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nice…
When it hasn’t been done yet, it’s on the agenda—in the platforms of green parties and left-wing parties in general. In South America, we’ve also seen the emergence of several major protest movements against large private water companies, culminating in the landmark cancellation of the Suez contract in La Paz in 2005 (read A Look Back at Suez’s Withdrawal from La Paz-El Alto, P-L. Mayaux).
These water multinationals—Veolia, Suez, and Saur—are actually French, by the way…
P.L.M.: Yes, for rather complex historical reasons, France has extensive experience in private water management, which is quite amusing since, in the public imagination, France is often associated with the state; yet on a global scale, it is actually one of the few countries to have developed a very powerful private sector in the small water cycle. When the World Bank talks about the French model, it is referring to the model of private management.
Isn’t it also because water is a technical issue that we leave it to the private sector?
S.B: Let me start by saying that we must not leave technical matters to the technicians! This is a genuine issue of democracy. The argument that water management is a technical matter suits certain stakeholders, who use it to sideline elected officials and citizens. To answer your question, technical expertise is not the exclusive domain of the private sector and is not the only argument in this debate. There is, in particular, a demand for transparency, based on the idea—which, incidentally, needs to be qualified—that public management is inherently less opaque.
Water policy in France is overseen by the Ministry of the Environment. Is the government pursuing an environmentally friendly policy?
P.L.M.: Environmental issues are much higher on the agenda in France and Europe than in the rest of the world, where the trend is more toward a supply-side approach to ensure the sustainability of economic activities. We keep seeking more and more water, going ever further without questioning consumption. We see mega-dams from China toEthiopia, the Maghreb, or the western United States…
Yet here too, you sound a warning…
S.B.: For the past 30 years, water policies have increasingly been presented as environmental policies. They have had undeniable positive effects on natural environments. Think of all that has been done in terms of sanitation. But the shift toward greening remains reversible at any moment. The revival of the policy of water reservoirs for agricultural irrigation, driven by powerful coalitions of stakeholders, clearly illustrates the balance of power and influence that shapes these policies.
What interest do public authorities have in keeping these issues out of the public eye?
S.B: Keeping “black boxes” closed means protecting negotiations—and even historic compromises—between the state and certain social groups. Opening them up risks undermining those compromises and may even spark collective mobilization.
* G-EAU (CIRAD – AgroParisTech – IRD – INRAE – Institut Agro)
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