Thea Gordon-Rawlings and Sarah Lo

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Key words: environmental injustice, water privatization, neoliberalism, governance, partnerships.

 

Introduction

The following analysis highlights environmental injustices caused and perpetuated in the processes and observed outcomes of the privatisation of Metropolitan Manila’s water supply. It questions the ability of neoliberal processes of water privatisation to realise what they were supposedly set out to do: satisfy the basic human right to water, in cities of the urbanising world especially in Latin America and in growing Asian economies. In contrast to this, the role of civil society in providing water services for the urban poor, in particular those living in informal settlements, will also be examined.

Background

The privatisation of Metropolitan Manila’s water supply took place against a backdrop of rapid political and economic structural changes that took place both in the Philippines and internationally. Though it was claimed that this move increased the proportion of people in the city’s East Zone with access to a safe water supply from 26% to 99%, the figures did not take into account the rate of urbanisation or the “off of the map” expansion of informal settlements which disclaims its actual success (Haughn, 2012). Modelled on the Parisian privatisation process, Metropolitan Manila’s water and sewer utility in 1997 led to the separate public-private concession contracts for the East Zone and the West Zone. Concessionaire Maynilad won the bid for the West Zone, incurring 90% of the debt of the national public utility, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS), as well as the deteriorated and unreliable infrastructure of that part of the city. The state of the existing infrastructure would later lead the private operator into serious financial difficulty, adversely affecting the coverage and cost of its services. The Manila Water Company covered the East Zone and found itself in a comparably more favourable position due to prudent financial management practices in the face of two external, unforeseen shocks that took place just after the privatisation process occurred. The first of these was an unprecedented drought of the Angat Reservoir, the aquifer providing 98% of the water for Metropolitan Manila’s some 10 million residents, and the second was the Asian financial crisis of 1997 (Wu and Malaluan, 2008: 215).

Since privatisation occurred, water-related infections fell and the health of millions of inhabitants improved. Furthermore, a significant proportion of Manila’s population who had previously spent a greater portion of their income on water from private vendors saw an increase in the available amount of income to allocate elsewhere (Haughn, 2012). Maynilad struggled to meet their targets for coverage, to reduce non-revenue water[1] (NRW) and to maintain affordable tariffs despite the impacts of a financial crisis. In contrast, Manila Water remained afloat and achieved a reduction of NRW from 56% to 11% as well as an increase in coverage from 67% to 99% (Cheng, 2013).

To increase their coverage, Manila Water developed a multi award-winning Flagship Project known as “Tubig para sa Barangay” (TPSB, Water ForThe Poor), that allowed it to increase its services by passing on a significant amount of responsibility for water losses and the collection of payments to individuals or community-based organisations. TPSB currently accounts for the supply of half of the concessionaire’s customers connected to the network (Matous, 2013). Whilst the United Nations admirably praised the program for fostering partnerships that ‘enhance the community’s sense (emphasis added) of ownership and increase the willingness to pay’ (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, 2005 cited in Cheng, 2013), the process had effectively transferred a significant proportion of the social and political costs of water provision onto local communities through so-called “partnerships”[2]. In some areas, the program entrenched existing stratifications by favouring well-connected community leaders in allocating water supply rights and the widespread concentration of decision-making and profits in the hands of these individuals (Matous, 2013).

While TPSB is said to have increased social cohesion, this is not always the case. In fact, since being colonised by the Spanish, the Philippines has a long history of politically and economically-powerful families that have dominated local governance (Porio, 2012; Shatkin, 2000). This stratification of society erodes the potential for equal representation in some local communities and breeds significant tensions between members of communities. This is likely to have had implications for the capacity for communities to self-organise, leading to contempt rather than solidarity among the urban poor.

When discussing the selection of local water suppliers among 40 competing organisations, an employee from Manila Water was disappointed in the realisation that they only wanted to ‘get the money’ (Matous, 2013: 222). There seemed to be, then, a level of mistrust in people’s ability to manage the water supply fairly and transparently. Furthermore, the fact that many communities did not have partnerships with NGOs, which were thought to be more accountable in the eyes of Manila Water (Haughn, 2012), was a further limitation to an effective delegation of responsibilities.

 

Applying the Political Ecology Framework

Clearly there is a fundamental flaw in the neoliberal model, due to the perceived financial risk associated with servicing low income groups in Manila, meaning that an essential human need is still not being met (Budds and McGranahan, 2003). Budds and McGranahan (2003) highlight the incompatibility of both public and private utilities in providing universal access to water, but suggest that it is the way in which privatisation is developed in local contexts that determines its success, suggesting that private-community or tripartite partnerships only succeed under specific circumstance at a local community scale.

Cheng (2013) is hopeful that there exist direct ways of addressing the remaining barriers to providing the unconnected with access to a clean, regular supply of water. These would include strengthening the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System regulatory office, creating an independent reviewer role for members of civil society and third party auditing of concessionaires’ progress. One way in which this could be done is by carrying out surveys of unconnected houses rather than asking for feedback from a small proportion of serviced households, which is the mechanism currently in place. It remains to be seen, however, whether the implementation of such schemes would level out the most recent layers of stratification within Metropolitan Manila. It might be that this would only solidify existing power structures. As Bryant (2002) has posited with reference to NGOs operating on behalf of biodiversity and indigenous people in the Philippines, despite their frequent motivations to empower the poor, do some NGOs serve only to reproduce and solidify existing inequalities through the Foucauldian notion of “governmentality”?

Finally, there has been a tendency within the literature to focus on the under-use of water by the urban poor and a relative neglect of the amount of usage by the richest few. How is over-usage in some areas affecting the longevity of the water supply? How would water be distributed if there was another drought? Is there an over-reliance upon the Angat reservoir? What kind of an effect could policy reform regarding usage and resource redistribution have upon the urban poor?  Whether it is possible for any utility, public or private, to deliver a service that is truly environmentally sustainable is an unanswered question. What is certain is that Metropolitan Manila is not yet stepping up to the mark.

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CITE THIS ARTICLE

Gordon-Rawlings, T. and Lo, S. (2014). The impossibility of watering the one percent: nature’s truth or man’s construction? | UCL Encyclopaedia of Political Ecology. [online] Available at: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/esd/the-impossibility-of-watering-the-one-percent-natures-truth-or-mans-construction/

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Bibliography:

Bryant, R., L., (2012), ‘Non-governmental Organisations and Governmentality: ‘Consuming’ Biodiversity and Indigenous People in the Philippines’, Political Studies. 50 (2), pp. 268-292.

Budds, J. and McGranahan, G., (2003), ‘Are the debates on water privatisation missing the point? Experiences, from Africa, Asia and Latin America’, Environment and Urbanization, 15 (2), pp.87-113.

Cheng, D., (2013), ‘(In)visible urban water networks: the politics of non-payment in Manila’s low-income communities’, Environment and Urbanization. 25 (1), pp. 249-260.

Haughn, S., (2012), ‘Making Connections in the Philippines: Water Privatization Across Manila’s East Zone’. [Online].  Available at: http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2012/world/making-connections-in-the-philippines-water-privatization-across-manilas-east-zone/. [Accessed: 4^th December 2013].

Matous, P., (2013), ‘The making and unmaking of community-based water supplies in Manila’, Development in Practice, 23 (2), pp. 217-231.

Porio, E., (2012), ‘Decentralisation, power and networked governance practices in Metro Manila’, Space and Polity, 16 (1), pp. 7-27.

Shatkin, G., 2000. Obstacles to Empowerment: Local Politics and Civil Society in Metropolitan Manila, the Philippines. Urban Studies, 37(12), pp. 2357-2375.

Swyngedouw, E., 2005. Governance Innovation and the Citizen: The Janus Face of Governance-beyond-the-State. Urban Studies, 42(11), pp. 1991-2006.

Wu, X. and Malaluan, N.A., 2008. A Tale of Two Concessionaires: A Natural Experiment of Water Privatisation in Metro Manila. Urban Studies, 45(1), pp. 207-229.

 

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