Salt in the wound
Article in Spanish here.
Uruguayans are facing a double scourge with the crisis affecting half of the population; aside from the dystopia of not having potable water despite vast freshwater reserves beneath our feet, we find ourselves devoid of independent ideas, critical capacity, and with little hope that future crises will find us better prepared.
The causes behind this supply crisis are clear: the water intake infrastructure is unable to withstand such significant flow reductions. The next question is: Did we know this could happen? The answer is yes. There were complaints from local residents, reports, and warnings from various stakeholders (as the archives make abundantly clear), along with project initiatives and governmental reports that gathered dust in recent years. However, my concern for addressing this in the long term is not solely focused on the causes or technical solutions.
We have encountered at least two clear groups of denialists attempting to divert attention: those vehemently defending the current government’s negligence and those who attempt to label all water-utilizing companies as “plunderers”, regardless of their identity, shifting the discussion away from governmental political responsibilities — both current and previous — in managing the primary basin.
Defenders of the current government have struggled to disseminate unclear information, ignoring the population’s exposure level. Their habitual ideological obstinacy has prevented timely action, with the most affected individuals left at the center. There is no self-criticism regarding the massive cuts to OSE resources during droughts or the immense losses due to infrastructure deficits. Despite numerous warnings from academia, workers, and technicians about what would happen — first agriculturally, then with potable water supply — the government chose to delay action.
It’s not news that leaders are facing unprecedented challenges due to climate change. However, the strategy of waiting for circumstantial climatic trends to reverse cannot form a rhetoric of excuses that Uruguayans can accept, turning leaders into victims rather than demanding contingency plans that meet the current demands.
On the other hand, some prefer not to attribute responsibilities to state policies or governmental negligence, instead arbitrarily prioritizing complaints about water usage in basins unrelated to the Santa Lucía basin, which do not pose a threat to the water supply of the respective localities. The use of irrigation systems for production — which was previously demanded from producers to address the agricultural emergency last summer — has now been labeled as immoral waste, and even the use of transgenic cultivars has been cited as a cause of drought in an argumentative line that has yet to be fully reconstructed.
Once again, the dynamics of water use and cycles are considered as if it were a giant bucket or a bank account. Amidst the chaos, the issue of nationwide water pollution and quality is brought up as if eutrophication, agrochemical contamination, and their multiple causes were related to the state’s inability to supply potable water to the metropolitan area. As if irrigation use in reservoirs outside the Santa Lucía basin directly affected water supply in Montevideo. As if surplus water in one basin could be easily transferred elsewhere, as if aqueducts could be built overnight, or as if everything were as simple as transferring water from one bucket to another, contrary to the complexity involved.
I also believe that paradoxically, criticism of the extraordinary profits garnered by bottling industries and government tax revenues from increased bottled water consumption have been sidelined in the catastrophe of not issuing a prudent and differentiated critique of corporate responsibility for water usage. The only entrepreneurs benefiting from this crisis are those selling bottled water, and I consider there to be no more urgent issue than this on which to raise objections regarding water privatization in Uruguay.
A plural sensitivity regarding agricultural consciousness, food production, food sovereignty, and the desired direction of our country would allow for clearer discussions without the need to be experts. We can understand the difference between production that utilizes our natural resources in favor of national interests and that which does the opposite, with all the nuances and contradictions that may be encountered in the process of reaching consensus on this matter. However, we are turning our backs on agri-food systems and their operations with each step we take.
This does not diminish the enormous importance of penalizing local and regional pollution from various artificial chemical sources, combating anthropic impacts on water supply from surface or groundwater intakes throughout the country, and undoubtedly, also engaging in serious discussions about the implications of possible water usage fees. However, a national crisis cannot be addressed with frantic desperation where all aspects of an issue are mixed and spewed out on a protest platform with the aim of generating a simple, replicable slogan that confronts the political system and national production matrix against its people from an analytical perspective that does not clearly present this dichotomy under an argument of class interests necessarily.
In the country of prodigal sons and repeated surnames, the preaching of certain isolated individuals seems to contain the only reproducible ideas of left-leaning sympathizers when rallying for popular demands, despite their fundamentalist rhetoric. Some years ago, we allowed reactionary sectors of society to conspire against national development, attempting to sabotage the update of the irrigation law, a consensus unanimously supported in the political system. Despite the law proposing changes that did not achieve the promised positive impact, today, no one takes responsibility for the grievances or predictions made regarding its supposed negative effects. There is also no progressive force with its own platform that can replace these movements with critical mass when defending the popular right to access water and grant its sustainable use.
There have been some interviews — resulting from specific journalistic initiatives — with certain academics or inquiries made by the national or departmental governments. However, no one has found it profitable to form a public analysis of experts on the subject from multiple disciplines and areas of study. Neither academic experts nor social collectives truly engage with each other. I have seen some academic panels, but none with more than two or three legs.
Understanding that the country has different basins separated by distance, topography, realities, agroecosystems, environmental conflicts, and distinct populations despite proximity and similarities might be believed to be a basic understanding of geography, but it has proven to be an insoluble knot for much of the local progressivism, incapable of following a common thread and separating the wheat from the chaff when analyzing the environmental crisis we are currently experiencing in the form of drought.
It is important that we understand that, as much as we may be impressed and tempted to angrily retweet the number of zeros to the right of the decimal point in the cubic meters used for irrigation by the largest rice joint-stock company in this country, that water cannot be transported overnight to the metropolitan area, nor can curtailing its use resolve the problem that we cannot viably collect or distribute potable water in the capital city.
I have done nothing but become indignant with the terms in which the so-called independent press frames this discussion, but this must be viewed in a global context. Western media is submerged in clickbait logic above all else. In the pursuit of survival, they cannot avoid providing yellow confirmation biases to their target audience to encourage clicks and monetize news consumption, which often does not depend on editorial lines. News portals remain for-profit organizations that need to sustain themselves and survive. This is not a moral critique nor does it aim to vilify the seriousness of journalistic work that can be found (and is found), but it is understood that profitability logic — which is nothing more than capital logic — undermines the quality and relevance of information, especially in times of crisis.
The urgency with which a news article is needed at a time like this often runs counter to building it with foundations and sensibility. There may be a few initiatives to alleviate this phenomenon, but they often end up being merely voluntaristic. The truth is that a headline seeks to make an impact. For this, the reader needs to be attracted, and they will be drawn to what is most viral, confirming what they believe they already know. Different editorial lines that defend their market niches (according to the news consumer’s banner) end up feeding voracious discourses riddled with biases, futilely at odds, with national interests held hostage.
And so, we will argue divided, distorting reality from multiple angles; that there are no culprits given the unprecedented drought and therefore only praying for rain remains, or that the blame lies with compatriots who produce on a considerable scale, regardless of hydrographic basin, industry, history, or production method. Meanwhile, the usual negligent parties emerge unscathed, free of any responsibility, and the most vulnerable suffer the consequences.
Climate change will only intensify the systematic torment of the world’s poor unless the Global South demands fair financing from those responsible to address the consequences of industrial development in which they participated minimally. This means that Latin American commodity producers can have access to technology to produce in a less extractive, sustainable, and regenerative manner of the systems on which the planet has been relying at low cost. Others benefit while we point fingers.
