Commentary: From the Rockies to the Andes — How to Manage Scarcer Water Supplies: International Development Research Centre

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2008-10

In the past, the present, and maybe in the future too, Albertans and Bolivians share a common concern: how to fairly and efficiently manage scarce water supplies.

Most Albertans (and surely all Bolivians) would be surprised to learn that about 90 years ago farmers along the Bow River were threatening to move en masse to Bolivia. Although they felt provoked by various concerns, most prominent were complaints about the dominance of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR).

A big part of the problem was water. Farmers protested about how much they were paying to a private water system, one that was owned and operated by the CPR.

A condition of the original 1880 CPR agreement was that the railway received 10 million hectares of land grants as compensation for constructing the intercontinental line. The CPR actively recruited colonists and in 1903 the company established an irrigation scheme along the Bow River, hoping to profit from the sale of land and water while building up traffic on its lines.

The investment was significant. The CPR spent over CA $40 million (a huge sum then) on the scheme to irrigate the last 1.25 million hectares of the land grant. A diversion weir was built near Calgary, the Bassano Dam constructed, over 2 000 kilometers of canals dug, and Lake Newell created.

A farmer-owned water cooperative is born

Despite the optimism, promotion, and engineering achievements, the CPR scheme floundered from the beginning. By the 1920s, farmers had organized and were blaming the CPR, saying that the high expenses for land and water were unacceptable. Many abandoned their farms. A farmer named W.D. Trego led some of the protests and contacted a relocation agent about moving a group of farmers to Bolivia.

With the onset of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl in Southern Alberta, the CPR gave up on the water business. In 1935, the railway wrote off its losses and handed its entire eastern Alberta operations, including the substantial infrastructure of dam, canals, and reservoir, to a farmer’s cooperative. The Eastern Irrigation District was born and through to today successfully operates as a farmer-owned water cooperative in an area larger than that of Prince Edward Island.

In the end, Trego’s farmers never made it to Bolivia. But that Andean country, so physically and culturally removed from Alberta, today shares some of the same water problems that bedeviled the Canadian province generations ago.

The "Water War"

In 1997, the World Bank offered financial aid to an indebted Bolivia on the condition that its water system would be privatized. International companies such as Bechtel and Suez took over water delivery in the cities of Cochabamba and El Alto. Urban water users complained of tariff hikes up to 200%, dollarization of water prices, and a lack of promised connections (especially in the poorest areas of the cities). Farmers protested the loss of water sources that had been theirs for generations.

These complaints erupted into the famous “Water War” of Cochabamba in 2000 and the mass marches in El Alto. The riot police who were sent into Cochabamba clashed with protesters, killing one person and injuring 30 others. In 2005, in El Alto, 10 days of protest effectively paralyzed the city, cutting the nearby capital city of La Paz off from the airport.

Whether the water is used for household purposes or for irrigation, people tend to protest when their water supply is privatized. Curiously, arguments about cost appear to matter less than issues surrounding the trust that cooperatives or publicly owned corporations seem to invoke. Why?

Favouring fairness and justice

Research conducted in Bolivia after the Water War provides some clues. The researchers compared the “pay as you go” system favoured by the Bolivian government—which believed it to be the most efficient way—to the “cooperative distribution system” preferred by farmers and traditionally used in the Andes. They found that the cooperative system was at least as efficient in water use as the “pay as you go” system, but resulted in a much fairer distribution of water. This fairness was most pronounced in times of water scarcity.

When it came to water, what worried most people was basic justice. Small wonder that farmers in Bolivia recently, and in Alberta during the Dust Bowl, both preferred the cooperative approach.

In both countries, people have new reasons to cooperate. In recent years, glaciers—the water towers of the Andes and the Rockies—have shrunk dramatically. This year both ranges received a lot of precipitation but, nevertheless, glaciers retreated during the last century and especially fast during the last 30 years.

This means that, in both countries, water will become scarcer—and will likely become more contested. A whole new set of questions will need answers. Will urban water demand for human consumption, lawns, and golf courses bid water away from agricultural uses? How do we define efficiency? How do we define fairness? How do we decide who gets the water and who does not?

Negotiation is key

Solutions that try to balance efficiency and fairness can not be defined scientifically but instead should be negotiated. Water needs to be viewed in a collaborative sense with attention to its “public good” characteristics.

This means that more public participation will be necessary to achieve good water policy, whether in Bolivia, Alberta, or elsewhere. Future water institutions will need to take into account certain key principles.

For example, the constitutional agreement recently approved in Bolivia placed water in the context of fundamental human well-being, using phrases such as “water for people, food, and the environment.” As water becomes scarcer, ideas or “basic principles” such as these will increasingly need to underlie water institutions.

Second, there is increased pressure in many countries to respect and recognize traditional and indigenous rights, uses, and customs. The recognition of traditional water customs in law has helped achieve considerable consensus over water in Bolivia, and could possibly do so elsewhere.

Third, rapid demand growth in Alberta and Bolivia, combined with high agricultural prices, will make water more contested in the future. This will require negotiation, cooperation, and collaboration.

Finally, when it comes to a sensitive issue like water, policymakers who rely on abstract theories will do so at their peril. Most ordinary people will prefer their water supply to depend on a sound knowledge of what has worked historically and on what has been shown to be fair. Together, Alberta and Bolivia offer some interesting lessons.

Adapted from an op-ed first published in the August 28, 2008 issue of The Western Producer.

Juan Carlos Alurralde is Executive Director of Agua Sustentable, a Bolivian non-governmental organization that researches water policy. Merle Faminow is Program Leader for the Rural Poverty and Environment program of Canada’s International Development Research Centre. Merle grew up in Alberta’s Eastern Irrigation District.