Water and Cities in Latin America: Challenges for Sustainable Development

This book emerged from discussions during the 2011 World Water Week, which revealed a need to focus on a variety of issues surrounding water and Latin American cities from a development perspective.

Water and Cities in Latin America intends to share key messages with policymakers, planners and practitioners, as well as the larger public. These messages relate to suitable institutional frameworks, inclusive management of water and infrastructure cycles and access to services, improved data gathering and analysis, stakeholder integration, and holistic management in general.

The call for coherent urban management and comprehensive water management is framed within larger objectives of the sustainable development and green growth agendas. Thus it also addresses underlying issues of poverty and income distribution, climate uncertainties and the management of risks. Applying a development perspective to gain a comprehensive understanding of water issues requires seeing them in relation to other sectors, such as housing, health, agriculture and spatial planning.

While Chapter 1 gives a broad overview of urbanization trends and economic geography, the following chapters provide a range of cases that examine some of these relationships in different Latin American cities. For example, Chapter 3 highlights the links between water and sanitation policies and the finance sector, particularly from the perspective of the OECD, and addresses the need for stable plans to finance initial investments as well as long-term operation and maintenance of infrastructure. Chapter 5 looks at the social construction of water scarcity in Lima and how the socio-spatially uneven distribution of water services accentuated patterns of inequality and deprivation there. Chapter 14 analyses water funds in different Latin American regions, arguing that they can be useful tools for improving and maintaining water quality and quantity, reducing flood events, and generally improving the well-being of people living in watersheds.

Hence, this book highlights the breadth of challenges related to water and cities in Latin America. It also offers interesting case studies of how these challenges are already being addressed to establish more inclusive, just and sustainable ways of management.

Book note prepared by Julia Wesely