Fernando Cajas
People and our activities, especially since the Industrial Revolution, have polluted water. Water is a chemical compound that has many properties to sustain life, but also for industrial processes, water is also a way to transport waste, both agricultural and domestic, not to mention industrial. The decline in water quality caused by pollution affects the use of downstream waters, whether the pollution of the city of Quetzaltenango directly affects Cantel and then Zunil and then Santa María and the River basin All of Samalá. But Quetzaltenango also suffers pollution from Olintepeque, La Esperanza, San Mateo and all the towns upstream. So this river pollution problem is an interrelated problem.
The urban water problem is due to lack of drinking water. In Guatemala, the water in the home, in the schools, in the hospitals themselves, the tap water, is not drinkable in terms of being drinkable. But not only in Guatemala. In the world, one third of the population does not have access to drinking water. Oh, and sanitation, half the world’s population has no sanitation. But urban water management does not only deal with drinking water and sanitation but also with flooding, because usually there is poor management of rainwater. This is because urban drains actually mix rainwater with waste, that is, sewage. In addition, the heavy rains now associated with Climate Change are producing ongoing unmanaged urban flooding. So, in Quetzaltenango, there are certain flooded areas, zone 2, in the lower part of the City and now Calvario as a result of bad urban planning. The growth of residential areas in the upper part of the city, deforestation in the upper part of the basin are part of the problems that the city did not solve.
Recently, President Bernardo Arévalo approved the creation of the Water Cabinet, Agreement 139-2024 of September 2, 2024. Undoubtedly, the president’s advisers know the complexity of the creation an institutional framework that allows the integration of human, economic, political and social systems. . That is, legislation that recognizes water as a key element in the social processes of communities in a way that requires the participation of key actors, public and private, rural and urban, to maintain the basic principle of water as a public good. From our university experience, after several projects within the framework of Integrated Water Resources Management, IWRM, one of the main elements in improving water management is the scientific, technological and sociological research behind water use processes . Therefore, the construction of the water law must be done from the Integrated Management of Water Resources, respecting general principles that are widely accepted and on which the Dublin Principles stand out at the International Conference 1992 International Conference on Water and the Environment:
Principle I: Fresh water is a vulnerable and finite resource, essential for life, development and sustaining the environment.
Principle II: Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy makers at all levels.
Principle III: Women play a central role in water supply, management and protection.
Principle IV: Water has economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognized as an economic benefit.
Because it won’t take long for the defenders of the free market, or the free market, to come out, who are more neoliberal than those of the Washington Consensus and say that Guatemala does not need a water law. existence and that we must allow it. For Curruchiche himself to start another pre-trial because the president has exceeded his tasks in the creation of the water cabinet, it is better to clarify why the law is and why the law is not.
The water law proposal that will be worked on as an action framework should be considered, both by the State, as well as by key actors, companies, people, communities, non-governmental organizations; Therefore, it is an important element in creating an appropriate social environment that follows a national policy and an international vision that overcomes regional divisions and the special interests of some companies. Above all, it must consider water as a public good in a way that serves basic human needs and allows for the protection of water sources, groundwater, water bodies, rivers and ecosystems in general.
The water law would be expected to guarantee the use of water rights, as well as social, community and private investment in water management and to a large extent the control of monopolistic access to water. The work is huge, but there is already experience in other countries, there are universities in the world that have studied this problem and proposed solutions, there are local universities, like my own university, the University of San Carlos .
From my point of view, the basic problem in water management is a learning problem related to education, environmental education. It is urgent that citizens know the transformation processes of water and its physical and chemical properties and its social aspects to understand how fast we are in Guatemala to take care of it, improve it, clean it. This is everyone’s job. I am happy that President Arévalo gives the importance of water management, but it is everyone’s job to take care of water. To the extent that we build the water law, we will also build our own democracy. So, as Minister Orantes says: Let’s jump into the water! Let’s do it. If not now, it will never be to Guatemala.
