National Alliance for Universal Water Access | Article

Mario Luis Fuentes

ANDUniversal and effective access to clean water is one of the necessary conditions for development and one of the indicators without which one cannot speak of well-being. Nationally, less than 25% of those who get tap water at home, according to the government’s National Quality and Impact Study, consider it drinkable, meaning they can drink it without risk of getting sick. sick.

In this sense, a double challenge arises: to improve the management of water resources so that their use in various sectors is carried out taking into account the criteria of sustainability, rationality and efficiency; and the other is to move forward in building a culture of home and personal use to create a new collective awareness of the responsible use of water.

But for this it is necessary, first of all, to improve and expand the national infrastructure for the provision of drinking water supply services. Especially in the most dispersed areas and with the smallest population. Although this should be treated with reservations, since back in 2020, according to the population and housing census, almost 25 million people lived in rural areas, where accommodation is much more difficult due to the wide territorial extent of the area with fewer inhabitants and where the proximity between dwellings is much wider than in urban areas.

Paradoxically, of all the water used in the country, more than 60% is used in the main activities of the economy; that is, mainly in agriculture and animal husbandry, where irrigation methods and heavy water use are highly inefficient, creating a very high percentage of waste due to evaporation, filtration, and fluid leakage.

It is also unacceptable that half of the water available in cities is wasted due to leaks and leaks in pipes. And this is due to the fact that there is no national atlas, or at least a complete diagnosis of the state of the infrastructure of drinking water supply networks in urban areas; and in this regard, what are the investment needs and the time frame within which the next generation of national hydro infrastructure can be developed.

At the institutional level, there are several structures that need to be seriously and responsibly reviewed. First of all, it is necessary to determine whether the decentralization of water management, established by Article 115 of the Constitution as the exclusive prerogative of the municipalities, practically 30 years after the reform by which this prerogative was granted to them, has the results that were expected; and in this regard also to establish ways of improvement that strengthen federalism and the capacity of local governments.

Secondly, it is important that, in the field of agriculture, the structure and functions performed by the authorities of the irrigation modules be reconsidered, which in many cases have become genuine places for the implementation of local katsikazgo, which thrive on resources. and this makes it impossible to upgrade technology and infrastructure to risk and substantially improve food production in the Mexican village.

Thirdly, the logic of harbor masters, management and use of dams, lakes and lagoons must be reviewed and modernized to ensure not only the responsible management of water resources, but also the protection of these spaces in all their importance for the protection and vitality of ecosystems, as well as the protection of biodiversity; but also to develop the capacity and capacity for the sustainable use of these spaces, where the potential for tourism development is enormous.

A large number of lessons have been learned, which, on the other hand, need to be used and strengthened. For example, reversing the depreciation of urban green infrastructures, reforestation, and promoting microclimates to mitigate climate change; adopt new forms of urbanization, more orderly but also based on materials compatible with sustainable development, building more and better storm sewer networks and adequate rainwater collection and storage.

The enormous vulnerability that was evident in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic should serve as an incentive to revive concepts that have worked at other times, such as regional development and the promotion of regional basins, and update them to implement them in a context that is more hostile, and in which there is an urgent need to reverse the degradation of soils, groundwater and ecosystems such as glaciers that we are losing across the country.

It must be understood that the entire climate change agenda is not something that will come; that this is already a real reality in our lives; and that its effects and destructive potential have already been felt over the past three years. Therefore, building a genuine state policy on this issue is an inevitable imperative for whoever becomes the new President of the Republic in 2024.

It must be recognized that the sector’s budget is still insufficient and that everything must be done to have the resources that are urgently needed to help with the emergencies we are suffering from; In addition to the fact that, as has been pointed out, the problem is so complex that it can be solved not just by investing more money, but by creating new capacities, new consensus and new processes that will put us on the path to environmental sustainability. .

End hunger, improve conditions for the rights of indigenous peoples and communities; eradicate urban and rural poverty; guarantee adequate conditions in schools for all girls and boys; and to strengthen our capacity in the field of health prevention, to have as an indispensable condition a national system of universal provision of quality services.