How Chile’s new constitution could affect irrigation

Chile’s new constitution could remove incentives for the construction of new irrigation infrastructure, since the new magna carta, if approved, would end the existing model of water rights, replacing it with authorizations of use that cannot be traded.

In the current draft, the new constitution establishes that water is a “natural common good” and new usage authorizations would not provide ownership rights to the recipients.

Some of the proposed provisions of the new text, which will be voted on this week by the constitutional convention, would make that change even more abrupt, since they would transfer all existing water rights to the new model as soon as the new constitution goes into effect.

“This is the largest expropriation that we have seen in many years,” convention member Rodrigo Álvarez, a member of the right-wing UDI party, said during a webinar held by fruit producers guild Fedefruta on the water rules in the new constitution. 

When BNamericas consulted the panelists in the webinar about what this could mean for irrigation infrastructure, Álvarez said there was relief that the some of the more “extreme” proposals, such as placing water infrastructure under state ownership, were rejected by the plenary of the convention, but he pointed out that uncertainty would be increased.

“We’re in limbo once again. This will be a situation to be defined by legislators,” he said.

However, he pointed out that replacing water rights with non-tradeable authorizations, regardless of how rapidly that is implemented, will be a barrier for new investments in infrastructure.

“I don’t know what kind of works could be carried out without resources of one’s own,” he said. 

During the webinar, Francisco Contardo, a member of Juntos por el Agua, a group of water experts that has made proposals to the constitutional convention, said the new regulations could make water management more difficult not only for farmers, but also water utilities, energy firms and others. 

He recalled that some water utilities have reached agreements with farmers to share water access, even saying that one such deal between Aguas Andinas and farmers in the Maipo river basin has secured potable water for Santiago this year amid the ongoing drought.

Without water ownership, these agreements would not be possible and water management would be in the hands of new institutions whose powers have not yet been outlined, he added.