Visiones sobre el manejo del agua y experiencias de prácticas sustentables

This article contrasts two approaches that have predominated in water management: the supply-oriented and the demand-oriented visions. The supply-oriented approach, which prevailed from the Industrial Revolution until the end of the 1960s, is characterized by its emphasis on infrastructure development. It is based on principles that recognize water as an infinite and abundant resource, and the main challenge is how to make it available for meeting the human needs. In contrast, the demand-oriented approach recognizes that prices and tariffs are the most appropriate mechanisms to encourage the efficient use of water. The emphasis on prices and rates is based on the principle that water is a finite and scarce resource, and that there are certain luxury uses of water that should not be considered a necessity but rather a desire. Given the public opposition to considering water an economic good, since the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, there has been a scientific consensus that water management should be done from an integrated and, therefore, sustainable perspective. This perspective acknowledges that multiple actors must be involved in management, that water is not merely a resource but also provides multiple environmental services, and cannot be separated from what is done in the territory -particularly those in urban areas. Especially when these cities have become spaces of population concentration and centers of political and economic power, and therefore the maximum possible use of space conflicts with aesthetics and beauty. The three cases of sustainable urban planning in cities such as Curitiba in Brazil, Portland in Oregon, and Xalapa in Mexico are examples of how the sustainable approach applied to urban environments makes these spaces more livable, walkable, and integrated with water-not only as a resource but also as an environmental service.