Radio Mundo Real

Uruguay “has a certain degree of freedom towards the sustainable management of its territories”, but at the same time “we have potential that external agents use, like transnational corporations, that are pressuring our water basins to have short-term benefits”, said PhD in Geography Ana Dominguez.

She mentioned that the expansion of soy and forestry monoculture plantations is having negative impacts in our territories.

Real World Radio interviewed Ana Dominguez during the workshop on “Water basins and territorial management” held on Tuesday in Florida, Uruguay. Nearly 30 people participated including family farmers, social organizations, the municipality and rural women.

Dominguez is a Professor at the Instituto de Profesores Artigas and the School of Sciences of the University of the Republic. She is also a member of REDES – Friends of the Earth Uruguay and Programa Uruguay Sustentable.

She explained the meaning of water basins, their components and their joint management. She highlighted “nature’s goods like water, soils, which are closely related”. Also the fauna and flora, the geological aspects that are underneath the basin and the people depending on it, that extracts nature’s goods to develop economic activities”.

“Thinking about the management of water basins is trying to see not only its components but also the many interrelations existing between them”, said Dominguez. A joint management of basins should take into account aspects such as the existing knowledge about them, the different elements of the water cycle, the quantity and quality of water, as well as the environmental, social, economic and political dimension.

The prevailing model to see basins is “sectorial”, which means it regards water based on the role they play in meeting certain demands. Therefore, water is seen with respect to hydroelectric power generation, or with respect to cattle growing activities, its industrial and human consumption. “We should not abandon this type of analysis because we need to have an alternative way to regard nature in its workings, because it works in an integrated way. Joint management is a new paradigm, a new way of seeing societies integrated with their territories”, she explained.

Another highlight of her presentation was the citizens’ participation in decision-making processes on the water basin and territories. “It is easier to work with the different social, environmental, cultural organizations in the different territories because the people see and feel how their territories work as basins”. She said the rural residents depend largely on water management, so this explains the greater sensitivity towards these issues in the rural areas, compared with cities.

In the recent years a National Water Policy and a Land Planning Act were implemented in Uruguay. The different consumers and the civil society have to be able to control and propose our own territorial planning policies. In order to participate we need to be informed but also to analyze and reflect about our territories”.

She shows optimism since Uruguay has certain degrees of freedom to move towards the sustainable management of territories. Although she warned that this potential is used by transnational corporations to obtain short-term benefits.

The expert mentioned the examples of the pressure on the territories by soy and forestry monoculture plantations. These occupy nearly two million hectares of the country’s surface, which has 16 million cultivable hectares of land in total. “So the Uruguayan society should discuss the future water policies that should go hand in hand with territorial planning policies”, Domínguez concluded.

Photo: http://apdurazno.blogspot.com