Home / Vol.13, n°3 / Water Management in Mexico

Abstract
At the beginning of the millennium, the Mexican government announced that the country was under a hydric surveillance. In absolute value, Mexico does not experience a shortage of freshwater; rather the resource scarcity comes from the uneven distribution on the territory, the pollution of the resource and the poor maintenance of the sanitation and supply infrastructure. The authors are proposing to understand this situation through the influence that the socioeconomic setting of the country and its level of international reliance have had on the development of public policies and the adoption of governance models : traditionally considered as a common good, the management of water has been delegated to the only public authorities capable of ensuring the public interest ; for some 10 years, other governance models based on administrative decentralization, decision-making democratization and resource privatization have been impulsed by international economic organizations.