Privatizing Water, Producing Scarcity

The Yorkshire Drought of 1995

Bibliographic Data

ID4042883
AuthorsKaren J Bakker (University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2000
Volume76
Issue1
Pages4-27
Publication date2000-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomic Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0095 • E-ISSN: 1944-8287
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1944-8287.2000.tb00131.x
OpenAlexW2096433859
LanguageEN
Citations received113
References cited65

The Yorkshire drought of 1995 was the most extreme climate event faced by the English and Welsh water industry since its privatization in 1989. As an emblem of crisis in privatized water management, and as a potential signal of climate change, the 1995 drought has motivated change in water regulation and management. In this paper I challenge conventional interpretations of the 1995 water supply crisis as a natural hazard or as a result of managerial ineptitude. Drought is conceptualized as the production of scarcity, an outcome of three interrelated practices: meteorological modeling, demand forecasting, and corporate restructuring and the regulatory “game.” These practices are situated within an analysis of the context of the regulatory implications of the privatization of the water industry in 1989. I explore the simultaneously natural, social, and discursive elements of water scarcity and situate them within an analysis of privatization as reregulation , rather than deregulation. This analysis brings insights developed in debates over “real” regulation and regulation theory to bear on nature‐society analysis, while extending this debate through theorizing regulation as, in part, a discursive practice. The ensuing rereading of drought challenges conventional interpretations of environmental crisis, raises questions about the implications of water industry privatization, and emphasizes the need to account for the role of the state and the intricacies of “real” regulation in analyses of resource management

Agriculture · Archaeology · Climate change · Context (archaeology) · Deregulation · Economics · Environmental resource management · Geography · Market economy · Natural resource economics · Political economy · Restructuring · Scarcity · Status quo · Water resource management · Water resources · Water scarcity · Ecology · Environmental Science · Social and Economic Development in India · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Water resources management and optimization

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