The Water Crisis In Cochabamba, Bolivia

The vision of the relationship between humans and their environment seems to differ from person to person. The water war crisis in Cochabamba, Bolivia is a good example of showing how different people or organizations see this relationship. In this case, the world bank, city government, and local non-government organizations have varying ideas on how water should be distributed to people. With water being a large part of the environment and an essential bodily component, the way each of these groups goes about disbursing water to people shows their perception of a human’s relationship with the earth and also lead to different water management styles.
The world bank sees water strictly as an asset. To them, water is valuable and if sold, can be used to pull the Cochabamba people out of poverty. This is their main objective, overruling human necessity (William, 2002). This demonstrates the world bank’s view of the environment being something that must be earned by humans. The city’s government was facing such horrific economic states that it was reliant on the world bank. After the world bank advised the city’s government to continue selling the water, they privatized the matter. This allowed the city government to receive more aid from them (William, 2002). While it would be favorable to assume that the city government resulted to this in desperation for economic relief and that they truly believe water is a basic …show more content…
The world bank sees the environment as a profit making machine, the city government may think that humans have a basic right to their environment but fail to act on this belief, and the non-profit organizations believe the environment always belongs to the people who inhabit it. These differing visions of the human relationship with the environment cause changes in the water management style in Cochabamba. Hopefully they find a system that is beneficial for