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Access to essential public services in Portugal in the period post debt-crisis of 2009: the right to water and sanitation

  • The Portuguese water supply and sanitation sector has witnessed over the last 40 years a steady improvement in levels of coverage and in the general quality of services provided. This evolution has been hailed by international organizations as the "Portuguese miracle". Yet, this qualification is restricted to the results achieved during the period marked by the liberalisation of the sector. In 1993, a water sector reform led by the central government started a number of processes towards commercialization, corporatization and liberalization of the Portuguese water sector. In 2007, a major financial crisis started in the United States of America and spread across the world. In the European Union, and in particular in Portugal and other peripheral countries, the crisis meant the enforcement of neoliberal shock therapy for almost five years after the so-called sovereign debt crises. The social impacts were devastating and provision and access to public services were restricted. This paper concentrates on assessing the links between the neoliberalisation of the Portuguese water sector and the situation of access to water and sanitation services in the aftermath of the deep crisis. The analysis focus on typical dimensions of neoliberalisation in this sector and empirically tries to assess how and to what extent these processes impact on the political and human rights goal of progressive universal access to these services in a context of austerity politics. It is argued that neoliberalisation processes both increase and hinder access to the services. In fact, by expanding networks under an environmental paradigm and improving consumer rights, neoliberalisation delivered on increasing levels of access with improved quality, yet consistently rising water prices coupled with policy loopholes and institutional blindness to the distributional impacts of that trend lead to the imposition of inequitable burdens on low-income households. Recent policy initiatives to relief the financial burden on low-income households seem weak and difficult to implement since they do not break away from the basic principles guiding water policy (user-pays principle, polluter pays principle and full-cost recovery from water charges).

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Metadaten
Author:Álvaro Carvalho
URN:urn:nbn:de:kobv:b721-opus4-12160
Referee:Martina Sproll
Advisor:Christina Teipen
Document Type:Master's Thesis
Language:English
Date of first Publication:2018/12/13
Publishing Institution:Hochschulbibliothek HWR Berlin
Granting Institution:Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin
Date of final exam:2017/07/24
Release Date:2018/12/13
Page Number:67
Institutes:FB I - Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Licence (German):License LogoUrheberrechtsschutz