Abstract
In environmental economics’ literature, water resources are marked by the tension between commodification—extension of the market sphere to water—and a more collective management process based on the notion of common patrimony. Reconciling these two logics—market and patrimonial—is nonetheless difficult to perform from a theoretical perspective. Main lessons from these two trends highlight the need to go beyond the neoclassical economic approach, which alone proves to be insufficient for understanding the patrimonialization processes. These processes refer to social constructions aimed at identifying material or immaterial objects, inherited from the past, which have to be protected, managed, and transmitted to future generations. Patrimonial management and patrimonial economics propose a new analytical framework for environmental analysis. French water policy, which has been progressively rooted in the so-called patrimonial approach, provides a case study for this new framework.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Principle 4 of the Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development (Dublin Statement 1992).
- 2.
The overview of the commodification and the patrimonialization of freshwater and water services constitutes one of the guiding principles of the CNRS Urban Water Research Network “rés-EAU-ville.” This research group has organized several multi-disciplinary scientific conferences in France on water commodification (Paris, March 2003) and on water as a common patrimony (Arras, March 2007). These events resulted in two collective publications (Baron 2005; Petit 2009). This article permits us to reposition the terms of the debate from an economic perspective.
- 3.
The terms “legacy,” “heritage,” or even “patrimony” refer, in English, to notions that cannot properly circumscribe this notion of “patrimoine.” The expression refers to legal systems inherited from Roman law, away from common law traditions. The authors have chosen the last expression (patrimony) because of its similarity with the French term “patrimoine” (and even “patrimonio” in Spanish). But the notion of patrimony is beginning to spread; Morehouse (2011) applied it when discussing public trusts in the USA.
- 4.
Griffin (2006, p. 102) thus wrote: “In any case, one cannot conclude that certain institutions are inefficient merely because they constitute common property, as the phrase ‘tragedy of the commons’ insinuates.”
- 5.
Shaw (2005, p. 29) observed: “In fact, economists may oversimplify things when they advocate ‘moving’ from lower to higher economic uses. Some water economists have concluded that the potential for markets has been overestimated, and now recommend slight modifications to conventional water pricing schemes to achieve efficiency.”
- 6.
In his seminal article, Dales (1968, pp. 803–804) wrote: “It should be noted, finally, that the market in pollution right is not a ‘true’ or ‘natural’ market. In natural markets, price creates two-way communication between sources of supply and demand and affects amounts supplied as well as amounts demanded […] My market provides only one-way communication. It transmits the government-owner’s decisions about the use of water to the users of the asset, but there is no feedback from the users to the owner […] The price signals that this government gets from the market are ‘false’, in the sense that they are largely echoes of its own arbitrary decision about the supply of rights. The market proposed in this paper is therefore nothing more than an administrative tool.”
- 7.
The general equilibrium model is a model of the large-scale behavior of market economy stating that with some assumptions and under certain conditions, there exists a set of equilibrium prices (economy is in equilibrium when prices are set so that supply equals demand in each market).
- 8.
A systemic approach considers a system in its totality, its complexity, and its own dynamics and studies interaction between the diversity of elements linked together within the system. This study leads to the determination of rules that can modify the system or design other systems.
- 9.
In his famous article, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Hardin states that common property management leads inescapably to the over-exploitation of the resource. He has been strongly criticized, however, because he confuses “common property” with “open access.”
- 10.
In addition, this patrimonial perspective is constructed in comparison to the 1964 French Water Law. According to Ollagnon (1979, p. 50), “by creating consultative structures, by calling the users and the local authorities to negotiate,” this law “considerably increased the efficiency of administrative action.” It offers the framework that makes it possible to implement the patrimonialization process, which Ollagnon called for when he considered the Alsatian aquifer. More precisely, he wanted to create a water patrimonial institution, which in his opinion would enter into the framework of the 1964 law under its Article 11. This would be a regional administration composed of elected officials responsible for developing a water policy by making the different stakeholders negotiate.
- 11.
Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) proposed a sociopolitical model based on six “orders of worth” or “common worlds” (“cités” in French). This model describes the conventions (or languages of coordination) used by stakeholders in the majority of ordinary situations or conflicts. Neoclassical economics resembles one of these conventions: the “market world.” However, there are other conventions to define the “common good”: the “industrial world” and the “civic world,” for example.
- 12.
This theory generally proposes a vision of reversible time—that is, a historic—and a vision of space based on distances and cost differences such as production and transport costs.
- 13.
General Commissariat for Economic Planning.
- 14.
State intervention by means of taxation to avoid externalities.
- 15.
SDAGE: Schéma Directeur d’Aménagement et de Gestion des Eaux. SAGE: Schéma d’Aménagement et de Gestion de l’Eau.
- 16.
According to an administrative memo of October 15, 1992 (Circulaire du 15 octobre 1992 relative à l’application du décret n° 92–1042 du 24 septembre 1992 portant application de l’article 5 de la loi n° 92–3 du 3 janvier 1992 sur l’eau, relatif aux schémas d’aménagement et de gestion des eaux).
- 17.
The WFD uses the term “heritage,” whereas the authors use the word “patrimony.”
- 18.
LEMA: Loi sur l’Eau et les Milieux Aquatiques.
- 19.
The World Water Forum is organized every 3 years by the World Water Council and aims to put water issues on the international agenda. The last one was held in Marseille, France, in March 2012.
- 20.
The first World Water Forum in 1997 had for its primary theme “Water: The World’s Common Heritage.”
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Calvo-Mendieta, I., Petit, O., Vivien, FD. (2014). Patrimonial Economics and Water Management: A French Case. In: Schneier-Madanes, G. (eds) Globalized Water. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7323-3_2
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