Abstract

ARIAS-ARBELAEZ, Fabio Alberto  and  CASTRO-BOTINA, Laura Marcela. Political Economy of the Environment: Uses and Abuses of Water in Cali and Other Cases in Valle del Cauca. Soc. Econ. [online]. 2022, n.47, e10311395.  Epub Aug 27, 2022. ISSN 1657-6357.  https://doi.org/10.25100/sye.v0i47.11395.

This article reviews, updates, and extends cases on water use in Cali and Valle del Cauca, Colombia. The analysis follows a political economy of the environment approach: how does a society with diverse values and heterogeneity of interests make choices on environmental issues? The new information reveals that the main criterion for pollution control is public health, but it is solved by environmental institutions that have a marked anthropocentric bias and are less effective in caring for nature. Also, the city faces high environmental risks, whose attention seeks to lower the maximum alert without being able to minimize them. In addition, environmental deterioration, accumulated over decades, is in a phase of mitigation with large infrastructure constructions. And the values of transformation come from organized communities without sufficient repercussion.

Keywords : political economy; environment; resource allocation; water; collective choice.

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