La gestión participativa del agua subterránea en México: Hacia un cambio de paradigma
Boris Marañón
Dania López

Resumo
Se esbozan los ejes centrales de una propuesta conceptual y metodológica para la gestión y reglamentación de acuíferos sobreexplotados en México. La gestión del agua subterránea continúa caracterizándose por estimular una participación restringida y por basarse en una racionalidad técnica instrumental que excluye en el diseño de las políticas las racionalidades de los otros actores involucrados. Este enfoque, “desde arriba”, no logra revertir la crisis de legitimidad y representatividad de los grupos de agua al carecer de atribuciones efectivas para realizar actividades de administración. El logro de una gestión participativa de los acuíferos demanda reformular las concepciones de política y participación, reconocer la heterogeneidad de los actores involucrados para dar paso a un espacio de interacción social donde se establezca un proceso de acción comunicativa entre los diferentes actores, de modo tal que se puedan encontrar soluciones comunes y consensuadas para reglamentar los acuíferos sobreexplotados.

Palavras-Chaves: agua subterránea, gestión participativa, paradigma

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The participative management of the underground water in Mexico: Towards a change of paradigm

Abstract
This document tries to outline the backbones of a conceptual and methodological proposal for the management and regulation of the overexploited aquifers in Mexico. The current management of the underground water, nevertheless the important modifications registered in the last fifteen years towards to a participative orientation, continues stimulating a restricted participation. This is because it is based on a technical instrumental rationality that excludes the rationalities of other involved actors in the design of the policies, specially the small agricultural users. This top down approach does not contribute to revert the crisis of legitimacy and representation of the organizations entrusted to contribute in the management of the underground water, neither to correct a problem of location of the same organizations in the institutional arrangement, since they only have a moral and not legal mandate. Therefore, the users do not have interest to engage in their activities since they lack attributes to conduct water resource administration effectively. The approach holds that to achieve a participative management of the aquifer it is necessary to reformulate the predominant conceptions of politics and participation as well as the recognition of the heterogeneity of the actors involved and their different rationalities, interests, perceptions and positions in order to go forward to the creation of a space of social interaction. It would lead to establish a process of communicative action among the different actors, in a such way that common solutions could be agreed upon regulating the overexploited aquifers.

Keywords: underground water, participative management, paradigm

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