濟州 地下水 商品化에 관한 硏究

Abstract

Water is an essential element for the survival of human beings and it is irreplaceable. The maldistribution of water and its public nature contribute to the politicization of water. Conflicts occur over the rights to secure and take advantage of water all over the world. Water serves as an element of national security for some powerful countries while threatening the safety of human beings with possible disasters such as poverty, disease and starvation for the third world. These conflicts over water, coupled with neoliberalism, have created a new idea of the commercialism of water, which is based on the theory that water will be distributed to those who need it in the most efficient way by 'invisible hands' if we put water under the control of the market like other products. The commercialization of water involves bottled water, the privatization of water supply and drainage, massive transfer of water and so on, which are being operated by several large supernational corporations. In addition to that, international meetings supported by these corporations and those countries are trying to continue to reproduce the logic of the commercialization of water and urge the third world to further commercialize water. There are, however, oppositions to this idea. It would not be an efficient way of distributing water to leave water to the control of market due to the fact that water would go first to those who would be willing to pay the highest price rather than those who really need it because of the nature of the market. What is happening right now around the globe is that the political dynamics surrounding those who own water, those who manage it and those who use it are getting maximized. At the regional level water has been studied as a source of making money, but not under the social consensus. Traditionally water was managed as public property, but as this water is getting out of the control of the local community, different kinds of problems about the commercialization of water have arisen, which in turn suggests that water should go back to public property from private property. In particular, if you look at the cases of water commercialization in Jeju province, you will find that Jeju is also seeking to commercialize water along with the rest of the world even though Jeju has well established the institutional structures based on the public nature of water. In this context, a new theoretical frame is necessary to replace the public nature of water. This paper presents water democracy as a new idea to replace the public nature of water to address the concerns of water commercialization all over the world and with the cases of Jeju this paper also suggests the measures to make it better in four aspects: conservation of water, equal access to water, improvement of water management and water control by the public. This idea of water democracy has its theoretical significance in that this idea expands the debates of democracy so that it can connect the dots among debates over the sustainable use of water, especially in the political ecology aspect, debates over the accessibility of water from the prospect of human rights and the participatory democracy. In addition, water democracy provides four useful frames not only for the theoretical implications but also for the application of the theory in reality and therefore keeps the doors open for the possibility of applying the theory to debates over managing other public assets similar to water.