The social construction of scarcity. The case of water in Tenerife (CanaryIslands)

Water has traditionally been considered a physically scarce resource in the Canary Islands. Paradoxically, one of the reasons behind the conquest of t he Islands in the 15th century was the existence of abundant water which al lowed sugar to be grown in Tenerife and Gran Canaria. This article aims to show that the water scarcity in Tenerife is not physical or natural, but ra ther a socially constructed one, stemming from a set of social processes th at reflect the conflicts concerning the desirable kind of society and socia l order. These processes also consolidate the notion of aquifer and water a s a capital asset and commodity, as opposed to the notion of water as an ec osocial asset or common property. The change in mentality with respect to w ater momentarily led to abundance, with availability multiplying tenfold in less than a century and, at the same time, to the social construction of s carcity, given that the groundwater aquifer was overexploited rapidly becau se successive changes in the institutional framework were impeded which mig ht have regulated water extraction. The overriding concern was to maintain private ownership of water, even if this entailed eventual exhaustion. We s tudy water shortage as the result of the articulation between the natural s ystem (aquifer) and the social system. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All r ights reserved.