Water Policy in Uruguay (2000–2025): Structural Tensions Between Water Governance and Productive Extractivism

Abstract

During the first quarter of the 21st century, water management became one of the most important areas of public policy and socio-environmental conflict in Uruguay. This article analyses the trajectory of Uruguayan water policy between 2000 and 2025, focusing on the interaction between institutional transformations, territorial disputes, development models, and citizen participation dynamics. Using a qualitative approach based on the analysis of regulations (laws and decrees, among other official documents), press reviews, and academic publications on water issues, we reconstruct the main phases of the period, from resistance to privatization and the constitutional reform of 2004 to contemporary controversies surrounding water quality, climate change, and infrastructure megaprojects such as the Neptuno project. Drawing on approaches from Latin American political ecology and environmental governance and democracy, this work discusses how water conflicts express structural tensions between a robust regulatory framework—based on the human right to water, public management, and social participation—and a productive matrix with intensive use of natural resources. It is argued here that Uruguayan water policy operates as a laboratory for environmental democracy, where institutional advances coexist with persistent limitations derived from power asymmetries, institutional fragmentation, and extractive pressures. The article concludes that the democratization of water requires not only formal institutions, but also transformations in the power relations that structure the governance of the resource.