Politics and Space: A Theoretical Analysis of the Impact of Neoliberalism on Water Crisis

Many places around the world are increasingly facing water shortage and then water crisis. It is generally believed that water scarcity is a natural phenomenon, but water crisis is a managerial and governance issue. In other words, it is a man-made phenomenon, which is mainly related to poor management in the field of population growth and distribution as well as intensity and distribution of economic activities. Although some researchers consider climate changes as one of the causes of water crisis, part of this phenomenon is the result of human activities. Human beings always affect the geographical space, the quantity and quality of which is often influenced by their type of thinking and thought. At the governmental level, the collective and dominant thought of human beings, which is the criterion for action in dealing with all phenomena in all areas, is known as political thinking and ideology. Neoliberalism is an ideology that has emerged mostly in the economic sphere in the late twentieth century. The main context of the study is politics and space and from a theoretical perspective seeks to answer the following question: what is the effect of neoliberal economic policies on the occurrence or exacerbation of water crisis?

This research has been done using the descriptive-analytical method. Data collection is done through library data gathering from printed and Internet sources. The analysis was performed qualitatively and through inferential methods.

The research findings show that some major components of neoliberalism such as privatization, decentralized production, deregulation, and disregard for the public interest in the form of a wide range of actions, policies, and strategies can play a role in water crisis especially in developing countries. Although the occurrence of a water crisis due to the application of these policies is expected in both developing and developed countries, its manifestation and prevalence is higher in developing countries. The reason is that the adoption of the same policies in developed countries often keeps them away from water crises. Because, within the framework of this ideology, they preferentially try to transfer high water consuming and environmentally destructive production processes, industries, and economic activities abroad and to spaces where environmental regulations are less strict. Another notable point is that with the emergence of a water crisis in the geographical spaces of developing countries, which leads to a decrease in the competitiveness of these spaces, companies in developed countries leave those spaces and repeat this destructive cycle in new spaces.