The social construction of water's legal status: the case of Quebec and Mexico

For a long time, water was regarded as a common resource that could not be appropriated and was accessible to all. Today, water has become a strategic, political and commercial issue. The redefinition of water's legal status has become the object of an ideological "battle" between groups who support different approaches: water as an economic good, subject to the laws of supply and demand, or water as a common good, constituting a fundamental human right.

This book sets out to determine how the legal status of water is chosen in both Quebec and Mexico. These are territories that are economically integrated through NAFTA, with significant variations in terms of resources, public policies and social actors. The results of these social constructs differ greatly in these two territories of the North American continent.