Water conflicts in Mexico's central highlands. Analysis and background of conflicts over water distribution between Mexico-City and the surrounding countryside

Conflicts over water will become more and more widespread in forecoming years. This is not only true for international conflicts but as well for conflicts inbetween nations, for example between major cities and their countryside. Mexico-City as one of the largests cities of the world is highly dependend on water sources from outside its own territory to maintain its function as developing motor of the whole country. Therefore it is an extremely interesting case in this context. This is especially true as the city does not only depend on the countryside for drinking water but also for sending its wastewater and rainwater into the countryside to prevent the flodding of its territory. This does not only contradict all that is known about sustainable use of resources, it leads to a highly critical dependence between the water-sending countryside, the city itself and the wastewater-receiving countryside as well. This interdependence is not easily corrected for a diverse set of reasons that have to do with political, structural, institutional and cultural developments since the early 19th century. The thesis analyzes these reasons in the context of conflicts between the city and its countryside and tries to evaluate the future development. For the political and structural development of ecological matters it also draws a short parallel between Mexico and middle and eastern European states. In difference to other publications the work does not only evaluate the strategic behaviour of administrative and organized civil actors in this context, but concentrates on the opinion and strategies of the immediately affected parts of society. For this reason the work includes an empirical study that is interview based and evaluates the strategic position of all three actor-groups. Doing so it can be shown, that the situation of water distribution between Mexico-City and the surrounding countryside is much more critical as the low number of open conflicts at the moment state. Rather the different stakeholders for diverse strategic reasons decide against open conflicts, but for the permanent decline of water availability show tendencies to change their behaviour in the near future. Furthermore the thesis shows how the human-initiated transformation of the ecological environment and the human systems to deal with political and structural changes contradict and lead to a constant decline of the water resources. The core of the theoretical background is build on a combination of Scharpf's Actor Centered Institutionalism and Ostrom's considerations on comon pool resources. It is supplemented by works that especially focus on the different actor groups analysed