Sustainable Development and the Urban Water Sector Reform in Dakar, Senegal: The Politics of Neoliberalism in a Developing Country

The 1996 urban water sector reform in Senegal is not the sustainable development success claimed by its proponents. Privatization and cost-recovery management resulted in poor water and sanitation services unaffordable to many, increased access inequalities, and accelerated water resource destruction. Dependent on profitmaking and users' ability to pay, service provision did not improve the satisfaction of basic water needs for all and the protection of water resources, nor reduce poverty and waterborne diseases.;The water reform pursued the liberalization of Senegal's economy, opening new resources to the capitalist world economy and extending the inequity and destructiveness of this system to the water sector. Integrating water services into the global market, the reform served the interests of the international and Senegalese business sector, not those of the Senegalese people.;The reform process was an exemplary case of the workings of the neoliberal hegemony. Though the international financial institutions imposed the reform for continued lending, the Senegalese government and water sector officials and professionals endorsed it, encouraged by their ideological orientations. The spread of neoliberal economic ideas had paralleled the liberalization process since the late 1970s, and by the time of the reform the idea that privatization and commercial management would improve efficiency, and therefore water services and resource preservation, was pervasive. The reform was a sustainable development endeavor good for people and good for the environment. Ideology helped justify the reform.;The United Nations played an ideological role that facilitated the adjustment of Senegal to the interests of powerful international actors. Through the elaboration of a neoliberal notion of sustainable development and water policy guidelines, the UN encouraged the adoption of neoliberal water reforms in developing countries. As the World Bank and the business sector came to dominate UN policymaking for "environmental" services, the policy discourse eliminated ecological concerns from sustainable development. From challenging the capitalist growth development model and promoting the adjustment of human activities to environmental limits, the concept reconciled economic growth with environmental preservation and social improvement. Policies to privatize and manage water services for profit became sustainable, conducive to resource protection, social equity and democratic participation.