Institutional and regulatory ambiguity of the management and human right to water in Costa Rica: water for whom?

This article seeks the challenge of guaranteeing water as a human right and common good, whilst dealing with institutional ambiguity and regulations, and increase of socio-environmental conflicts. To paraphrase the 56th International Congress of Americanists, this case expresses territorial and multi-scale conflicts in which water is subjected to political confrontation. Where the human right to water has been established as a universal right through international declarations, there is a problem to ensure such a guarantee: Costarincan citizens deal with circumstances that threaten their quality of life, with a State that is incapable of monitoring the compliance of the existing legislation, and with extractive companies that depredate with impunity the environment. There is imperative a new Water Law that, based on the Human Right to access and sanitation of water, sets in order the institutional framework and creates mechanisms that guarantee availability, quantity, quality and accessibility to water.