Urban water pricing in Chile: cost recovery, affordability, and water conservation

To address water scarcity issues, policymakers are increasingly considering pricing as an important tool. However, implementing tariff reforms is often difficult in practice due to political factors and the absence of governance structures that can result in quality service provision. Additionally, institutional replication of successful water pricing policies has been difficult due to incomplete information and the contextual uniqueness of local institutions, politics, and social relations. The case study reported here seeks to fill this gap by analyzing Chile's water supply and sanitation (WSS) regulatory framework and evaluating its performance. We show that Chile's policy of providing WSS services through privatized regional and local water companies has been a notable success, but faces new challenges. Thus, Chile's urban water pricing regulation represents an interesting case study for countries that are analyzing their water and sanitation regulation. (C) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.