Regional Water Week for Latin America and the Caribbean 2025: Reflections and Concerns About The Topics Nobody Wants to Talk About

By Matthew Allen, William B. Wiener, Jr. Family Foundation Research Fellow From October 6th- 10th, the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC or CEPAL, in Spanish), the Iberoamerican Conference of Water Directors and Authorities (CODIA, in Spanish), the UNESCO Intergovernmental Hydrological Program for Latin America and the Caribbean (PHI, in Spanish), and the Government of Chile hosted the Regional Water Week for Latin America and the Caribbean. This week consisted of the 26^th Annual Meeting of the CODIA as well as the Regional Dialogues on Water.

The Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law & Policy sent two of its very own, Director Chris Dalbom, and your humble author, to attend the conference. Chris Dalbom was invited to speak on a panel dialogue on the valuation of water resources, where he emphazised the importance of transparency relating to water resource management.

Global water scarcity was top of mind amongst the attendees, highlighting the impending “Day Zero” crises around the world and those which have already occurred. The Amazon Basin holds approximately 1/5 of the world’s freshwater resources. Despite the global perception that Latin America is a water-rich region, it is also home to the world’s driest—Chile’s Atacama Desert—and eighth driest—Argentina’s Patagonia Desert—deserts in the world, making Latin America a region of extremes. Moreover, the Caribbean islands have varied climates and limited water resources. The careful—and integrated—management of the region’s water resources is crucial not only to the economies of the component States, but also for the fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and human rights obligations under international law.

The leaders of various States’ water agencies spoke about the progress being made by their respective agencies in water conservation, community involvement in water resource management, implementation of monitoring technologies and modeling utilizing internet of things (IOT) devices and artificial intelligence (AI), and international cooperation for transboundary water resources. Some States made impressive strides in the past few years:

·         El Salvador established a centralized government agency for the management of water resources; El Salvador did not have a central water agency until about three years ago 

·         Chile amended its water code in 2022 to recognize a human right to water and guarantee access to water to the neediest citizens

·         Brazil established a national secretariat for water security to prevent future day zero events like the one that nearly occurred in Sao Paulo

Altogether, Latin America and the Caribbean have made great strides in improving stewardship of water resources and ensuring SDG 6 is fulfilled, as well as implementing a human right to water. The focus on water as a resource for use in economic development for much of the member States was a troubling trend, however, that academics and community members must push back against. Water must be accorded inherent, non-economic value as the source of life for much of the planet. There are also still many challenges which States of the region must address not only with respect to transparency of water resource allocation and management decisions, but also international financing constraints on major water infrastructure projects.

During the panel about the valuation of water held as part of the regional dialogues on water, Tulane Water’s Chris Dalbom discussed the transparency gap in high level water resource management, particularly regarding consumptive water uses by AI data centers, which rely on vast quantities of freshwater for evaporative cooling of their computing infrastructure. His concerns proved prescient; OpenAI just announced its decision to build an AI data center in Argentina’s Patagonia region, partnering with Sur Energy to provide the 500MW the facility will need to operate. Unsurprisingly, none of the major players in Argentina or at OpenAI is talking about the facility’s water consumption or its environmental impact. Recalling the aridity of Patagonia, these discussions must be had by water managers and policymakers with involvement from the local communities most affected.

Developments in integrated water resource management and stewardship discussed in this year’s Regional Water Week were promising, but it was concerning that the focus remained on economic development, when much work remains to ensure that water is preserved for future generations and valued inherently rather than economically. Of course, many would argue that sustainable development, rather than unchecked economic development, is the goal, but this prompts the question: At which point must development take a back seat to resource conservation? Without water, there is no development—sustainable or otherwise—after all. Institutes like Tulane Water serve the important purpose of bringing these concerns to policymakers and other stakeholders to ensure that there will be water for future generations both in Latin America and the Caribbean and the greater global community.

Sources

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13.     Pengfei Li, et al., Making AI Less "Thirsty": Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models, arXiv (Apr. 6, 2023), https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03271.

14.    Aminu Abdullahi, OpenAI to Build $25B Data Center in Argentina, Expanding Its Global AI Infrastructure, TechRepublic (Oct. 14, 2025), https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-openai-data-center-argentina/.