About

Carl Bauer is a professor at the School of Geography, Development & Environment, where he works on problems of water rights and water policy at the intersection of law, geography, and political economy. His approach is comparative and interdisciplinary, encompassing research, teaching, and outreach. Bauer has studied issues related to water markets and privatization, water conflicts and governance, hydroelectric power in relation to other water uses and sources of electric power, and the law and political economy of property rights and regulation. His regional expertise includes the Western United States and Latin America, especially Chile, where he has lived and worked for many years. He collaborates with graduate students and colleagues from both the U.S. and abroad to study water policies across the Americas, as well as in Spain, the European Union, Australia, and the international arena. Bauer is concerned with empirical issues of law and public policy and aims to bridge the gap between academic and policy audiences. He is regularly interviewed by journalists, professionals, and students about water policy in Latin America, the U.S., and Europe. His overarching goal is to integrate the fields of law-and-society and geography—bringing together law, history, geography, and political economy as they relate to water, land, and nature. Bauer emphasizes property rights as a key analytical focus because they represent the area where these fields most closely overlap. His work reflects an interdisciplinary approach to human-environment relations, grounded in history and the physical world, with water serving as a critical lens for understanding broader environmental and resource issues.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Economics
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Environmental science
• Statistics
• Law and economics
• Electrical engineering
• Management science
• Business
• Environmental planning
• Process management
• Geography
• Environmental resource management
• Natural resource economics
• Law
• Environmental economics
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Hydroelectric power generation in Chile: an institutional critique of the neutrality of market mechanisms

  2024-09-26

  book-chapterSenior author

  This paper presents an institutional analysis of hydropower development in Chile, focusing on the main legal institutions involved and relevant jurisprudence. Hydropower expansion took place within a neoliberal institutional framework imposed by the military government (1973–1990) that included reforms in both the water and electricity sectors. One of the stated purposes of these reforms was to remove ideology from both water management and electricity generation and ensure the neutrality of the state. The paper argues that the security of property rights for hydropower activities is not value-neutral but sustained only through marginalizing other water rights and interests, such as in-stream uses.

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding Conditioning Factors for Hydroelectric Development in Chile: Bases for Community Acceptance

  Sustainability · 2022 · 2 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Environmental planning

  Chile has defined an energy development policy in which hydropower is an important part of the energy grid. This energy source has not yet been accepted by many people in local communities. For future hydroelectric development to be more widely accepted, the Chilean Ministry of Energy developed a methodological framework called Objects of Valuation. This framework is aimed at identifying the main community interests that may condition hydroelectric development. The objective of this paper is to analyze the scope of the framework based on a review of the scientific literature and information generated through participatory activities in three basins that have high hydropower potential. Analyzing the results obtained from the application of the framework, four complementary intangible factors not represented by the framework are identified: the lack of validation of a formal participatory process, under-recognition of different worldviews, distrust regarding the development of hydroelectricity, and a sense of self-determination in the community. These factors could potentially condition community acceptance of hydroelectricity, thereby limiting the framework as a decision-making tool. We recommend that this methodological framework should be complemented by the incorporation of intangible elements in the decision-making process, using a systematic tool applicable to spatial planning and strategic environmental-assessment processes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Protection of Nature and a New Constitution for Chile: Lessons from the Public Trust Doctrine

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Law
  PublisherDOI

• The long view of the water/energy nexus: Hydropower’s first century in the U.S.A.

  Natural resources journal · 2020 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Natural resource economics
  • Environmental science

  This paper offers a historical overview of the first century of hydropower in the US from today’s perspective of the water/energy nexus. Hydropower emerged as a technology in the 1880s and its development expanded until large dam building ended in the US in the 1970s-1980s. I summarize the century from the two different angles of the water sector and the electric power sector, as the roles and strategic importance of hydropower changed dramatically in the two sectors, in the parallel histories of water development and electric power development. The paper emphasizes the electricity side of the hydropower story because the water and environmental aspects are more widely known. During the first 50 years, hydropower dams were far more important to the electric power sector than they were to the water sector. Dams were juicy economic prizes that were fought over by private and public power utilities, politicians and government officials, and other interest groups, and that were built into the core of regional power grids during their foundational decades. Control of hydropower symbolized the deeper political and economic conflicts between public and private interests in the power sector, with hydropower becoming strongly identified with public power. In both sectors, there was a major turning point in the 1930s because of the growth and intervention of the Federal government in the New Deal. The earlier trends reversed and over the next 50 years hydropower became essential in the water sector - scaling up rapidly as the critical factor in paying for Federal multi-purpose water projects - and secondary in the power sector (with regional exceptions). In the power sector, hydropower’s trajectory after the 1930s was paradoxical. It boomed in absolute terms, quadrupling in generating capacity as Federal agencies built hundreds of large dams, but hydropower’s relative importance in the power sector declined steadily as the rest of the sector grew even faster. The half-century of hydropower’s greatest expansion ended by its taking a smaller role in the overall power grid. Over the long run, the dynamics of the energy sector have dominated the water sector, a lesson that may apply to other examples of the water/energy nexus in the US and abroad. © 2021 by the Natural Resources Journal Cover design by Ashley Baca.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Trajectory of a divided river basin: law, conflict, and cooperation along Chile's Maipo River

  Water Policy · 2017-12-08 · 15 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The historical trajectory of the Maipo River basin offers critical insights into current and future challenges in Chile's internationally famous model of water management. We highlight the legal dimensions of the trajectory, looking beyond the 1981 Water Code and water market debates to some of the underlying principles of Chilean water law that shape river management. In particular, we focus on a legal-administrative rule that splits rivers into multiple, independently managed ‘sections’ – a policy that has received little attention despite posing a prima facie contradiction to the goal of integrated water resources management. We demonstrate that, despite government officials’ insistence that this policy is merely an ‘artificial’ administrative tool, river sectioning has significant material, discursive, and socio-political consequences for water governance. We highlight three emerging issues: (1) tensions over section boundaries, (2) the institutionalisation of a ‘right to leave the river dry’, and (3) ongoing struggles to establish formal vigilance committees in the lower sections. Far from functioning as a legal simplification, river sectioning is complicated and contentious and demands more attention in policy and research. We conclude by considering possible solutions aligned with efforts to move toward more coordinated and equitable water management in this crucial basin.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Governing the transition to renewable energy: A review of impacts and policy issues in the small hydropower boom

  Energy Policy · 2016-12-06 · 213 citations

  reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Water, Law, and Development in Chile/California Cooperation, 1960–70s

  World Development · 2016-10-19 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Water Conflicts and Entrenched Governance Problems in Chile’s Market Model

  DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · 2015-06-01 · 124 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The Chilean system of tradable water rights and water markets has been well known and controversial in international water policy circles since the 1990s. Chile’s 1981 Water Code is a textbook example of neo-liberalism, with strong private property rights and weak government regulation, and the market in water rights has been the dominant theme in debates about Chilean water policy, both nationally and internationally. The Water Code was somewhat reformed in 2005 after over 13 years of political debate. In this paper I review the issues in water policy and politics in Chile during the decade since that reform. What does the ongoing Chilean experience tell us about water privatisation, markets, and commoditisation? Water conflicts have become the essential issue in Chile, rather than water markets. In the past decade conflicts among multiple water users have deepened and widened in many parts of the country, involving river basins and groundwater aquifers. The institutional framework for governing these water conflicts has worked poorly, for a variety of reasons, and the conflicts have become a serious national political problem. I review the evolving political and policy debates in Chile, including the current government’s proposal in 2014 for a new and stronger reform of the Water Code. In short, the critical problem of the Chilean water model is the lack of institutional capacity for governance or integrated water resources management, and the problem has worsened as water conflicts have become closely linked to conflicts in the energy and environmental sectors.

  Publisher

• The experience of water markets and the market model in Chile

  2012-01-01 · 3 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Hydroelectric power generation in Chile: an institutional critique of the neutrality of market mechanisms

  Water International · 2012-03-01 · 55 citations

  articleSenior author

  This paper presents an institutional analysis of hydropower development in Chile, focusing on the main legal institutions involved and relevant jurisprudence. Hydropower expansion took place within a neoliberal institutional framework imposed by the military government (1973–1990) that included reforms in both the water and electricity sectors. One of the stated purposes of these reforms was to remove ideology from both water management and electricity generation and ensure the neutrality of the state. The paper argues that the security of property rights for hydropower activities is not value-neutral but sustained only through marginalizing other water rights and interests, such as in-stream uses.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Manuel Prieto

  5 shared

• David Tecklin

  3 shared

• Sophia Borgias

  Boise State University

  1 shared

• Peter H. Gleick

  1 shared

• Katherinne Silva-Urrutia

  University of Chile

  1 shared

• Arica Crootof

  University of Montana Western

  1 shared

• Rodrigo Fuster

  University of Chile

  1 shared

• Helen Ingram

  1 shared