Privatizing Water, Producing Scarcity: The Yorkshire Drought of 1995*

Abstract

The Yorkshire drought of 1995 was the most extreme climate event faced by the English and Welsh water industry since its privatization in 1989. As an emblem of crisis in privatized water management, and as a potential signal of climate change, the 1995 drought has motivated change in water regulation and management. In this paper I challenge conventional interpretations of the 1995 water supply crisis as a natural hazard or as a result of managerial ineptitude. Drought is conceptualized as the production of scarcity, an outcome of three interrelated practices: meteorological modeling, demand forecasting, and corporate restructuring and the regulatory “game.” These practices are situated within an analysis of the context of the regulatory implications of the privatization of the water industry in 1989. I explore the simultaneously natural, social, and discursive elements of water scarcity and situate them within an analysis of privatization as reregulation, rather than deregulation. This analysis brings insights developed in debates over “real” regulation and regulation theory to bear on nature‐society analysis, while extending this debate through theorizing regulation as, in part, a discursive practice. The ensuing rereading of drought challenges conventional interpretations of environmental crisis, raises questions about the implications of water industry privatization, and emphasizes the need to account for the role of the state and the intricacies of “real” regulation in analyses of resource management.