Regulatory Capture and Water Crisis in Latin America: A Bioethical Reading within the Framework of Human Rights and Environmental Justice

Abstract

This article analyzes regulatory capture as a structural determinant that weakens the collective protection of water and deepens the water crisis in Latin America, with particular attention to the Mexican case. Considering the complexity of this phenomenon, it proposes an interdisciplinary perspective that brings together the discursive fields of human rights, global bioethics, international law, and environmental justice in order to examine how water governance may be shaped by private interests linked to extractive industries, agro-industrial activities, and other economic sectors associated with the high environmental impact generated in recent decades. The article argues that the degradation of rivers, aquifers, and rainwater bodies does not respond solely to technical failures, natural scarcity, or regulatory insufficiency, but also to structural and institutional dynamics that allow economic actors to interfere in regulation, oversight, the production of scientific evidence, and public decision-making. Several Latin American cases are used to illustrate mechanisms of regulatory disruption, including revolving doors, material and ideological incentives, voluntary self-regulation, legal or economic retaliation, and the control of critical information. The article argues that these practices violate the human right to water, public health, and a healthy environment, particularly for communities living under conditions of exclusion and for future generations. Finally, it proposes a regulatory governance framework grounded in bioethics, guided by the precautionary principle, the principle of responsibility, and the comprehensive reparation of water-related, environmental, and health damages.