A Growing Threat to an Essential Resource
Water, like air, is so essential to life that throughout history most societies have treated it as a common, shared resource.
In the United States, 85% of people get their water from publicly owned and operated systems.Public water systems have been one of the great equalizers in societies around the world. But the landscape is rapidly changing.
Currently, almost 900 million people lack access to water globally, and these trends are predicted to worsen with growing population, water use, contamination, and global climate changes. Citing rising projected profits, corporations are racing to turn our water into a privately-held commodity, like oil. This privatization of water is happening through corporate control of municipal water systems, water bottling, and corporate attempts to influence global water governance.
Just a handful of corporate giants are driving this global water grab, and their reach is growing. Supplying water is already a $465 billion a year business. Large scale corporate take-over of water resources is happening right now as corporations, with the help of the World Bank and other international financial institutions, are pushing cash strapped-governments to privatize their water, leaving many without basic access. If the private water industry has its way, by 2015 three times as many people around the world will rely on for-profit corporations for water services as in 1999.
The private water industry is expanding, often in the guise of Public-Private Partnerships. Yet, private sector involvement in water services delivery has failed to solve most of the problems of access to water. It has also created new problems such as rate hikes, frequent contract renegotiations, and broken promises to extend or improve water services. Ultimately, the growing role of for-profit water services threatens democrratic governance of water and the human right to water, as an essential and collective good.
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