By Theodora Filis
(Video: World Water Day 2023: UN Warns of potential global crisis)
Water scarcity is an increasingly frequent and worrying phenomenon that affects at least 11% of the European population and 17% of the EU territory. Since 1980, the number of droughts in Europe has increased, and they have become more severe, costing an estimated €100 billion over the past 30 years.
Everyone agrees that we are in the midst of a global freshwater crisis. Around the world, rivers, lakes, and aquifers are dwindling faster than we can possibly replenish them. Increased global population and industrial and household chemicals are also causing a decrease in freshwater.
A drought’s impact is far-reaching and touches every part of our ecosystem, from human life to crops and vegetation, and even to livestock. Water shortages also affect wildfires; dried-out land can feed fires and make them larger, and a lack of water also affects the ability to put out the fire.
Water privatization is a very hot subject and is causing many problems in North America and within the European Union (EU).
The largest water supplier in the US recently declared a drought emergency in Southern California. This will possibly result in mandatory water restrictions beginning early in 2023, and will definitely impact millions of people and businesses. Reservoirs are depleting, wells are drying up, and water deliveries remain low.
Most Americans — and more than 90% of Floridians — get their water from a public provider. But the corporate water lobby is trying to change that through privatization-friendly laws. Fourteen states have passed a version of dubiously named “fair market value” legislation to grease the wheels of private water system takeovers. Florida could be next.
The water supply for millions of people in and around Uruguay’s capital city of Montevideo reached critically low levels in the Southern Hemisphere fall and winter of 2023. The shortage occurred as two main freshwater reservoirs serving the region—Canelón Grande and Paso Severino—have nearly run dry.
People are being deprived of water access in municipalities where the water supply is managed by private companies. Citizens are fighting against water privatization all across the EU, with many examples of massive mobilizations in Italy, Madrid, Berlin, El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain, and Greece.
The water you drink could be worth millions — to a private corporation. A bill advancing in the legislature seeks to encourage the corporate takeover of Florida’s public water utilities, which will cost residents and businesses dearly. At a time of rising prices for everything from medical care and energy to housing, the last thing Floridians need is to be priced out of essential water service.
A drought’s impact is far-reaching and touches every part of our ecosystem, from human life to crops and vegetation, and even to livestock. Water shortages also affect wildfires; dried-out land can feed fires and make them larger, and a lack of water also affects the ability to put out the fire.
Water privatization is a very hot subject and is causing many problems in North America and within the European Union (EU).
The largest water supplier in the US recently declared a drought emergency in Southern California. This will possibly result in mandatory water restrictions beginning early in 2023, and will definitely impact millions of people and businesses. Reservoirs are depleting, wells are drying up, and water deliveries remain low.
Most Americans — and more than 90% of Floridians — get their water from a public provider. But the corporate water lobby is trying to change that through privatization-friendly laws. Fourteen states have passed a version of dubiously named “fair market value” legislation to grease the wheels of private water system takeovers. Florida could be next.
The water supply for millions of people in and around Uruguay’s capital city of Montevideo reached critically low levels in the Southern Hemisphere fall and winter of 2023. The shortage occurred as two main freshwater reservoirs serving the region—Canelón Grande and Paso Severino—have nearly run dry.
People are being deprived of water access in municipalities where the water supply is managed by private companies. Citizens are fighting against water privatization all across the EU, with many examples of massive mobilizations in Italy, Madrid, Berlin, El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain, and Greece.
The water you drink could be worth millions — to a private corporation. A bill advancing in the legislature seeks to encourage the corporate takeover of Florida’s public water utilities, which will cost residents and businesses dearly. At a time of rising prices for everything from medical care and energy to housing, the last thing Floridians need is to be priced out of essential water service.
(The Fight for Water | DW Documentary)
Goldman Sachs estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, and the United Nations expects demand to overcome supply by more than 30 percent come 2040.
As the crisis worsens, companies that own the rights to vast stores of water (and have the capacity to move it in bulk) won’t necessarily weigh the needs of wealthy water-guzzling companies like Coca-Cola or Nestlé against those of water-starved communities in Phoenix or Ghana.
Privately owned water utilities will charge what the market can bear, and spend as little as they can get away with on maintenance and environmental protection.
There is no substitute for water, and as everyone is painfully aware, corporations don’t care about the environment, and they don’t care about human rights, they care about profit.
In the developed world you can turn on any tap, and it comes rushing out, clean and plentiful, even in the arid Southwest, where the Colorado River Basin is struggling with drought.
Water privatization, until recently, was an almost exclusively Third World issue. In the late 1990's the World Bank infamously required scores of impoverished countries—most notably Bolivia—to privatize their water supplies as a condition of desperately needed economic assistance.
Let Bolivia be a warning for the rest of the world.
As the crisis worsens, companies that own the rights to vast stores of water (and have the capacity to move it in bulk) won’t necessarily weigh the needs of wealthy water-guzzling companies like Coca-Cola or Nestlé against those of water-starved communities in Phoenix or Ghana.
Privately owned water utilities will charge what the market can bear, and spend as little as they can get away with on maintenance and environmental protection.
There is no substitute for water, and as everyone is painfully aware, corporations don’t care about the environment, and they don’t care about human rights, they care about profit.
In the developed world you can turn on any tap, and it comes rushing out, clean and plentiful, even in the arid Southwest, where the Colorado River Basin is struggling with drought.
Water privatization, until recently, was an almost exclusively Third World issue. In the late 1990's the World Bank infamously required scores of impoverished countries—most notably Bolivia—to privatize their water supplies as a condition of desperately needed economic assistance.
Let Bolivia be a warning for the rest of the world.
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