Future Fridays: Water Must NOT Be Traded as a Commodity

So, the other night we were watching a December episode of A Late Show with Stephen Colbert and he reported that Wall Street is trading WATER like gold and oil. Talk about a splash of cold water in my face! Check this out:

The country’s first water market launched on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange this week with $1.1 billion in contracts tied to water prices in California, Bloomberg News reported.

The market allows farmers, hedge funds, and municipalities to hedge bets on the future price of water and water availability in the American West. The new trading scheme was announced in September, prompted by the region’s worsening heat, drought, and wildfires fueled by climate change. There were two trades when the market went live Monday (December 7th 2020)*.

Shutterstock photo

 
How and why would people treat water, the basis of life, like a commodity?

“Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come,” RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray told Bloomberg. “We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops.”

I remember when former President Enrique Bolaños (2002-2007) tried to privatize water in Nicaragua. The country rose up in defiance. Although basically health care and education were privatized to a degree, water never was.

Last November, the Nicaragua government voted to open consignments on water to get clean water into areas that do not have access, but water is still in the government's hands.

 
The World Bank estimates by 2025 that 2/3rds of the world’s population will experience a shortage in clean drinking water. Two-thirds!

According to Water for All, they list these ten reasons for not privatizing water: 

1. Privatization will lean to rate increases.
2. Privatization will undermine water quality.
3. Companies will be responsible to their shareholders and not to consumers.
4. Privatization will increase corruption.
5. It will reduce local control and limit the public's right to water.
6. It will lead to job losses.
7. Private financing is more costly than public financing.
8. Privatization is hard to reverse.
9. It will lead to bulk water exports.
10. It can leave the poor with no access to clean water.

Privatization of water is terrifying.  We all need to rise up in defiance. This needs to be nipped in the bud NOW.

-Kathleen

*Yet, another reason for 2020 to be a crappy year!

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