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Exploring the Ominous Shift Towards Privatization and Control of Water Resources.

The next global mega crisis will be on energy, water, food, air and security.

We have covered some of those in my previous articles:

• The Nuclear Investment Surge with AI and Quantum
• Climatetech meets Defense investments
• The issues with ethical energy transition
• Silicon Valley, Cerebral Valley, AI and theClimate-tech Mafias
• Nuclear tech setting a new world order
• AI is solving climate and setting up a catastrophe
• The geopolitics of energy transition and global resource control
• The Dark side of renewable energy

We also predicted that Water Stewardship will get mainstream attention in 2025.

Water is the blue gold

Billionaires and large companies are investing in and trading water in stock exchanges (most notably the Chicago Stock Exchange in 2020) as a commodity like oil and gold. Water consumption on the planet reaches 4 Billion m³ now. 

Remember all the bougie Status Ice flooding your socials? And remember this new trend with startups selling glacier ice water to premium cocktail bars in Dubai? But we are not merely pointing to such low stakes ridonculous frills and fluff. 

Water privitisation and markets

While giants like Coca Cola have been accused of draining and polluting water resources for making soda others like Fiji Waters selling premium drinking water are accused of privatising water bodies and depriving Fiji’s people of essential water resources. Coca Cola’s notorious relationship with water inequity dates back decades; just check on Google and articles from 2 decades ago are popping up. 

Severe heat, wildfire, floods, droughts lead to us doing one most important thing across geographies across the world: consume water. Think ACs, bathing, drinking something cool and mostly it involves using pure or distilled water right? 

But imagine industries: agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare and pharma, construction, recycling and AI (needing water to cool servers), you get the gist. 

The Issue of Water Scarcity

UNICEF reports that water scarcity would displace 700 million people by 2030 (that is in 5 years). A UNESCO 2023 report states that 26% of the world’s population don’t have access to safe drinking water and 46% lack access to safely- managed sanitation. About 2.4 billion people would face water scarcity in 2050.

Only 0.5% of Earth’s water is freshwater and usable — climate change is obviously affecting that availability too. Melting glaciers, permafrost and snow affect freshwater ecosystems and water quality and this affects food systems and the existing biodiversity too. It takes between 2000 and  5000 litres of water to produce a person’s daily food and think about everything else we use. 

Check out Aqueduct’s Global Water Risk Mapping Tool to understand various issues relating to water in your area. 

The World Bank states, we need $131 to $140 billion annually to meet water supply and sanitation goals for sustainable development and it could only happen through private-public partnerships.

 Are public-private partnerships any good?

While such stats and figures may sound scary for us, the world’s richest are having a field day securing water rights to privatise water while they are also buying nuclear power plants to feed their AI infra guzzling water and electricity. 

Forget desalination plants, restoring biodiversity, cleaning polluted water bodies or anything remotely ‘good’ where capital can flow; we are only looking at the bad and the ugly. The ultrarich already know now that access to clean, safe drinking water will be an ultra luxury. 

The Rise of Water Market Monopoly

Something that is widely happening in the United States is this: Wall Street, hedge funds, and private corporations are hoarding water rights while the public is left to deal with the water crisis every year due to forest fires, drought, heat waves and hurricanes. Water markets allow investors to pull public water and wring profits by trading their claims in water markets, and control water prices by inducing fake ‘scarcity scare’ or actually hoarding water when there is a shortage.

Water management companies are also buying farmland rights to consequently sell water rights as an inevitable add-on. Under Trump’s regime, water bills are skyrocketing while he is defunding clean water infrastructure and corporations are polluting water. The citizens are hoping the WATER Act may be their saviour. 

In Latin America, investors and agribusinesses are buying land and water rights to grow water-intensive crops, advancing monoculture, and  putting stress on smallholder farms and rural communities. This news comes at a time when we will be hosting COP 30 in Brazil this year. 

Australia’s water markets that once were taken globally as a benchmark as water-reform success stories are now battling controversies, especially when only a small part of water rights is controlled by the country’s indigenous communities, and its Government is actively intervening to provide water equity. 

Why do we care about what happens in Wall Street? 

Well, the movement has been happening since the 2000s with global investment banking, corporations, and utility giants doing a creepy market takeover: Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group, Apollo Management, SUEZ SA, Vivendi SE, HSBC Bank, Prudential, UBS AG, JP Morgan Group, Allianz Group, Dresdner Bank AG, Barclays PLC, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and many more organisations. 

Should water be treated as a basic human right or a commodity due to the increase in climate disasters? 

With escalating global water shortages, water markets could regulate equitable water usage, prevent market monopoly and protect ecosystems — but our 800 words of rant caution has ironically been about water governance issues. We have managed to successfully twist a solution into a weapon of our perversions. 

Chile and Australia, once showing promise of ‘how should a water market function’ are now infested with water inequalities, trans-boundary water conflicts,  and environmental degradation affecting the front lines and the vulnerable population. 

The growing trend of influential entities, like billionaires and corporations, investing in water rights and markets poses a troubling threat to water equity and access. As the debate between treating water as a commodity or a basic human right intensifies, we need to address governance issues and work towards sustainable and equitable solutions and firstly be vigil and learn to future-proof ourselves.

Credits

This article is written by Deepa Sai for ecoHQ.