ABCs of Water Privatization

Public Citizen | Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program | Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program - ABCs of Water Privatization: "The World Bank has predicted that by the year 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will run short of fresh drinking water. As supplies become scarce, water will take on unprecedented market value. Fortune magazine dubbed water the “oil of the 21st century,” but, unlike gasoline, its real value is incalculable. No living being can survive without water, an immutable fact of life that multinational corporations are seeking to parlay into profits.

Thus was born the water privatization movement, which, though in its infancy, arguably looms as the greatest threat to the protection of this irreplaceable public resource.

National and local governments, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and multinational utility companies are jumping onto the privatization bandwagon with nary a second thought. While the full story of water privatization is decades away from being told, early reports reveal that these schemes in the United States and throughout the world have gone terribly wrong with prices increasing, quality suffering and accountability falling by the wayside. [...]"