Context of the Water Debate
Often taken for granted, water is vital to life. It is the essential component in all aspects and activities related to our well-being and existence, including food and energy production and manufacturing in general. It’s clear that if our water supply continues to dwindle, and/or, water became unaffordable, then our lives would be detrimentally transformed. Millions are already experiencing and suffering from the mismanagement and unequal allocation of water. Between 1.1 and 1.5 billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. 1.8 million Children die each year from diarrhoea – a water related disorder. In total, 2.2 million people die each year due to low quality drinking water and/or lack of sanitation – that is 42, 000 people a week, 90 percent of whom are children (WHO/UNICEF, 2005: 15). These horrific consequences, of exclusion to socially necessary goods and services, are catastrophic, yet entirely preventable.
Access to and control of water, have been contentious issues for centuries. Most recently this struggle has taken the form of a conflict over the increasing commercialisation, privatisation and liberalisation of fresh water goods and services. This shift in regulation, which has been introduced throughout much of the world, can be characterised not only by its nature – an increase in private sector participation in the water sector and thus a reliance on the free market as the model upon which society structures the governance, production and distribution of socially necessary goods and services – but also the geo-political climate within which this shift takes place, namely, the era of economic globalisation.
Indeed, this shift has been facilitated by processes of economic globalisation – processes that are defined by the dominant neo-liberal policies of deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation. Economic globalisation has done more than just facilitate the shift from public to private sector however. When it comes to governing resources which hitherto were considered public goods or part of the global commons, neoliberal policies have changed the nature and structure of governance. The shift in regulatory power has meant a reduction (and in some cases an outright eclipse) in the planning capacity of local, regional and national authorities.
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