The Threat of Water Grabbing

One of the areas the Transnational Institute (TNI) works on is Water Justice. With articles on ‘EC, stop imposing privatisation of water!’ and ‘Reclaiming Public Water,’ their website is a great resource for anyone interested in learning more about water issues and the need for advocacy.  

The threat of water grabbing is very real today. Here’s a section from TNI on the subject of water grabbing: 

What is ‘water grabbing’?

Water grabbing refers to situations where powerful actors are able to take control of or divert valuable water resources and watersheds for their own benefit, depriving local communities whose livelihoods often depend on these resources and ecosystems.1 The ability to take control of such resources is linked to processes of privatisation, commodification and take-over of commonly-owned resources. They transform water from a resource openly available to all into a private good whose access must be negotiated and is often based on the ability to pay. Water grabbing thus appears in many different forms, ranging from the extraction of water for large-scale food and fuel crop monocultures, to the damming of rivers for hydroelectricity, to the corporate takeover of public water resources. It also inheres in a model of development which is underwritten by a trade in virtual water.

Water grabbing is not a new phenomenon and has much in common with earlier resource grabs and what has been called the “enclosures of the commons.” 2 The new dimension of contemporary water grabbing is that the mechanisms for appropriating and converting water resources into private goods are much more advanced and increasingly globalised, subject to international laws on foreign investment and trade. There is thus a real concern that a new generation of ‘Mulhollands’, the early 20th Century Los Angeles official who made water grabbing infamous, will profit from this scenario to the detriment of local communities and ecosystems, and at a scale that has not been seen before.(see Box 1) In the context of a ‘global water crisis’, where 700 million people in 43 countries live below the water-stress threshold of 1,700 cubic metres per person, there is an urgent need to put an end to the global water grab.3

Box 1. A New Mulholland? One hundred years ago William Mulholland, superintendent of the Los Angeles Water Department, resolved the city’s water shortage problem through a brutally effective innovation: a ‘water grab’. By forcibly transferring water used by farmers in the Owens Valley, more than 200 miles away, he made it possible for Los Angeles to become one of the fastest growing cities in the United States. Control of water continues to be a source of great dispute in California, although nowadays the battles are mainly fought in courts of law. But across much of the developing world competition over water is intensifying at an alarming rate, giving rise to intense—and sometimes violent—conflict. The danger is that the Mulholland model will resurface in a new guise, with power, rather than a concern for poverty and human development, dictating outcomes. Source: UNDP (2006). Human Development Report 2006 - Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis

Continue reading at Transnational Institute http://www.tni.org/primer/global-water-grab-primer

This article by Jennifer Franco and Sylvia Kay was originally published on http://www.tni.org under a Creative Commons Licence: http://www.tni.org/primer/global-water-grab-primer