Environmental Engineering Reference
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access to resources and know-how, which allows them to build and operate bigger and
better water systems.
Big Water and its backers claim that free markets are the most efficient way to de-
termine what people really want and how much they are willing to pay for it. When
water is plentiful and clean, its price is relatively low, but as water becomes scarce and
polluted, its value rises, and so should its price, the privatizers say. According to this
theory, when prices rise, water providers earn money to reinvest in their systems, and
their competition for customers incentivizes them to expand services. Indeed, compet-
ition protects consumers and promotes accountability in the marketplace: if a public
water utility does a poor job, then consumers can often do little, but if a private water
company does a poor job, consumers will reject it in favor of another, better company.
This argument has won favor from Albania to Bolivia to China, where municipalities
are increasingly turning to private companies to fix and upgrade their systems. The rise
of Big Water has been abetted by politicians from wealthy nations—particularly France,
Germany, England, and Spain—who encourage poor nations to outsource their utility
needs as much as possible. Big Water is also aided by major lending institutions, such as
the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank,
which are largely staffed by free-market economists who favor privatization, and which
provide loans for infrastructure projects.
But arrayed against them is a growing movement of antiprivatizers who believe that
water should be treated as “a human right.” Community and environmental activists say
that citizens bear too much burden and see too few benefits from privatization. Accord-
ing to their view, privatization, especially in developing nations, leads to water mono-
polies that are accountable only to their shareholders. Such monopolies, antiprivatizers
charge, make greater profits in times of shortage and are thus enticed to restrict water
services. The activists point to a record of occasional price-gouging by water companies
and note that corporations destroy ecosystems to make “unnecessary” products, such as
bottled water and other packaged foods. But their greatest fear is that privatization leads
to a loss of control of an essential resource: that for-profit water companies become, in
essence, arbiters of life and death and make such godlike decisions based purely on an
economic calculus.
“No one should be denied access to water because they can't pay for it. It's very im-
portant that we say water is not a commodity,” writes Maude Barlow, a Canadian act-
ivist who is the loudest critic of privatization. Barlow has written several antiprivatiza-
tion topics and in 2007 was named the UN's irst senior adviser on water issues. While
she has agreed that the private sector should be allowed to build pipes, dams, and water
treatment plants, Barlow has been adamant that the delivery of water—i.e., control of
the tap—be left to public not-for-profit utilities. When the poor cannot afford private
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