Blue Gold
According to researchers, developed nations have taken cheap, abundant fresh water largely for granted. Now global population growth, pollution and climate change are shaping a new view of water as “blue gold”.
Global water markets, including drinking water distribution, management, waste treatment, and agriculture are a nearly $500 billion market and growing fast.
But governments pushing to privatize public water systems are colliding with a global “water is a human right” movement. Because water is essential for human life, its distribution is best left to more publicly accountable government authorities to distribute at prices the poorest can afford.
According to experts, the world is at a transition point where fundamental decisions need to be made by societies about how this basic human need is going to be provided. The profit motive and basic human need for water are just inherently in conflict.
What’s different now is that it’s increasingly obvious that the world is running up against limits to new fresh water supplies, says a water expert. It’s no longer cheap and easy to drill another well or dam another river.
Image: File photo of a farmer waiting for rain at his drought-hit paddy field at Morigoan, near Guwahati in Assam. | Photograph: STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images
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