Should water supplies be in private hands?

There are a couple of water supply related things in the news this week. The NGO GRAIN has published a report on Africa warning that large scale land grabs for export orientated agriculture will increase water stress on the continent. Land, and more importantly the water that comes with it, is being bought by companies and countries with financial muscle locals cant match. The result will be Africans being robbed of their access to fresh water.

And rather closer to home (for the UK IDEA office at any rate) there has been Flooding in wales and South East England which will mean that hosepipe bans as a result of drought are likely to be lifted. The drought conditions brought up questions of whether the UK needs a national water grid, something which would be expensive and might be very difficult to coordinate given the privatization of the water network.

Both these examples highlight some problems with water being considered to be just another commodity that can be bought and sold. The first is that privatization may be useful when everyone has relatively equal resources to spend on water but it can be very damaging when there are some who cant compete and may be denied water as a result. The second shows the problems created by natural monopolies – there is little incentive to invest and create a national grid especially as not all the companies cover areas where there have been water shortages.

Debatabase debate: This House would privatize the supply of water http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/environment-animal-welfare/house-would-privatize-supply-water