Is the privatization of water the right thing to do?
September 8, 2009
“Scarcity is not a quantity issue: it’s a distribution issue,” says law professor Gabriel Eckstein of the Texas Tech School of Law. “We have enough fresh water globally to provide every person on earth a hundred times over.” Private water markets, he says, could get it to the people who need it.
Written by: Jessica Behnham
Back in 1999, when Bolivia decided to privatize water services in Cochabamba, the country’s third-largest city, it didn’t bargain for the backlash that would unleash. Mobs of angry Bolivians, some armed with Molotov cocktails, took to the streets in protest. Martial law was declared, and in the ensuing violence one person was killed and several others were injured. Eventually the government withdrew the private water contract, and Bechtel, the U.S. engineering giant overseeing the water system, was run out of the country. Since then, documentaries such as The Corporation, Blue Gold and Flow have used footage of the riots to highlight the perils of water privatization. But it’s too bad the filmmakers didn’t stick around to see how things turned out.