Water
The economics of issues we face today.
Water for Life: UN Human Right to Water and Sanitation
The UN recognized the human right to water and sanitation
-
clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights.
-
The right of everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable and physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses.
-
What does this mean to Nations and their economy?
-
How does this affect the privatization of water?
Why is Water Important?
Water is the base of all life on Earth. Whether it be salt water for marine organisms or fresh water for humans and other land bansed plants and animals. Commodifying water has been one of the worst decisions of the human race. Now we are faced with power struggles, contamination, and worst of all, scarcity. This website will explain the basics of each of these issues as well as give you examples on when and where this has happened.
This website has been made as a group project for Jens Christiansens Econ 203 course at Mount Holyoke College. For more information please refer to the previous website by clicking the link below.
"Supply
As if the problem of a fixed supply were not enough, there are three further major supply problems affecting the world's water situation.
First, the distribution of existing water resources around the world is horribly uneven: 60% of the world's fresh water is located in just nine countries. And unlike many commodities, water isn't portable; it simply doesn't make economic sense to transport water from (say) Canada to (say) China; water, even if its value rises tenfold, is simply too voluminous.
Second, where water is actually available, it is often not available in a suitable form. It may, for instance, be either too hot or too old, or, perhaps, too dirty or too salty. Increasingly, it's also too polluted; in the U.S., the gasoline additive MTBE has rendered a significant percentage of wells unfit for human consumption.
Third, in developed countries, where water is generally available as needed, the infrastructure supplying it is old and decaying. Estimates of how much a country like the U.S. must spend upgrading its water infrastructure over the next 20 years measure in the billion.
Demand
Population growth and economic growth are the two biggest drivers of demand. On the one hand, as population numbers increase, so does the demand for potable water. On the other, as economies grow, so does the demand for water for use in both agriculture and industry: the richer people get, the higher they live on the water food chain. The U.S., for instance, is the world leader in water consumption per capita, largely because we live such a rich, luxurious lifestyle."