Our water commons

The integrity and health of the Commons, notes the IFG, crashed when econom- ic globalization and market fundamentalism were introduced as the only model of development for the world, and transnational corporations gained access to the genetic, mineral, timber and water resources of even the most remote parts of the earth for the first time. [...] However, the World Bank and the big water companies set out to promote a major shift in water policy in the global South (a model they have gone on to try to sell in the North) by actively seeking the buy-in of non-governmental organizations, think tanks, state agencies, the media and the private sector in order to manufacture con- sent for the commodification of water. [...] World Water and Flow Inc, two companies on the verge of a bulk water transfer business, are looking to send their first shipments, not to the parts of the world where people are dying for water, but to Las Vegas and Los Angeles in the case of World Water, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the case of Flow. [...] Kravcik is spearheading a movement to view water in the hydrologic cycle as a Commons before it has even fallen from the clouds and asserts the right of a drop of water to “domicile.” Restoring ecosystems and watersheds by rainwa- ter harvesting is key to the restoration of the hydrologic cycle upon which we all depend for life, he explains, and adds that the beauty of this project is that it is a [...] They are continuing to fight similar projects around The greatest indict- the province arguing that private hydro companies would be able to use and ment of our collective control for profit the water Commons that belong to all residents of B. C. abandonment of the notion that water is a Commons is the water apartheid now suffered by the poor and disenfranchised of the global South.