In its report, The Economics of Water: Valuing the Hydrological Cycle as a Global Common Good, (see Blue News 17 October), the Global Commission on the Economics of Water warns that, unless water resources are urgently conserved and the destruction of ecosystems is stopped, more than half the world’s food production will be at risk of failing within the next quarter century. In the executive summary, the authors of the report state:
“The world faces a growing water disaster. For the first time in human history, the hydrological cycle is out of balance, undermining an equitable and sustainable future for all. Decades of collective mismanagement and undervaluation of water around the world have damaged our freshwater and land ecosystems and allowed for the continuing contamination of water resources. We can no longer count on freshwater availability for our collective future.”
As accurate as the analysis of the crisis may be in this report, when it comes to answers, the report and its authors stay prisoners of the old believe that money and the market will fix it, when they call for “a new economics of water”. Fixing the price of water and adjusting the market shall solve the problem. In the abstract, it reads:
“We can fix this crisis if we act more collectively, and with greater urgency. Vitally too, restoring stability of the water cycle is critical not only in its own right, but to avoid failing on climate change and safeguarding all the earth’s ecosystems, as well as on each and every one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It will preserve food security, keep economies and job opportunities growing, and ensure a just and liveable future for everyone.”
Leo Heller, former UN Special Rapporteur for the Human Right to Water and Sanitation and director of the Brazilian ONDAS Observatory, comments on the GCEW report:
“The new GCEW report is very tempting for people interested in a better future for water, because the main narrative is that of ‘neutral science’. Nobody would disagree with the ‘five mission areas’ for tackling the so-called water crisis. The problem with the report arises when it comes to the medicine to cure the disease of the water crisis: the same – orthodox – wine in a new bottle. These medicines are not solutions to the water crisis, but the same remedies that have been used since the 1980s, which caused the crisis. So the wine is the cause and not the solution.”
While the term “human right” is hard to find in this report (only in reference to the UN Special Rapporteur to the Human Right to Water and Sanitation, Pedro Arrojo Agudo), the report is full of “market”. Thinking out of this market box does not seem to be the strength of this Commission. The call for water as a global common stays pretty hollow like this.
