Global Justice Ecology Project works with organizations around the world to end the threat to water from both direct and indirect sources.

"If the wars of this century were fought over oil… The wars of the next century will be fought over water."                          -- World Bank Vice President, Ismail Serageldin

"Water promises to be the 21st century what oil was to the 20th--the precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations."                --Fortune Magazine, May 2000

Fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce.

Coerced by international financial institutions such as the World Bank, governments are being forced to privatize public resources, such as water.  Governments must sell their fresh water sources to corporations as a way to raise money to pay off their loans.  Such privatization schemes are often pre-conditions for these loans and are used to enhance corporate profits.   Once corporations purchase the water, they then sell it for a high price back to the communities to whom the water belonged in the first place. 

This subversion of democracy and human rights is being resisted by peoples around the world.

This is contributing to a worldwide water crisis where 12% of the world's population uses 85% of its fresh water, leaving 1.2 billion people without access to safe drinking water.

"Water is essential to life.  It is a basic human right.  No one should be able to control it or expropriate it for profit. In the current global water crisis, billions of people still lack access to basic water and sanitation services. Everyday, thousands of people die from preventable diseases contracted because they do not have access to clean water."            --Council of Canadians, "The Right to Water"

Global Justice Ecology Project created a powerpoint called, "Water is the Blue Soul of the Planet" following the March 2006 Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City, which was attended and documented by Global Justice Ecology Project co-Director Orin Langelle.

But privatization of water does not have to directly involve a corporation purchasing water directly.  Industrial timber plantations and industrial agriculture monopolize and deplete fresh water sources.  Toxic herbicides and pesticides sprayed on crops and plantations contaminate surface and ground water. 

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View our Water Privatization Powerpoint.

Top Right: Marchers protest the Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City, March 2006.  Photo: Langelle/ GJEP