The Politics of Water Rights: Scarcity, Sovereignty and Security

Abstract

The unsustainable and exploitative use of scarce global resources of freshwater continues to create conflict and human dislocation on a grand scale. Instead of witnessing nation-states adopting more equitable and efficient conservation strategies, powerful corporations are permitted to privatise and monopolise diminishing water reservoirs based on flawed neo-liberal assumptions and market models of ‘global good’. The commodification of water has enabled corporate monopolies and corrupt states to exploit a fundamental human right, in the process, creating new forms of criminality. This chapter thus explores the ways in which corporate power, supported and sponsored by government initiatives and legal frameworks, monopolises an essential global resource with devastating environmental and human consequences.