The market alternative

Abstract

Water generally has been regarded as a 'free good', available for use by anyone with access to it. Because the water can be used multiple times, water traditionally has been a 'public good', held by the community, either as common property or as public property, although rights to make particular uses of water might be assigned to particular persons to promote social and economic stability. Markets never were used to manage water on a large scale. Only late in the twentieth century did a large number of influential people advocate markets for raw water as a primary management tool. The pressure to rely on markets as the primary tool for managing water produced intense controversy because reliance on markets ignores water's public or shared nature. This chapter recounts the rise of and resistance to markets as the water management tool, concluding that markets, at best, can only play a limited, marginal role in water management. © 2009 Springer Netherlands.