Asension Torres

Globalizing Water and Solutions to Water Scarcity:

Alternate Perspectives; Alternate Values

Introduction

The hydrologic cycle is global and it makes water present everywhere that

people can naturally live. That means water is one of the most ubiquitous ideas

about nature that humans share. How do people understand water as a resource to

their lives, their community and their economic well-being? What ideas about our

local understanding of water scale to the global space? How is water, something

that is so fundamentally natural, globalized? These questions were the basis of my

approach to the globalization of water. Through consultation, it became clear that

my early exploratory questions could not be the basis for a thesis or research

question. Therefore the intent of my early research was to educate myself

sufficiently in order to define a research problem or gap in the available literature.

These early explorations were as much an education on water issues as they were

an education on how things are globalized.

Method

My method of approach to understanding the issues surrounding water will

be to examine books, case studies, news reports and investigative journalism,

industry advertisements, and published participant research. At a macro level,

reading the literature revealed a set of themes that didn’t respect the boundaries of

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the types of literature. Ideas that were alluded to in one source were often

reinforced in another. I will apply the qualitative methods of analysis of authorship

and audience, suspending belief, coding, and textual analysis. Coding will involve

organizing and interpreting the literature surrounding water. The other methods

will be conducted by making use of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. It is defined

as everything written (or created) that has an effect, to include groups of writings

that are shown to be commonly themed with a unified effect, and the structures of

those statements. This is differentiated from everyday speech as the aggregate of

concepts and classifications through which context is given to phenomena, and

which is produced and reproduced though an identifiable set of practices.

Discourse analysis reveals those practices. It can reveal the underlying patterns of

influence which can change according to different contexts. Therefore they are not

really patterns. If the explanations of the roots of influence change according to the

observed conditions then the explanations aren’t really objective. They are simply

expressions of the context in which the structures of discourse took form. (Waitt

2010). This method allowed me to identify the themes that produce and circulate

ideas and knowledge about the water crisis. The method allowed me to consider

the limits or rules that govern an approach to a crisis or permit one solution over

another. Through method, I observed themes that were shared among and within

the sources. These themes illustrated a set of targets for analysis. I have grouped

the literature into themes of ideas about water, water crises, solutions, and

criticisms.

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Early queries to a Library catalog of “(water) AND (globalization)” provided

scholarly sources and articles, the earliest of which was from a report by Raymond

Nace in the USGS Circular 536 in 1967. This early report led to a related result in

the library search called Water in Crisis by Peter Gleick. I then searched for “Peter

Gleick” through the Amazon online store which provided highly relevant results

and recommendations. The results were provided first by the initial results list but

also by other Amazon generated results titled “Frequently Bought Together”,

“Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”, and “What Other Items Do

Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?” I include these initial steps as they were

the central theme of a lecture and course at the University of Maryland (Linden,

Smith and York 2003). The efficiency of the associated algorithms that were

intended to aid a customer in making a book purchase, ironically allowed me to

optimally explore the case studies and issues surrounding water around the world.

Early research, readings and consultations with advisors provided some literature

and sources that began to coalesce into a question about the urgencies surrounding

water issues around the world.

Literature

From here began the formation of my eventual research question. There

were many scholarly articles, books, investigations, documentaries, and businesses

addressing the issues of water in crisis. But first I needed to understand if it was

reasonable to assume that water was valued by all people.

Ideas About Water

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There are numerous examples that describe water as a substance of divine

and spiritual embodiment. “Water symbolizes the whole of potentiality: it is the

fons et origo, the source of all possible existence … water symbolizes the primal

substance from which all forms came and to which they will return” (Eliade 1979,

130). Water is a central theme of identity in Indian culture and informs Indian

people’s behaviors and practices with water. The Mahabharata, one of the Sanskrit

epics, says that

“The creator first produced water for the maintenance of life among human beings. The water enriches life and its absence destroys all creatures and plant-life.”” Charity of water is greater than charity of food. Life cannot exist without water. Charity of water means charity of life. Charity of water will lead to fame, success, long life, defeat of enemies, freedom from sins and gain of punya. Water bodies are a resting place for everybody. This includes gods, man, demigods, forefathers, demons, animals, birds and aquatic life. Charity of water will lead to the prosperity of the future generations.” (Østigård and Tvedt 2010, 2)

Water is a core element in purification rituals of Abrahamic and non-

Abrahamic religions from Shinto to Judaism to Islam (UNESCO 2005), and is a

central character in human foundation mythologies as evidenced by different

forms of flood stories (Jastrow and Clay 1920) (Doniger 2004). We baptize ourselves

in water and equate it with salvation and a divine spirit. “Truly, truly, I say to you,

unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of

God.” (John the Baptist 1546). We begin (coffee) and end (beer) our day with water,

our vacations are pilgrimages to it, and we are transfixed by waves of water

crashing on the shore. (Fishman 2011) .Speaking on behalf of many sailors, I have a

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strong reaction to bodies of water and often experience an emotional pull to the

ocean, rivers and even pools (I embarrassingly admit) and have endured a deep

nostalgia from having to live so far inland.

There are numerous examples but these sufficiently espouse the irreducible

importance of water that all groups of people share which can be seen or revealed

through origin myths, beliefs systems and daily practices of life. (Doniger 2004);

(Jastrow and Clay 1920); (Østigård and Tvedt 2010). It is reasonable to assume that

water has been valued by all people. Given peoples’ ideas about water as

fundamentally natural, ubiquitous and universally valued, why and how can there

be a crisis of water?

Crises and Solutions

I sought the answer through literature that describes water crises, which

included government reports, scholarly research and participant research. The

themes of crisis have been floating in the discourse for at least 50 years, as a U.S.

policy concern (Nace 1967, 1). A U.S. government agency researcher, circa 1967,

relates the hydrologic cycle in terms of an oil barrel representing all water on earth

and a micro syringe representing water available for biological consumption.

Stemming the waste of water, managing future demand, the criticism of water as a

means of waste disposal in core countries are early propositions to answer the

limits of water availability, as well as suggesting that water pollution is an

economic issue over a health issue, and that countries in the periphery have a

water development and management shortage as opposed to simply a water

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shortage. (Nace 1967). Going even further back, in the 1892 Supreme Court case

Illinois Central R. Co. v. Illinois, the Illinois state legislature granted deed for

ownership of a one-mile strip of the Chicago harbor shoreline to Illinois Central

Railroad Company. (Barlowe and Clarke 2003). The following legislature had a

different opinion on the sale and cancelled the deed. The Supreme Court decision

was based on the right of the public to maintain control of their water, as it is held

in public trust by their government. (United States Reports 1892, 40).

Such a case seems a natural development of common law and the values of

democracy. However, water as a territorial leverage or tool is evident in the

literature as well. Examples of intrastate violence at the Cauvery River in India,

conflicts between indigenous peoples of the Americas and early settlers, Israel’s

ongoing turbulence with its neighbors of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, with whom it

shares the Jordan River basin, (Giordano, Giordano and Wolf 2002) (Wolf 1999, 8),

demonstrate the geopolitical nexus that water disputes can represent. Before Israel

was formed, the World Zionist Organization specifically addressed the desire for a

pending Jewish state to have primary control over its water resources as well as the

sources of those water flows. (Giordano, Giordano and Wolf 2002) (Wolf 1999, 8).

"Watersheds come in families; nested levels of intimacy." … " As you work upstream toward home you're more closely related. The big river is like your nation, a little out of hand. The lake is your cousin. The creek is your sister. The pond is her child. And, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, you're married to your sink." (Parfit 2003)

Today, Israel applies disparate water management and access practices,

illustrated by Israeli citizens and Israeli settlers having continued and unrestricted

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access to water. The conditions are realized by denying permits for construction or

maintenance of water infrastructure, which is not enforced for Israeli settlers,

whose settlements in the occupied territories are kept connected to the Israeli

support network. Water collection systems have also suffered damage from Israeli

military air strikes and ground incursions. (Koek 2013)

From elementary school through university we learn how the hydrological

cycle is an eternally (geologically speaking) renewing process of precipitation,

evapotranspiration, percolation, stream runoff, evaporation, condensation and

precipitation (Stephens 2012) (Gallagher 2013, 7). This Gaian vascular cycle is cross

indexed with other processes of carbon and solar radiant heat transfer such that a

shift in energy of one cycle has a change in distribution or quantity of another,

“dry places will become more dry, & wet places wetter”. (Gallagher 2013, 8).

Because the hydrological process is a system/cycle, it frames water as a finite

resource to which we apply the operations of life on a “budget” (Nace 1967, 5).

This is a key description that I would draw attention to for its limited use in the

literature. It is significant in that it definitively characterizes the scarcity of water

as a crisis and it is seemingly and unexpectedly avoided throughout the rest of the

literature regardless of source.

Industrialized agriculture and its monoculture approach to food production

represent what is referred to as nonpoint pollution, which is differentiated by point

pollution such as other industrialized manufacturing. Non-point pollution also

includes logging and large-scale development. This is an obvious source of water

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degradation when considering more easily identifiable and manageable human

habit of collocating with bodies of water into which people have diluted societal

waste and pollutants. (Carpenter, et al. 1998); (Office of Wetlands, Oceans and

Watersheds 2013). The conditions for pollution have persisted in spite of attempts

at legislation that may have been a response from an earlier and more ethical civil

service corps à la Raymond Nace. (Nace 1967). Consider a story related by Scott

Racek, a Supreme Court scholarly researcher, who worked on Capitol Hill and

encountered legislative bills haunted by the ghosts of dead trees due to their

encumbering thickness. He observed that the legislator did not always directly

perform the review of drafted legislation, as it was his role as a lowly staffer to

report to the member on the contents of the proposed legislation. Racek related his

knowledge about the Clean Water Act while working on a Senate Judiciary

committee and assigned to the staff of Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. The crux of

the bill was that manufacturing byproducts shall be rendered chemically inert

prior to discharge into water bodies. Dupont Chemical Co., of Delaware, was a

strong financial supporter of Biden. Understanding that Biden is publicly expected

to vote favorably on the bill, the company explicitly did not ask Senator Biden to

vote against a bill that is so obviously in line with the Senator’s constituency and

voting record, in exchange for continued campaign support. DuPont instead

proposed that they be exempted by description, without being directly named. A

continued framework of exemptions written into U.S. Code has had the effect of

creating the conditions for pollution for a nearly infinite nonpoint pollution

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sources (A. Lustgarten 2013) that permit the borders of the U.S. and Mexico to

become a toxic drainage basin that not even Border Patrol agents will contact in

spite of a battery of inoculations. (M. Barlowe 2008). The conditions and precursors

for the state of our pollute-able environment aren’t strictly a result of the ability of

money to secure exemptions to legislation and access to legislators. (Racek 2010).

The literature also makes clear that nonpoint pollution is not in need of a

technological solution but in fact requires a social, political or institutional one, as

it is the sources of pollution through the use of chemical fertilizers to artificially

increase crop yields that enable the high volumes of water to be a pollutant, to a

degree that 55% of rivers and streams are in poor condition. (Carpenter, et al. 1998,

3) (Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds 2013). While industrial agriculture

is wasteful (and that waste is the medium for nonpoint pollution) - new methods of

irrigation that preserve the methodological goal of delivery while moving away

from archaic methods of ground traveling stream diversion or field channels for

providing water to croplands. In Rising City, Nebraska, a farmer named Eugene

Glock, has applied a networked array of sensors, which measure the moisture

content of the soil supporting crop development. The sensors also measure crop

canopy temperatures. With the right centralized software (that can be modified

tweaked or entirely re-written for a specific crop's needs) a pivoting overhead

sprinkler system that is integrated with the centralized software can respond to

specific and variable conditions within the crop. That can save up to two-thirds of

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available water resources while also increasing the crop yield because of more

focused and responsive irrigation. (Markey, Leal and Rogers 2010, 48-50)

The source for Glock’s rotating sprinklers is an artesian well that is sourced

by the Ogallala Aquifer. (Markey, Leal and Rogers 2010, 51) Part of the landscape

for the polluting conditions has been an outdated view of groundwater and deep

aquifer geology that has not evolved for nearly 30 years. It has retained a

confidence in a theory of geologic impermeability between groundwater and

surface waters (that are the source of many reservoirs and wells) and fossilized

water located in heretofore-inaccessible geologic recesses. (Texas Railroad

Commission, Oil and Gas Division 2003); (A. Lustgarten, Injection Wells: The

Poison Beneath Us 2012) (A. Lustgarten, Poisoning the Well: How the Feds Let

Industry Pollute the Nation’s Underground Water Supply - ProPublica 2012). The

use of injection wells to sequester waste threatens to pollute sources of water that

are being depended upon more and more as surface waters become polluted.

Water crises are viewed differently in different areas but the common theme

seems to be that the solutions that people are considering are steered toward a

private answer or at least a technical answer and it’s implied, privatized licensing

or otherwise indirect ownership. I also considered how water privatization is

played out in different areas.

In the literature of solutions, the example of Saudi Arabia is presented as a

model for transplant to other non-core countries with water scarcities. Saudi

Arabia approach is to see water scarcity as an economic development issue where

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the central goal is to manage a life fulfilling need. That is seen as manageable by

balancing the economic demands of oil revenue in favor of the social demands for

water. Oil money pays for water. The relationship is complexly illustrated as “an

interactive model of general equilibrium involving an aggregate petroleum

production function, the derived revenue equation, water subsidy and water

pricing.” (Choudhury 2004). Essentially the model that is proposed is that the

market demand for oil provides a predictable growth of oil revenue from which

water subsidies can be supported. This model is seen as a case from which a state

supported, privatized solution can answer water scarcity in developing countries,

and can be transposed to other regions to manage scarcity. The Saudi Arabian

approach uses desalination technology as the means to address water scarcity but

not all approaches can be attributed to desalination. The example of England and

Wales privatization of their water infrastructure makes use of a certain kind of

privatization called market environmentalism, where the solution to water

scarcities are seen as best managed through a neoliberal valuation of water. Market

environmentalism applies commodity attributes to environmental concerns. By

specifically applying to water the attributes of a product, a new framework of

solutions can materialize in answer to market demand for water availability.

(Bakker 2005). This idea also envisions global food markets as a potential way to

address localized hydrological stresses by seeing the water imbedded in food

exports as a way to transport water into areas with less available water. (Gallagher

2013, 26). The typical production of 1kg of grain uses 1KL of water. Given that

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grain is easier to transport then the small quantity of water included in the grain is

brought into the local atmosphere and watershed. Selling grain or corn to Saudi

Arabia can improve their hydrological cycle because the product has water

embedded in it. That water will be added to their local water cycle by exporting it

from an area of abundance to an area of scarcity of water and the resulting

consumption offset is seen in less use in other areas of industry in the importing

country. It may even decrease societal resilience to drought. (Gallagher 2013, 27 &

31)

Through a market environmentalism lens, opportunities for alternate

technologies beyond desalination can be explored. Ric Davidge, an entrepreneur in

the water solutions industry, coordinated the exploration of using water bladders

as floating moveable catchments that could be used to transfer water via sea routes,

after being staged offshore to catch the stream flow of rivers that empty to the sea.

"Right now, there are no economic incentives to conserve," Davidge said. "The

more you use, the more you should pay. Water is essential for economic life and

freedom." (Rossi 2003).

Criticisms

Revisiting the case of Ric Davidge, reveals more than an effort at addressing

water supply opportunities. It reveals a geography of power where the Ric

Davidges of the world are jockeying for position in a new landscape of a global

market of water scarcity. Ric Davidge was a political strategist for Ronal Reagan,

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and Alaska Governor Walter Hickel. (Snitow and

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Kaufman 2007). He has served as the Secretary of the Department of the Interior

under Ronald Reagan (Snitow and Kaufman 2007), and developed a body of work

that qualified him as a proponent of market environmentalism (WaterBank 2011).

With Margaret Thatcher's move to privatize England Wales water infrastructure, a

new geography of water in the marketplace was made available to transnational

corporations. Previously only country specific or national entities, where

privatization was applied, had sought to profit from water infrastructure.

(McDowel, et al. 2009). Market actors like Ric Davidge make use of a new

landscape of water scarcity, formed by a convergence of changes in government

policy such as the privatization of national water infrastructure in England and

Wales, as well as his own contributions to policy changes here in the United States,

which became a cornerstone of Dept. of Interior policy following Reagan's election

as President.

For a moment, I want to diverge into the sociopolitical ideas inherent to

dependency theory as developed from Raul Prebisch and Hans Singer (Prebisch

1949). Dependency Theory states that the benefits enjoyed in a capitalist economy

of core and developed countries are built on a foundation of abundance of basic

commodities in underdeveloped or periphery countries that also participate in the

capitalist economics. The product or commodity is a factor of production that

enables profitable enterprises due to its abundant presence in periphery countries

and has greater scarcity and greater value in core countries. In the matrix of a

global water market, the geography of abundance and scarcity don’t strictly rely on

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a physical core and physical periphery to set the conditions of potential profit. The

hydrologic cycle doesn’t respect the political, economic, cultural and otherwise

constructed boundaries of human geography. The hydrological cycle is firmly

based on physical geography. It can however be affected by human geography as

the conditions of pollution addressed above have illustrated. Given the finite

availability of a continually renewing resource, the conditions of water scarcity are

in fact imposed on the resource by human action. Previously the observed water

scarcities were seen as isolated conditions of isolated human effects. In the

aggregate lens of the world system, the water crises can be seen as an eventual

target for additional profit models. Using a Foucauldian discourse analysis one can

identify the themes that produce and circulate ideas and knowledge of the water

crises. What are the limits or rules that govern an approach to a crisis or permit one

solution over another?

Overall, there is less of a water crisis and more of varied water crises. While

some of the cases are about the balance between water use versus the rate of

renewal to the local reservoirs or lakes, others are about whether the aging water

infrastructure is affordable to the community, and others still briefly reframe the

conversation about the industrial use of water, which is rarely addressed. This is

significant because if you raise the water utility bill that households must pay then

individual households will make a limited attempt to curtail water use. The limited

change in behavior is not a function of resistance but a function of the limited

options that households have to affect water consumption. Individuals can’t stop

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drinking water and showering. They can be forced to not water their lawn nor

wash their cars but that is the extent of the household’s control over water

consumption. The huge use of water is not in our individual use. It is in the

industrialization of our food chain, as well as manufacturing and other private

uses of water in the marketplace. Those consumers of water are protected by a

ubiquitous laissez-faire view of business ownership. We have a marketplace that

doesn’t permit non-owners to dictate to owners how they use their factors of

production. People don’t flush enough to make up for industrial and macro-market

uses of water.

The research is comprised of various examples and case studies that make

the case that water is in crisis. It is polluted, overused, privatized, commercialized

and politicized. Most of the literature addresses the importance of defining or

proving that water as we know it is in jeopardy. There are issues of over

consumption, insufficient renewal, poor stewardship and pollution prevention as

well as scarcity. Some of the literature says that government must provide ideal

conditions for commercial development of water delivery infrastructure. Most of

the literature accepts that there is a crisis. But in light of water’s universal value to

everyone and the well documented conditions of consumption, pollution and

developing scarcity, why is there still a crisis? The FAO and the MNIO projects

have theorized certain conditions or attributes of access to water as a means of

showing that a population is vulnerable or at risk for development failure. (Food

and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. 2013); (Statistics Division, Department of

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Economic and Social Affairs, U.N. 2012). Should not knowledge of the

aforementioned conditions of crises sufficiently inform the public to solicit their

representative authorities for changes that address the underlying crises?

In fact, in the U.S., public resistance to preceding actions that can enable

improvements are consistently predictable because most people see the water and

then they see their water utility bill but never make the connection to the

supporting infrastructure and service. Most strongly resist paying a bill that

reflects the work that goes into providing the cleanest water in the world, right to

their tap. In the U.S., that represents such a well-orchestrated convenience wherein

the water is synonymous with the means of delivery; it’s free or at least priced as

artificially low as possible. We feel so strongly that water is fundamental and yet

we create conditions where longer-lived corporations can isolate the water for their

own use and profit. Nestle can bus out truckloads of water from a community and

repackage it to cost more than oil. (Soechtig 2010).

First I showed the lens of people’s view of water and its universal value.

Next I illustrated the lenses of crises such as scarcity, pollution, consumption, and

access. Then I related the lens of privatization, presented as the means of

controlling or curtailing consumption by market forces and market scarcity, as the

proposed solution to these crises. Next I will critique some of the approaches and

discourses that surround the water crisis. I will do this within a theme of

rethinking commodification as a distinct quality of the neo-liberalization of nature

as well as the geographical contradictions resulting from commoditizing water.

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I will start with criticism of the technological approaches that purport to

address scarcity. Desalination, reverse osmosis plants, water exports and water

condoms are technologically owned processes. They are an infrastructure that

requires factors of production. It is proffered as a solution to pollution conditions.

While solutions that address pollution co-opt the language of environmentalism (of

which pollution is a primary target) they obfuscate the question of preventing

pollution as a solution. The UN Water Convention focus areas do not directly

address standards or goals to ameliorate pollution thereby avoiding a discussion of

the conditions from which water scarcity propagates. (United Nations 2013).

Pollution creates scarcity to which technological solutions are the proposed

answer. Pollution is a threat to water and to people while it is simultaneously and

indirectly a sub factor of production, in the privatization model. In a similar vein,

Virtual Water Trading borrows from the language of the market place and logistics.

It isn’t really a solution because it merely attempts to reinforce the existing global

exchanges of agricultural goods by injecting additional value into the existing

product and the global exchange of that product which may carry its own

discordant core versus periphery flow. It further attempts to add credibility to

other wise irreconcilable abstractions of free trade versus actual trade policies like

core countries agribusiness subsidies. These approaches don’t address issues of

pollution because the discourses of neo-liberal economic policy are meant to

reinforce economic ideas, not engage in self-criticism.

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We’ve allowed other ideas that are normally encapsulated in our markets

and commodities to infiltrate our ideas of water. A critical review of the following

quote sees such an example.

“Guiding Principles Concerted action is needed to reverse the present trends of

overconsumption, pollution, and rising threats from drought and floods. The Conference Report sets out recommendations for action at local, national and international levels, based on four guiding principles.” (United Nations 1992, 1)

… “Principle No. 4: Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be

recognized as an economic good Within this principle, it is vital to recognize first the basic right of all human

beings to have access to clean water and sanitation at an affordable price. Past failure to recognize the economic value of water has led to wasteful and environmentally damaging uses of the resource. Managing water as an economic good is an important way of achieving efficient and equitable use, and of encouraging conservation and protection of water resources." (United Nations 1992, 2)

This is the first instance that water has been categorized as a product in the

international discourse (McDowel, et al. 2009). The statement constructs the idea

that the crises of water (listed here as “overconsumption, pollution”, and increased

“drought and floods”) can be reversed through action. That action is defined as

“local, national and international”. Further, one of the principles that should guide

the different scales of action (by localities, countries, and the world) is to see water

as being an economic good. It further asserts that crises of water are the result of

not classifying water as an economic product with market value. Having economic

value will encourage users of water to not pollute nor overuse.

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The discourse is formed by framing water as in crisis and that solving these

crises means taking action. Action is defined as being local (where all individual

people can associate themselves as local), national (where all people live under a

government to which they have already entrusted their well-being in some form),

and international (where all people must trust the unseen negotiations undertaken

by their own entrusted national governments as being in their own interests). I

assess that the Virtual Water Trade mentioned earlier has formed from the

discourse of water as commodity, injecting it into the existing market of

industrialized agriculture.

Another example to analyze is the report on the energy costs of water

delivery in California. The report is an example of the economic language used in

discourses about water and its unwitting participants/propagators like the Natural

Resources Defense Council. The report relates that most California residents don't

realize how closely related water delivery is to power use. Treating, heating,

cooling and delivering water to the rest of the state desert costs a great deal of

electricity. The California State Water Project uses up to 3% of all the electricity

used in the state just to deliver water to San Francisco Bay-Delta and Southern

California. Transporting water over the Tehachapi Mountains is the highest lift of

any water system in the world and costs the equivalent of 1/3rd the total average

household electricity use in the region. Pumping groundwater for irrigation on

farms uses 90% of total electricity in the region. State and municipal planners don't

consider these energy costs. This represents wasteful resource management which

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creates higher than necessary costs for the citizens to whom the water is delivered.

Knowing the logistics of water delivery can save both money and water.

Considering and incorporating the energy used into water planning can reduce

total costs and lessen water waste. (Cohen, Nelson and Wolff 2004). While the

feasibility of large urban and industrial infrastructures continually being

developed in arid regions is a worthy target for analysis, the report doesn’t address

that theme of criticism. It instead attempts to use the language of logistics

management and business models in order to qualify the discourse of conservation

of water resources. Saving water for everyone because everyone needs it is not seen

as a credible argument for water conservation in its own right, in this instance. It

has to be couched in rhetoric of business planning and reducing business costs.

An example of a participant and constructor of the discourse is the

corporation Nestlé Waters. Listed on their website are classifications of water that

serve to position their water commodity in language that sets it apart from

municipal water. Natural mineral water is defined but also described using leading

descriptors of "pure" and "untouched". The majority of European sales are of

natural mineral water. Spring Water is defined as origin water where the source of

the water is part of the descriptor. It is the majority of the brands sold in the U.S.

Prepared Water is described as any water that has been processed to include

municipal water (tap water) where processing serves to qualify the product as safe

to drink. This is the standard for emerging countries (developing, periphery)

whose markets equate purity with safe to drink. (Nestlé Waters 2013). Nestlé

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Waters also engage with the discourse on the environmental front as well. The

rhetoric used borrows from environmentalism as they describe their involvement

with water resource protection. Nestlé Waters extolls the virtue of their

involvement in protecting water resources. An example in Vittel, France is given in

which the success of the Agrivair program has protected three of Nestlé Waters

springs. (Nestlé Waters 2013). The language used suggests that local people’s water

is protected but only within a context of transnational corporate ownership of a

local resource as a precondition of successful protection in the form of water

resource management. These statements might not be impactful in isolation but in

the larger discourse they occur in concert with other corporations using other

methods to favorably position themselves to take advantage of water scarcities.

One such example is Maplecroft. Their business is issue and risk analysis

and their customers have a vested interest in preserving existing processes and

initiatives for profit. That means they identify key emerging economies and oil rich

nations in order to export water issues to ensure food security through an updated

“land grab” model. They have evaluated certain Middle East countries at extreme

risk such as Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. (Maplecroft 2013). Using a

basic understanding of precipitation levels measured against aquifer renewal (or

even consumption) can easily show a delicate hydrological balance in arid regions.

Maplecroft dazzles with numbers what is already well understood. Desserts are

dry and don’t get much rain so water must be carefully managed.

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Referring to statements from Ric Davidge as the one listed earlier “"Right

now, there are no economic incentives to conserve", Davidge said. "The more you

use, the more you should pay. Water is essential for economic life and freedom."

(Rossi 2003). In a discourse context, Davidge’s statements suggest that conserving

water requires a marketplace of scarcity and managed demand. Greater use should

mean paying more. Freedom, and our ability to conduct ourselves in the economy,

requires water. He has associated water with freedom which can be difficult to

disagree with or see past as many people could agree that our freedom should be

associated with water. But, he also associates our economic options with freedom.

That association is provided by the larger discourse of freedom which is pervasive

in our culture. That construct is the means by which solutions to water can be

framed or formed to eliminate local access or availability.

Another example of Davidge efforts at constructing discourse can be seen

from this quote in response to the question of whether water should be defined as a

human right. "Water has its own value, just like other commodities," Davidge

answered. “The problem is, if water is a human right, then it doesn't have value,

and it gets wasted." (Rossi 2003). Ric Davidge frames the issue of resistance to

water privatization by critiquing whether people have a right to water. He

considers rights as unvalued abstractions. Solving the water crisis requires

commoditizing it because a commodity has value. He carefully performs a bait and

switch with the public need for a solution and the private need for a profitable

scarcity.

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Conclusion Section

The purpose of the paper has not been to solve the water crisis. The goal has

been to challenge the assertion that the current discourse of crisis and solution are

the only alternatives to consider; I’m challenging whether the crisis is accurately

depicted and whether the solutions are answering the crisis.

As I have considered the literature that describes water crises, and the

proffered solutions, I believe the gap I have attempted to identify has not been a

gap of research. It is a gap made vacant by our Lockeian defined inalienable human

rights. Water has moved into crisis because we have allowed our values

surrounding commodity exchange to infiltrate our biological need for water.

“The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and, on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water; but it will purchase scarce any thing; scarce any thing can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it.” (Smith 1776)

We don’t really value water because we have adopted into our culture the

values of commodification as expressed in our inalienable right to life liberty and

property or the more abstract and popular "pursuit of happiness". We have

positioned property as the embodiment of our identity, philosophy and purpose. It

is property that we now struggle to acquire, whereas it was water that we here to

fore struggled to access.

Western thought can exhibit an undercurrent or theme has continually

attributed human inevitability regarding the mastery of the environment, or

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surrounding landscapes and ecology that people inhabit. Gravitating toward

private solutions may not simply be an expression of the current neo-liberal

primacy and self-propagating discourse of profit driven solutions but may in fact

be a cultural quality endemic to the currently unfettered capitalist thought. In any

case, whenever solutions are proposed, they are often proposed from within a

discourse that includes the rhetoric of economic costs, economic strengths,

economic values, and conditions of the market. Solutions that attempt to address

water crises by using market forces are in denial of the goals of market actors. As

longs as profit is the virtue, then the vices of corporate pathology will remain

invisible.

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