Despite early enthusiasm for the power of private companies to deliver clean water at low cost to people where water is chronically scarce, research now shows privatization was not a roaring success. In many regions around the globe, water remains a scarce and expensive resource that is often dangerous to drink.

"Privatization was promoted as a solution to the global water crisis in the developing world," said Karen Bakker, director of the Program on Water Governance at the University of British Columbia. "But recent research results indicate the private sector has been much less successful than was anticipated in the early 1990s. The bottom line is that privatization is not a panacea for the global water crisis."
 
In a lecture Friday at the AAAS Annual Meeting, Bakker explained that many large firms, including major American and European corporations, entered the international water business as a rush of investment money became available in the '90s. But toward the end of that decade, the amounts of money devoted to water projects declined dramatically and the water opportunity that had seemed so lucrative failed to deliver.

Of course, disputes have been one result. The corporate and other private owners argue that the water they deliver "should be priced at full value because it offers social benefits and better water quality," Bakker said. "But their opponents argue that the water is available at high prices, that [privatization] is unethical, and that water should be defined as a human right. It is a very contentious and and complex debate."

Part of the complexity stems from the fact that water is an economic input for society, and at the same time it even serves as a religious symbol for some groups, "so it is no surprise there is conflict," Bakker said.

In many major cities of the world, from Jakarta, Indonesia, to London, England, water systems may be inadequate--they aren't large enough to meet demand, or they're old and antiquated. In London, for example, wooden pipes laid into the ground more than a century ago failed and caused urban flooding. When originally installed, the wooden pipes were expected to last 100 years, and that's almost exactly what happened. Now, they're falling apart.

Also, given population growth and the rapid expansion of major cities, "a diminishing proportion of the world's population" is being supplied adequately with good water, Bakker said.

"More than half of the global population is now urban, for the first time in history, so water scarcity is an urban problem," she explained. "The inhabitants [of cities] depend on water," and while rich citizens can afford to buy what they need, poorer people are left to scrounge what they can, usually from surface waters or from less-than-pure water systems. If they want safe drinking water, they have to buy it in bottles.

As a result, Bakker said, "the water supply is socially segregated." Some households must rely on multiple water sources, three or four different sources of different quality," ranging from the surface waters found wherever possible, to the water that comes in sealed bottles. Also, even though bottled water is deemed safe because of government regulation, she added, that's not always the case.

In addition to the problems of supplying water for people, over-exploitation of surface waters taken from rivers and streams is having severe ecological impact in some nations. In short, the needs of the people outpace the needs of the environment--water is too valuable to be left for fish and other wildlife.