Finally, they went to fetch water | Reservations here …

The United States always has a financial instrument close at hand to apply to the essential resources of the 194 countries of the planet. This happened in 2008 with the Chicago Board of Trade Food Futures Markets. It’s just now the turn of the water, but the business has moved to New York. For whom the bells ring on Wall Street, Hemingway would have wondered if he lived. For this human right that the UN proclaimed in 2010, that would be the answer. Required like few specialists in these days of anguish because of the listing of something so basic on the New York Stock Exchange, the Spaniard Pedro Arrojo Agudo, United Nations special rapporteur for human rights at drinking water and sanitation, is pessimistic about this game played by the big speculators. The prestigious physicist said that “this is very dangerous, very bad news”. He has his reasons: the fluid could become a commodity. An indispensable common good will become a commodity like gold or oil. We are already talking about “recalcitrant”. Proactive subjects who will only seek opportunities to negotiate a rare commodity that is currently lacking to 700 million people in 43 countries.

This resource, threatened with insufficiency, has made the headlines of all the international media for the past two weeks. This was made possible by the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index, which is already traded among the Wolves of Wall Street. Its unit of measure is the acre-foot, something like 1233 cubic meters of the liquid element. The idea of ​​water becoming a commodity originated in California, ravaged as it was by forest fires and a shortage of the essential good whose price has doubled in a year.

Depending on the professionals consulted and the interests they defend, a crack will open on solid ground. Something like the San Andrés fault. In the world of finance, they explain that the “rights to use water” are listed and not the water itself. In areas where the debate is over what 1.8 billion people who will be deprived of the resource will do in five years, the criticism of the futures market rages.

Arrojo Agudo, internationally renowned scholar and conservationist, says: “Just as we now look at a forest and know that it is much more than a lumber store, the new water culture invites us to look. rivers and understand that they are much more than H2O channels ”. The Spaniard also explains that “an ecosystem, in addition to the water that can be used to produce, is the landscape, the territorial identity, the identity of social collectives and communities, recreational and cultural values, values ​​of life… And through these rivers, life is articulated on the continent and in the seas ”. His thoughts can be read here and there, even though he lives in Zaragoza.

In his latest statement as UN rapporteur, he points out that “you cannot set a value for water like you do for other products. Water belongs to everyone and is a public good. It is closely linked to all of our lives and it shows sustenance and is an essential component of public health. “Something that has been shown in preventable deaths due to lack of water. It happened in Argentina with the reference of the organization La Garganta Poderosa in Villa 31, Ramona Medina. As of June 2019, there were 3 billion Ramonas in the world without basic facilities for washing their hands, denounced the WHO.

The water futures market price refers to the antecedent of food in 2008. In that year there was speculation for 320,000 million, without this market behavior implying an improvement. food policies. Only a bubble similar to the one one could guess with the swollen water, now transformed into commodity. The Nasdaq Veles California Water Index is not strictly speaking new. It started operating in October 2018 but had not reached Wall Street.

Arrojo Agudo recalled the consequences of what happened twelve years ago with food: “In just a few months, the speculative manipulation of these markets has caused, for example, that the price of wheat, on which depends the staple food for billions of people, will be multiplied by five. In just three years, the average price of food in the world has increased by 80% and it is estimated that some 250 million people have joined the ranks of hunger ”.

The state of California is not the only region in the world with water problems, nor does it have exclusive concession rights for its use. In Chile and Australia, there is a history of granting free and perpetual rights to water resources. For example, in the Copiapó Valley in the Atacama region, more water use rights have been granted than is available in its river basin, said Gonzalo Delacámara, an expert on the subject cited by the newspaper El País. Pinochet’s constitution of 1980 maintained the privatization of water with the force of law for 40 years. This is a unique case in the world. According to Bishop Luis Infanti from the Aysén region in southern Chile, 82% of this scarce resource is owned by two foreign companies: the American AES Gener and the Italian Enel.

In 2012, he already denounced that “in Chile, you can own the land, but not the water that crosses its land. The laws in force promote the appropriation and marketing of water; As a result, some get richer, to the detriment of the common good of all. The poor, who have less purchasing power, are not only excluded from political and social decision-making, but also from access to goods for their lives and subsistence ”. Wall Street and its decision to fix the price of water in the future is a new twist of the problem.

Spaniard Arrojo Agudo publicly denounced what the commodification of this basic resource for life entails, almost a contradiction that must be explained in the midst of the second wave of the pandemic: “Today, in my capacity as special rapporteur for human rights, water and sanitation, I see myself compelled to send a warning message to the whole world, as this means accelerating and deepening the unacceptable risks to these human rights “. Hedge funds and global players already have, thanks to Wall Street, the financial tool essential to turn this right into painted cardboard. They don’t care what UN officials, environmentalists, lawyers and academics may say.