Water: Scarcity In Plenty

Individuals, entrepreneurs and communities are not waiting for government to fulfill empty promises and fill empty water pipes. Private initiatives in India, Africa, Latin America and Asia are already sustaining local markets and improving access for millions.

My article titled Water: Scarcity in plenty was published in Business Day on 23rd March 2006.

A fifth of the earth's inhabitants lack access to safe drinking water, and two-fifths lack adequate sewerage. But it is neither scarcity nor overpopulation that makes this abundant natural resource a scarce commodity: it is the heavy hand of government.

India's northeastern state of Assam ó one of the wettest places on earth ó suffers periodic bouts of government-induced scarcity. Yet Australia, the driest place on earth, exports agricultural produce.

For the past week, thousands of officials, researchers, businesses and international agencies have been meeting at the fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City. This year's slogan is Local Action for Global Challenges, and it might contain the beginnings of a push for local initiative to replace government monopoly.

Blaming everything from population growth to commercial interests, few noted that government control itself has caused and perpetuated scarcity.

Individuals, entrepreneurs and communities are not waiting for government to fulfil empty promises and fill empty water pipes. Private initiatives in India, Africa, Latin America and Asia are already sustaining local markets and improving access for millions.

Farmers in Coimbatore district, in the southern Indian province of Tamil Nadu, sell water to the local clothing industry. It is no surprise that farmers are happy to sell groundwater to industry: they earn more by selling water than from producing crops. But this is a rare instance of poor people owning their water and being free to use it.

In Delhi's slums, 'informal' entrepreneurs have responded to the demand for reliable water, supplying it from a borehole. These local entrepreneurs could easily become the nodes for the city's water authority to distribute water more widely, collect the rates and prevent leakage ó about 40% of municipal water in Delhi's gravity-fed system is lost. But they are illegal and discouraged by government monopolies.

Governments, like any monopoly, have no incentive to preserve, develop or innovate. People do, given half a chance: that chance means giving them property rights and free markets, creating competition and efficiency to match local demand.

The result would be that private entrepreneurs of all sizes and public agencies would compete against each other to provide this most vital of elements ó and water scarcity would be no reason for anyone to go thirsty or go to war.