How Free Trade And Investment Agreements Threaten Environmental Protection Of Water And Promote The Commodification Of The World’s Water
In Water for Sale Maude Barlow explores how modern free trade and investment agreements impede the ability of people and their governments to maintain environmental laws and regulations to protect their water. She also shows how trade agreements advance the privatization and commodification of water. Free trade has become a crucial tool to help transnational capital and transnational corporations influence government policy in their favour. Recently, corporations have used trade and investment agreements to challenge public control of water and to bring water into the market system where it is subject to strict corporate-friendly trade rules. Water For Sale examines how free trade and investment agreements are promoting the commodification of the world’s water and argues that if the 2010 UN resolution recognizing water as a human right is to be realized, water in all its forms must be removed from all such deals forever.