Humanity will face water scarcity as this century progresses. Water
use grew twice as fast as the global human population last century,
and an increasing number of regions around the world are facing, or
will face, freshwater scarcity. Four billion people face water scarcity at
least one month out of the year. Scarcity makes water valuable for
privatizers and commodifiers as an investment vehicle; it emboldens
the currency of commodification. I will argue for water justice as
socioenviron…
Read moreHumanity will face water scarcity as this century progresses. Water
use grew twice as fast as the global human population last century,
and an increasing number of regions around the world are facing, or
will face, freshwater scarcity. Four billion people face water scarcity at
least one month out of the year. Scarcity makes water valuable for
privatizers and commodifiers as an investment vehicle; it emboldens
the currency of commodification. I will argue for water justice as
socioenvironmental justice. The injustices that can and do attach to
water are not reducible to merely distributional wrongs or injustices,
they are moral and political harms as markers of a failing democracy;
water injustice, then, is a structural harm. I build on the literature of
power dynamics from Iris Marion Young and David Schlosberg and
argue that water injustice is structural and involves mis- and malrecognition
and participation; moreover, I introduce the argument
that water justice is participatory, a method of development that
walks in lockstep with reflexive and discursive democracy.
