World Water Day marked with a thirst for profit
As the UN marks World Water Day, we reveal stark inequality in the industry.
Today is World Water Day, which the UN uses to highlight the crisis facing Earth’s most precious resource.
In this year’s report, UN-Water highlights tensions over water that are exacerbating conflicts worldwide. They show that while 153 countries share water resources, only 32 have cooperation agreements.
In this week’s Bulletin, we’re investigating how corporate greed comes into conflict with people, creating inequalities in the water system.
Water inequality in numbers
The water crisis. In 2022, half of the world faced severe water scarcity for at least part of the year. The climate crisis will exacerbate this: an additional 1.5 billion people will lack access to water due to global warming by 2050.
An industrial scale problem. The world is consuming more water. Since 1900, demand for water has multiplied by 8 times while the population by 5. Much of this is driven by corporate use. While agriculture accounts for around 70% of freshwater withdrawals, industry uses about 20% and is one of the main drivers of increasing water demand according to the UN. Industrial operations, such as the energy and mining sector, are responsible for 16% of global withdrawals.
Corporate inaction. Our analysis of 350 of the world’s most influential food and agriculture corporations, using World Benchmarking Alliance data, finds that only a minority of corporations are acting to reduce water usage and pollution.
· Only 28% report they are reducing their water withdrawals.
· Just 23% say they are taking action to reduce water pollution.
· 31% are disclosing the proportion of withdrawals from water-stressed areas.
The 350 corporations analysed, including Carrefour and Avril Group, together account for more than half of the world’s food and agriculture revenue.
Bottled water industry. Every minute, more than 1,000,000 single-use plastic bottles are sold globally. The fast-growing bottled water industry is an example of how corporate giants commodify and exploit water which, according to the UN, is undermining progress towards providing universal access to safe drinking water. Bottled water is between 150 to 1,000 times more expensive than tap water with corporations running marketing campaigns aimed to discredit tap water while promoting the purity of bottled water.
D’ohnone. Last May France placed water restrictions on the drought-hit department of Puy-de-Dôme, where Volvic bottled water comes from. The restrictions did not apply to Société des Eaux de Volvic, a subsidiary of French multinational Danone, who continued to extract groundwater to supply its Volvic bottling plant. Danone raked in €881 million in profits in 2023 and paid out €1,238 million to its shareholders.
A humanitarian disaster. Our colleagues at Oxfam have seen first-hand how people face the daily challenge of accessing safe water sources. Last year Oxfam warned that 90% of water boreholes in parts of Somalia, Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia had entirely dried up. In Renk, a transit camp in South Sudan, more than 300 people are now sharing a single water tap.
Read Oxfam France’s media briefing here (French)
Something to read
Read Luke Hildyard’s new book “Enough” about how taxes on the rich and economic reform could be used to get the wealth of the 1 percent flowing to the workers who actually create it.
Listen to Bernie: The Podcast where Bernie Saunders discusses his recent book “It's Ok to Be Angry about Capitalism.”
Read Duncan Weldon’s piece on why we should worry about trillionaires.