Water trading markets: Facilitating financial flows through the hydro-social cycle?

Abstract

The world is facing a global water crisis, a crisis that is increasingly framed as a crisis of water governance. As water activists have successfully problematised neoliberal water governance, the question about what is going to come next remains. While current governance proposals appear somewhat similar to what came before, one key shift is the increasing articulation of water governance to circuits of global finance, seen through a growth in financial investors in the water sector but also the way that water and water services and infrastructures are being rendered legible for inclusion into financial markets – the first water futures market being one example. This article explores the water futures market in dialogue with three long-standing water trading markets (Australia, USA and Chile) in order to untangle the processes involved in, and barriers to, the financialization of water resources. The argument put forward is that although material barriers to the expansion of a water futures market exist, this does not mean that water resources remain immune to these processes. Instead, logics of crisis, risk management, and questions of financing appear to characterise this shifting terrain of global water governance across the hydro-social cycle. Moreover, when explored as a hydro-social cycle the financialization of these nodes are not singular “one-offs” but may instead feed into, facilitate, or conversely hinder further financialization across the hydro-social cycle.