Thirst

A sense of urgency about the global water crisis has entered the political and corporate discourse, and in humanity’s quest to solve it, we are all called to rise to the challenge. However, solutions are hard to come by where causes are not clearly defined. Given the scale and geographic dispersion of the problem, there are many drivers of the crisis.

In fact, the global water crisis is only global in the sense that there are people in regions all over the world who are condemned to insecure water access. The acute reasons for lack of water vary from place to place. The one unifying factor is the global power of the market over the provision, allocation, and maintenance of water supplies.

Building on a critique of recent responses to the water crisis and their contradictions, Thirst interrogates how saviour-like, ‘high priests’ of a fetishised global developmentalism—embodied by celebrities, CEOs, and sustainability directors—are shaping global water governance. The book thus argues that if humanity is to escape the current deadlock that bedevils access to clean water around the world, it has to reconsider both its faith in the market and its relationship with nature.