Listed water, a controversial market
Audio 01:52
Experts have been working on the future of water in financial markets for at least 20 years.
Brianna Soukup / Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
By: Marie-Pierre Olphand Follow
5 mins
Today is World Water Day.
“
The Value of Water
” is the chosen theme, and it is timely.
Water has been listed since last December on the Chicago Stock Exchange.
What makes some fear a financial drift.
Publicity
December 7 will go down in the annals of raw materials.
It was on this day that the first water futures market was launched, on the Chicago Stock Exchange, a market that fixes the price of water over the horizon of months or years.
The price has changed little since last September and is around $ 500 per acre-foot, or a volume of 1.2 million liters.
Experts have been working on the future of water in financial markets for at least 20 years.
Local markets have existed in Chile and still exist in Australia.
But with futures markets, even if they are only for California water for now, water becomes a pure financial product.
And this is what worries the Water Coalition.
The 250 NGOs that make it up denounce "
a dangerous slide towards the financialization of nature
".
The fear of these organizations is "
massive speculation and rising water prices
" to the detriment of the most fundamental right, that of access to water for all.
► See also: The water crisis in 5 questions
Water, a raw material apart
This outcry is based on nothing, comments Bernard Barraqué, emeritus research director in public water policy at the CNRS.
Water will never be a raw material like any other, he explains.
In fact, today only a tiny part of the resource is the object of markets.
This is a very regional market in the United States, specifies the researcher since we are only talking about California.
He adds: the aim is precisely to avoid any speculation.
“
It's a safeguard.
Intended to put an end to the sales of wild water which existed because of the droughts ”.
In other words, a way to control prices and prevent them from rising in the event of a fire, for example
”.
Transporting water: a real challenge
A commodity trader also tempers and recalls that "
for water to be a market good it would have to be the object of a rivalry and someone's property, but the two criteria are only rarely reunited
”.
For water to become a raw material like any other, it would also be necessary to find a way to transport large volumes over long distances, which is still far from possible.
► Also to listen: Are we going to run out of water?
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