The Global South

The presentation on The Global South brought up a very important question. Who owns water? This topic is very interesting as water is strongly believed to be a natural phenomenon that everyone should have equal access too, however it is not the case. In developing countries where water is such a scarce resource the people are struggling to be able to pay for their access to water. When they could not afford to pay for the water they were running the risk of health related problems caused by dirty drinking water. When did water become a commodity? A good point was brought up during the movie, that yes water is free, but the system that is involved in getting the water to our kitchen taps, the pipes, purifiers, etc. all cost money and somebody needs to pay for it. Therefore there is a price to pay for clean drinking water. Another interesting question was brought up during the presentation, with the fast pace consumption of such a necessary resource is the privatization of water a necessity for sustainability in the future? I feel that although this does not seem fair to developing countries who can not afford it, or country is taking advantage of our share of access. We are overconsuming our water supply and stronger limitations need to be put in place on our levels of use. Washing our cars and lawn every other day does not need to be done, and limits need to be placed on such activities. I thought that the comparison between three types of drinking waters was a neat idea. Many people feel that they need to have the more expensive water but if they were blind folded they probably would not be able to tell the difference.