Water commodification and decommodification narratives: Pricing and policy debates from Johannesburg to Kyoto to Cancun and back

From Johannesburg's Waterdome to the March 2003 World Water Forum summit in Kyoto to the Cancun World Trade Organization ministerial in September 2003, the conflict over water commodification appears irreconcilable. The W$$D's water privatization workshop and Kyoto's panel on pro-corporate infrastructure financing were both disrupted by protests. As for Cancun, the day after international demonstrations - including in 18 African cities - on September 13, 2003, negotiations on the General Agreement on Trade in Services bogged down as the summit imploded. Over the same 12-month period, grassroots and labor opposition also compelled the biggest French, British and US water firms to begin a strategic withdrawal from several Third World sites. Another reason was evident in former high-profile privatization pilot projects run by the ubiquitous French firm Suez, from Buenos Aires to Manila, with several South African towns in between. There, currency crashes and worsening inequality meant that even selling as essential a commodity as water to low-income people and returning sufficient profits to Paris had become impossible, due simply to unaffordability.