Can’t pay? Won’t pay! — putting a price on water

DAEGU, South Korea It´s arguably our most vital and precious natural resource, and one that is growing dangerously scarce from China to California, but no matter how much we value water, we´re not that keen on paying for it.
The issue of pricing water is extremely sensitive — socially, politically, economically — but it´s an issue that is being revisited with increasing frequency as warnings of a looming global crisis over water scarcity grow louder.
A recent editorial in The Economist and an op-ed piece in the New York Times — on China´s and California´s chronic water shortages respectively — both insisted that the best way forward was to raise prices.
The suggestion raises the hackles of those who feel pricing public water is tantamount to monetising nature, while others say there is simply no alternative given UN estimates that the world will face a 40 percent “global water deficit” by 2030.
“If you have an artificially low price for a product, you tend to consume more of it and tend not to give it importance,” said Angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
“It´s human nature. You give something away, people will take it for granted, waste it and not appreciate it,” Gurria told AFP in the South Korean city of Daegu where he was attending the World Water Forum — a seven-day gathering of policymakers, corporations and NGOs.
Nearly everyone who is connected to a water network pays something, but at hugely subsidised rates.
The argument for raising the tariff is that it would make consumers less profligate and provide income for utility companies to invest in more efficient networks.
Outdated, decrepit distribution systems in many developed nations are astonishingly wasteful, with the US Geological Survey estimating drinking water losses in the US at 1.7 trillion gallons a year.
But upgrades and retrofits are expensive, and the utilities generally don´t have the necessary funds.
Water bills are so low that they barely register with middle class consumers, but Ger Bergkamp, executive director of the International Water Association, warned against underestimating the “emotional value” people attach to water.
“You´d need to do a lot with the price to change behaviour. But anyone who says ´ok, let´s whack it up 10 times and be done´ is going to face a revolution,” Bergkamp said.
It stopped short of a full-fledged rebellion, but tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the Irish capital Dublin last month to protest new water charges.
NGOs dedicated to getting drinking water and sanitation to the most needy are largely sceptical about the effectiveness of tariffs as a conservation tool, although they don´t rule out the need for pricing.