Free Trade and Water Privatization: The Wet Side of the FTAA

By Carmelo Ruiz Marrero | December 2, 2004

Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)

Control over water is one of the main incentives of the proposal for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The United States and transnational corporations want to use the neoliberal integration of the hemisphere to privatize water resources. They also want to use it to alter the course of water flows with megaprojects that environmentalists deem demented. But throughout Latin America people are organizing to counter these water management schemes by creating socially equitable and ecologically sustainable alternatives based on popular participation.