Water Pricing: A Strategy for Rights Fulfillment or Rights Violation?

Providing and gaining access to safe drinking water has been a challenge across millennia. Today, approximately two billion people lack secure and sustainable access to safe water. In 2010, the United Nations’ member states voted in favor of Resolution 15/9, recognizing access to safe drinking water as a human right. In this chapter, I examine the role that water pricing plays in the fulfillment and violation of the human right to water. I argue that a tax base or other forms of public revenue, where feasible, should be used to cover the cost of a minimum amount of safe drinking water. Under the current global order, it may not be economically possible for many nations, especially countries in the global South, to cover the cost of a minimum amount of water; however, a restructuring of the global order could enable nations in the global South to use their public revenue to provide their citizens with access to a minimum amount of safe drinking water.