BETWEEN THE MARKET AND THE COMMONS: ENSURING THE RIGHT TO WATER IN RURAL COMMUNITIES

摘要

The purpose of this paper was to offer a solution to the failures of programs advanced by both the proponents of privatization, who view water as a need and commodity on the one hand, and the proponents of water as a human right and communal resource on the other. Water is a human right, and governments have real obligations in realizing those rights. The challenges faced by governments and the global community to meet those obligations will only grow in the coming decades. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to these problems, but the program offered here addresses both the challenges and realities on the ground. Market incentives are powerful and by harnessing those forces, safe, clean water can be available to everyone. The key to any program will be accountability. Larger forces such as the spread of democracy and the rule of law will have to be part of long-term solutions to resource scarcity. By working with existing development models and learning from past failures, problems can be addressed in small ways, village-by-village, and well-by-well. Experimentation by rectifying the failures of existing development models on an ad hoc basis may be the only way to ensure the right to water in marginalized and poor rural communities.