Rivers of resistance

Water for life, not profit

We present the report “Rivers of Resistance”, with which we intend to reflect the current state of the international movement for water justice. It comes at a time when water crises are on the rise in many territories, which already constitute a global crisis.

The report aims to strengthen struggles for public and community water management and is based on the discussions at the “Our Future is Public” conference in Santiago, Chile, in 2022, and is part of the movement’s critical response and reflections on the UN Water Conference in 2023.

The “Rivers of Resistance” report reflects the views of women water advocates, activists and researchers present at the conference in Santiago, Chile, and quotes from their interventions are included throughout the document. It is a joint publication of the Transnational Institute (TNI), the Platform for Public-Community Agreements of the Americas (PAPC), the International Association of Engineering Without Borders (ESF), the Blue Planet Project (BPP) and the Penca de Sábila Ecological and Cultural Corporation (Corporación Ecológica y Cultural Penca de Sábila).

In the wake of struggles to reverse water privatization, as initiated by the citizens of Cochabamba in 2000, and legislative changes in some countries to protect water from privatization, as Uruguay did in 2004, global movements came together in different spaces to build a global water justice movement to share experiences, stand in solidarity with each other and fight for the whole planet. A clear victory was when in July 2010 the water movement succeeded in getting the United Nations (UN) to pass the resolution recognizing the human right to water and sanitation.

In recent years we have seen a wave of remunicipalization of water services in many countries, returning water supply and sanitation to public control. Catalonia is a great example, where 36 municipalities have already recovered public water management since 2010.

Over time, the water movement has learned that it was not enough to defend public water and return services to public hands, now we are also beginning to focus on democratizing and improving public water services.

Today, extractivist economic development and climate change threaten the world’s water systems and billions of people remain without access to safe drinking water and sanitation. At the same time, we also see an intensification of private corporate capture of water governance, as well as new forms of privatization and financialization, as evidenced by the UN Water Conference in March 2023 in New York. In the face of this situation, the global water justice movement continues to organize against these threats and to fight against the growing socio-economic inequalities that restrict access to water based on gender, race and class, among other forms of oppression.