Eco-crime and fresh water

The unsustainable and exploitative use of one of the most important but scarce resources on the planet – fresh water – continues to create conflict and human dislocation on a grand scale. Instead of witnessing nation-states adopting more equitable and efficient conservation strategies, powerful corporations are permitted to privatise and monopolise diminishing water reservoirs based on flawed neo-liberal assumptions and market models of the ‘global good’. The commodification of water has enabled corporate monopolies and corrupt states to exploit a fundamental human right – as discussed in the following – and, in the process, create new forms of criminality.