By “water” I mean that it includes water rights, (etc.)

-author/journalist Yang, Jo-Shing is an ecological planner/designer/engineer, educated at tUCLA AND MIT.

12-21-2012  

 https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-water-barons-wall-street-mega-banks-are-buying-up-the-worlds-water/5383274

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10-31-2008

Given this recent liquid-gold rush by private (also several public pension-funds) capital, it will be extremely difficult for environmental activists and human rights advocates who called water a basic human right and a public good which should be under public control to reverse this privatization trend.  Naturally when governments are financially strained by revenue shortfalls and tightening municipal-bond markets, calls for privatization of existing public infrastructure and utilities will be louder and harder to resist.    -Yang, Jo-Sing

http://www.alternet.org/story/105083/why_big_banks_may_be_trying_to_buy_up_your_public_water_system

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              -Shiney Varghese has been since 2001 the co-chair of the UNCSD fresh water caucus, the primary civil society voice on water at the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.  Before moving to the United States in 1998, she worked in India on social and environmental issues for more than a decade with indigenous groups, civil society organizations and international groups such as Oxfam

1-18-2013   General Electric, Goldman Sachs and the Washington-based think tank World Resources Institute are the founding members of the Aqueduct Alliance. All of them identify water-related risks as detrimental to profitability, continued economic growth and environmental sustainability. The water maps, with their unprecedented level of detail and resolution, seek to combine advanced hydrological data with geographically specific indicators that capture social, economic, and governance factors.  But this initiative has given rise to concerns that such information gives companies and investors unprecedented details of water-related information in some of the world's largest river basins.

Many of these investors, described as the “new water barons” in Jo-Shing Yang’s article "Profiting from Your Thirst as Global Elite Rush to Control Water Worldwide," are the same ones who have profited from speculating on agricultural contracts and contributing to the food crisis of the past few years.  The food crisis and recent droughts have confirmed that controlling the source of food—the land and the water that flows under or by it—are equally or even more important.

A closer look at the land-related investments in Africa, for example, show that land grabbing is not simply an investment, but also an attempt to capture the water underneath.  At the recent annual Global AgInvesting Conference (with well over 370 participants), the asset management groups and global farm businesses showcased their plans, including purchases of vast tracts of lands in varying locations around the globe. With tools such as water maps, such investors are further advantaged.  The global rush for land grabbing, as well as the resistance to it, shows that all stake-holders—pension funds, Wall Street or nation-states on the one hand or the people who currently use these lands and waters, and their advocates on the other—are well aware of the life-and-death nature of land (and water) grabbing, especially in the case of developing countries.     -Shiney Varghese 

.https://www.iatp.org/blog/201301/the-global-water-grab

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-Jessica Lyons Hardcastle, educated at Santa Clara University, has worked as a writer and editor at newspapers, magazines and online publications for more than a decade covering business, green technology, renewable energy and other environmental issues

1-31-2013    

The World Resources Institute and companies including GE, Shell, Dow, United Technologies and DuPont have launched an online tool that maps water risks worldwide.

The Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, developed by WRI and founding members of the Aqueduct Alliance, can help companies, investors and governments see how water stress will affect operations locally and globally, and help prioritize investments that will increase water security, according to the organizations.

The atlas is a customizable global map, based on 12 indicators of physical, regulatory and reputational risk. It allows users to evaluate how water stress, flood occurrence, access to water, drought and other issues may affect operations. The global map can be tailored specifically for nine water-intense industry sectors including oil and gas, agriculture and chemicals.

Through the atlas, users can plot locations — from facilities, to suppliers, to potential new markets or proposed power plants — and compare those locations’ potential exposure to water stress and risk. They can also review maps of individual indicators, such as seasonal variability.  -JLH    https://www.environmentalleader.com/2013/01/aqueduct-launches-global-water-risk-atlas/