Originally posted to the UN Post 2015 Water Thematic Consultation.

With all the talk about how important it is to 'engage the private sector' and give them concessions in exchange for cooperation in solving problems largely caused by the private sector's prioritizing it's own profitability above basic human concerns, I think it would be an important step forward to establish some kind of basic ethical boundries for the 'private sector' to adhere to, with actual criminal penalties for the people involved, no matter how 'important' they are or who they're friends with. 

The final straw has to be the blatant, deliberate attempts by private companies to create water scarcity in order to use it as an angle towards privatization. The manipulative methods they've used, working collectively while outwardly 'competing', to make something free and abundant into something scarce and in need of regulation, warrant criminal fraud charges. 

Deliberately polluting streams and then offering for profit water purification solutions through subsidiaries is one method, but it's even more insidious than that. In the developing world and even in the US 'grain belts' there have been streams and underground aquifiers diverted away from cooperative and subsistence farmers to commercial farmland or systematically polluted so the land can be acquired cheaply, and there's been a longstanding effort to make normal human water usage seem like it's having a major impact on the world's fresh water supplies, but normal human usage filters out of the freshwater system through the planet's natural functions, only industrial use does permanent damage to water supplies, and irresponsible industrial operations are endangering the planet's natural functions as well. 

It's become common for industry to threaten the economic stability of a country while constantly more subsidies, often in the form of massively inflated government contracts and lower taxes, while using it's control over media to make public infrastructure seem like a burden on the working class people who end up providing the bulk of the tax base that goes into those subsidies and padded contracts. 

Elected officials in every 'democratic' country are always looking at their future once they leave office, and appeasing business interests ensures that they'll be well paid when their political career is over. Because of the personal incentive to put business interests ahead of public interests, politicians are happy to help perpetuate artificial water scarcity by allowing public sector water infrastructure to become decrepit and failing, so that privatization can be held up as a solution. 

The effort to make water appear scarce is still ongoing, and in western countries it's a growing, highly funded, movement with many disguises. Some are pseudo-environmental, grabbing onto legitimate concerns about pollution and using them to promote the idea of normal human usage causing water scarcity. But there are also straight out profit-motivated tactics to change the basic culture of civilized human society to think of water strictly as a commodity.

A striking example is Coca-Cola's quiet campaign called 'Cap The Tap', in which they urge restaurateurs to stop offering tap water. "Every time your business fills a cup or glass with tap water, it pours potential profits down the drain." and they offer to help businesses by teaching (your) crew members or waitstaff suggestive selling techniques to convert requests for tap water into orders for revenue-generating beverages."

http://www.commonfloor.com/news/artificial-water-scarcity-benefits-the-water-mafia-1411

http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report-artificial-water-scarcity-ushers-in-a-dry-festival-in-bangalore-1460924

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/water-scarcity-artificial-created-by-corruption-hegde/294100-60-115.html

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18363-hightower-coke-conspiracy-tap-water