Arrivederci, Water Profiteers: Italians Claim Water as a Common
Good “Water—whether we treat it as a public good or as a
commodity that can be bought and sold—will in large part
determine whether our future is peaceful or perilous,” wrote the
scholar Maude Barlow. In Italy last month, an overwhelming
number of people (96 percent of the 57 percent of the population
that voted) cast their ballots for a peaceful future based on
shared ownership of water. The referendum overturned a law
passed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government, which
would have encouraged private companies to buy up public water
utilities and guaranteed them a profit on their investment,
opening the door to rate hikes. The referendum also stripped
Berlusconi government ministers of special court privileges and
reaffirmed public opposition to nuclear power. An international
grassroots movement is working to make sure that water, that
basic building block of life, is treated not as a commodity to
be bought and sold but a common herit