One thing is that selling water from some place enables the source to be developed. E.g. enable better water treatment technology and eliminate losses. It may very well actually <i>improve</i> availability of water.<p>Sale of drinking water is not really much of a problem, anywhere; the amounts consumed by drinking are small compared to everything else, and the development of treatment capability may well offset them.<p>Selling water in bottles is a problem because of the bottles (trash, materials, energy), but that is another thing. Supplying water to other uses (industry, agriculture) is a problem because the amounts are vastly bigger than with drinking water.<p>To be honest, I trust the English Wikipedia here more than the German...