Water belongs to the earth and all species. No one has the right to profit from it. By 2025 as much as two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in conditions of serious water shortage. Already 31 countries face water scarcity and more than a billion people lack adequate access to drinking water.

Just as we are beginning to face this reality, however, water is being turned into a commodity. Governments all over the world are dismantling environmental legislation or allowing the industry to police itself. Instead of taking care of the limited water we have, we are diverting, polluting, and depleting it at an astonishing rate.

• Millions of Chinese farmers find their local wells pumped dry
• 80 percent of China’s major rivers are so degraded, they no longer support fish
• 75 percent of Russia’s lake and river water is unsafe to drink
• Mexico City is so desperate for water, the entire population may have to be relocated within a decade

While governments have been slow in coming to terms with this crisis, the private sector has identified water as the last great untapped natural resource to be exploited for profit. Giant transnational water, food, energy, and shipping corporations are doing all in their power to kick-start the trade in "blue gold." Their goal is to make water a private commodity, sold and traded on the open market.

At the heart of environmentalists’ many demands is the necessity

• To use resources frugally
• For industry and agriculture to cause minimal pollution
• To preserve wildlife, wildernesses, and biodiversity, and
• To maximize recycling

Globalization thwarts this by its mix of trade rules that maximize international competitiveness, with the emphasis on the cheapest product, and the encouragement of inward investment and reduced public expenditure.

This article is an excerpt from Take It Personally: How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World by Anita Roddick. Copyright © 2001 HarperCollins Publishers. Used with permission.