The head of Nestle – the world’s largest food group – has suggested his company is open to exchange-based water trade as a means of dealing with competition over scarce water resources in Alberta.
Here is the reference.
Alberta currently has a “first-in-time, first-in-right” system of prior allocation that concentrates water licences in the hands of the province’s irrigation districts (farming requires plenty of irrigation in semi-arid southern Alberta).
The usual suspects argue this is water ‘privatization,’ but to an extend water is treated like a commodity (you pay a water bill), although water is not priced for the end user.
Pricing, however, could assist in creating incentives to conserve water.
“You see what happens when demand is growing. The market reacts and people start to use oil in a more efficient way,” said Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck.
“One thing that does not move at all is the price of water.”
