Commodities de água, especulando com a vida

Abstract

With the future likely to worsen the water crisis, the race for dominance of water is increasing among investors, exacerbated by the recent transformation of water into a commodity directly traded on the Wall Street stock exchange. Thus, based on the premise that the 2008 crisis was the result of an open opportunity in the stock market, with high consequences on the lives of many people and a substantial increase in food prices, investigating and analyzing this new market is necessary and relevant for a greater perception of water governance in nations before choosing to follow the flow of global forces, since water is indispensable for food production and the life not only of humans, but of the entire ecosystem. This paper, therefore, aimed to identify the association of water and commodities through time. To this end, theoretical associations are presented about the value attributed to things by social beings, the historical context involved for the current direct commercialization of water, and the reasons why it was already considered, indirectly, a commodity traded among other commodities. In the background, a descriptive analysis of the first movements of this new market is presented in a quantitative way, the relationship when compared to the water consumption in Brazil (acountry in prominence for retaining one of the largest reserves of drinking water in the world and being an important exporter in global trade) and the connection of the price of water with other commodities. In the first part, we found a strong association between water and commodities, especially agricultural commodities, and its high use value, with high expectations for high exchange value according to the authors. The quantitative analysis, which totaled 78 observations, did not show any price association. This difference in results can be justified by the short period since the inauguration of the direct water market and its low trading volume so far. If the worsening of water crises continues and the expansion of this new cross-border market reverberates, the financial relationship of water with other commodities may be different from those found in this study, thus more work on the subject of water is essential, and greater attention to the governance of nations over their natural resources.