• Oil, Natural Gas, and Electric Deregulation



• Stopping the Nuclear Relapse



• Interactive Map of Proposed New Reactors



• The Case Against Nuclear Power



• The Case for Renewables and Efficiency



• Energy Legislation



• Press Room



• Congressional Voting Records



• Take Action!

How international organizations promote water privatization

The World Bank and the Global Water Barons

The World Bank has spent the past two decades undermining access to basic services such as health, education, clean energy and water through so-called structural adjustments. Structural adjustment is a standard World Bank/ IMF policy which calls for reduced government spending, increased privatization options, and opens up countries to foreign investment. Structural adjustments are applied to countries that seek loans from the bank and are used as conditions for rewarding the credits. These adjustments include public sector budget cutbacks, privatization and deregulation through the program of ‘public sector reform.’ Often, loans given to related sectors include conditionalities of privatization of other state assets. In order to strengthen this policy the World Bank and the IMF has two agencies that lend exclusively to private sector development, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).

The World Bank promotes and markets its policies as a ‘knowledge bank.’ But instead of providing open access to different development models and possibilities, the World Bank has established a knowledge monopoly by providing a multitude of research date, information and theory that all supports a single model which focuses on supply-side models and market-based solutions. World Bank appraisals of privatization continuously fail to assess the impact on low-income groups and ignore parameters such as cut-offs from services, equality of service delivery, procedural rights, price increases and price structures.

The World Bank has established partnerships with so-called independent NGOs such as the partnership between the Global Water Partnership and the World Water Council, who play a key role in softening the flawed image of the global water companies, by introducing flawed discourse on environmental and social responsibility without following actual implementation. Through such partnerships, the World Bank exchanges staff with the global water barons and awards them with a key insight on how to maneuver and get influence in the bank. This is a partnership that is not offered to any civil society groups, who supposedly benefit from such policies. In this way we give the corporations our taxpayer money in order to extort the Global South.

World Bank policies assist a small number of water barons in gaining increasing control over our basic resources. The bank barons (and your tax money) buy the few profitable utilities from struggling governments in the South and leave the unprofitable utilities to be managed from a diminished public sector. The unprofitable utilities are based in small urban or rural settings, areas the bank should ideally support to improve their infrastructure. 

What's Wrong with the Water Policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?

more resources

Because Public Citizen does not accept funds from corporations, professional associations or government agencies, we can remain independent and follow the truth wherever it may lead. But that means we depend on the generosity of concerned citizens like you for the resources to fight on behalf of the public interest. If you would like to help us in our fight, click here.