A Sudanese woman fills water bottles held by a young boy about 60 kilometres north of El-Fasher, the capital of the North Darfur state, on February 9, 2017. (Photo: Ashraf Shazly/AFP via Getty Images)

by Julia Conley • December 7, 2020

Though the international community recognizes water access as an essential human right, hedge fund managers and public water agencies are poised to begin profiting off water scarcity, which experts say will worsen in the coming years in the U.S. as well as other countries. 

As Bloomberg reported late Sunday, water will be treated as a commodity and traded on Wall Street for the first time starting this week, with market participants able to bet on or against potential water scarcity. 

The Chicago-based global markets company CME Group first announced in September—as wildfires linked to higher temperatures and drought raged across the West Coast—that it would soon offer contracts within California's $1.1 billion spot water market. 

"Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come," RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray told Bloomberg Sunday. 

Progressives, climate action campaigners, and rights advocates expressed shock Monday that traders are poised to treat water scarcity—which plagues two billion people around the world and is expected to affect two-thirds of the population in the next four years—as an opportunity to profit. 

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