You cannot live without it. You cannot grow food without it. Civilisation, as we know it, is built on reliable access to it. And right now, some of the world’s most aggressive financial institutions are buying as much of it as they can.
Water rights — the legal entitlements to draw water from rivers, lakes, and underground aquifers — have long been traded in the American West and parts of Australia. But something has changed in the last decade. What was once a market for farmers and municipal utilities has been entered, at scale, by hedge funds, private equity firms, and sovereign wealth funds.
They are not buying water to use it. They are buying it to hold it — and to sell it, at their price, when the droughts come. And the droughts are coming.
