Access to fresh water and international trade law

Lack of access to fresh water rapidly becomes one of the biggest problems global community has todeal with. The United Nations already made an urgent and pressing wake – up call by formulating asone of the Millennium Development Goals to ‘halve by the year 2015, the proportion of peoplewithout access to safe drinking water’. In this respect, it is submitted at present that WTO trade lawprovides a suitable framework under which effective (trade) solutions can be found (even on arelatively short notice). Hence, the question before us will be how to enhance access to fresh water bymeans of trade regulation in order to meet MDG 7 on time. At present there are no GATT tariffbindings on water (moreover there still is an astonishing lack of commitments on water services underthe GATS agreement). Since most regions in the Northern hemisphere are predominantly water richas opposed to a great deal of the Southern hemisphere regions which are predominantly water poor,trade in water is deemed to develop rapidly on a regional basis between ten North and the South.Various methods of trade are involved under which bulk transport by water-tankers as well as pipelinetransport. Furthermore there is also the emerging ‘embedded’ water problematic which is to be taken into account and which touches upon food production strategies. Indeed, a considerable amount ofwater can be saved in many arid or semi arid regions of the world by simply deciding on producingless water consuming foods and therewith spare the overexploited underground water reserves.