Past Events
Wed, October 9, 2024
The Water Futures Workshop was a three-day event focused on critically examining neoliberal water governance, financialization, and water justice movements. The workshop brought together academics and activists from around the world to diagnose the current governance model, explore the entanglement of water justice with financial discourses, and imagine future regimes of water governance. Out of this meeting, we founded JustWaterFutures as a response to the urgent need for alternative visions of global water stewardship.
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Fri, March 21, 2025 12:00 AM
Speakers –
Kate Bayliss – School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
David Hall – University of Greenwich
Video –
https://youtu.be/k5BMEN19zKo
This first JustWaterFutures seminar features a discussion of Thames Water and its Troubles. Kate Bayliss (Research Associate at the Department of Economics, SOAS) presents on private equity, Macquarie and the financialisation of the water system, as well as on the impossibility of regulation. David Hall (Greenwich University, PSIRU) discusses investments, dividends and the political context of the UK water industry. The discussion includes an assessment of the UK government’s “independent commission” which cannot consider public ownership even though 82% of the British public demand it.
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Fri, May 16, 2025 , All Day
Welcome to our second JustWaterFurtures online event where a panel of academics, activists and experts will critically evaluate the recent report on The Economics of Water by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. Let’s delve into the Global Commission’s proposals for water governance and the challenges they pose from a water justice perspective. Don’t miss out on this insightful discussion! Panelists: Margreet Zwarteveen – IHE Delft & University of Amsterdam Alex Loftus – King’s College London Dante Maschio – People’s Water Forum Meera Karunananthan – Carleton University & Blue Planet Project Leo Heller – Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation. Chair: Lyla Mehta – Institute of Development Studies, UK & Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVA28ZvZkhk
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Fri, June 13, 2025 , All Day
Debates about water privatization have tended to construct a simplistic binary of public versus private. In reality, ‘public’ water is varied and complex in its institutional and ideological make-up, illustrated in part by the rise of very different types of ‘remunicipalized’ water services over the past two decades as well as the growth of ‘corporatized’ public utilities. Drawing on over 25 years of empirical and theoretical work on this topic, David McDonald will highlight key tensions and synergies in the emerging debates about the nature of public (water) services. Speaker: David McDonald is Professor of Global Development Studies at Queen’s University, Canada, and Director of the Municipal Services Project. He has conducted research on public services in more than 50 countries. Recent books include “Meanings of Public and the Future of Public Services” and “Public Banks and Public Water in the Global South.”
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjvCMK7ZVak
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Fri, September 12, 2025 , All Day
This bilingual (Spanish-English) JustWaterFutures Event explored the financialisation of water through water funds and their implications for community and public control. Speakers: Camila Perez Failach, Gyekye Tanoh, Javier Marquez. Moderated by Meera Karunananthan.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQxcWttAv7Q
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Fri, October 24, 2025 , All Day
This JustWaterFutures seminar brought together academics and civil society actors to reflect on the accelerating privatization of Brazil’s water and sanitation sector, examining its drivers, consequences, and the challenges it poses to the human right to water and sanitation.
Organized in collaboration with ONDAS, the National Observatory on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in Brazil, the event explored the historical and political context behind the current wave of privatizations, assess patterns of market concentration and financial flows, and considered ongoing struggles and possibilities for resistance. Speakers:
- Léo Heller, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation
- Isadora Cruxên, Senior Lecturer in Business Politics and Development, Queen Mary University of London.
- Marcos Helano Fernandes Montenegro, Communications Director, ONDAS – National Observatory of the Rights to Water and Sanitation
- Edson Aparecido da Silva, Executive Secretary, ONDAS – National Observatory of the Rights to Water and Sanitation
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