Neoliberalizing Nature? Market Environmentalism in Water Supply in England and Wales

TLDR

The 1989 privatization of England and Wales’s water supply sector is a widely cited example of market environmentalism, using market institutions to reconcile efficiency with environmental conservation. This article investigates why market environmentalism has retrenched, arguing that resource commodification is contested, partial, transient, distinct from privatization, and that freshwater is an uncooperative commodity. Using geographical analysis of water’s spatial dynamics, the author examines contradictions among regulators, companies, and the government in implementing direct competition, universal metering, and full‑cost pricing. Market mechanisms have been applied far less than expected, and unresolved contradictions triggered reregulation that improved environmental and drinking water quality, showing how neoliberalization can drive reregulation that reshapes human and nonhuman entitlements.

Abstract

Abstract The 1989 privatization of the water supply sector in England and Wales is a much-cited model of market environmentalism—the introduction of market institutions to natural resource management as a means of reconciling goals of efficiency and environmental conservation. Yet, more than a decade after privatization, the application of market mechanisms to water supply management is much more limited than had been expected. Drawing on recent geographical research on commodities, this article analyzes the reasons for this retrenchment of the market environmentalist project. I make three related claims: resource commodification is a contested, partial, and transient process; commodification is distinct from privatization; and fresh water is a particularly uncooperative commodity. To illustrate these claims, I explore how water's geography underpinned the failure of commodification initiatives in England and Wales. I focus specifically on contradictions faced by industry regulators, water companies, and the government when attempting to implement direct competition, universal metering, and full-cost pricing of water supply. The failure to resolve these contradictions was a critical driver in the reregulation of the water supply industry and in the overall trend toward improvement in environmental and drinking water quality, a finding that underpins my closing argument—that neoliberalization is implicated in processes of reregulation that rescript the entitlements of both humans and nonhumans, with outcomes that are not necessarily negative for what we conventionally delimit as the environment.