The Value of Water

From The New Zealand Herald:

“Few [People] have any idea what a valuable commodity water is. We luxuriate under the shower, drink our fill out of the tap and buy our consumer goods without a worry in the world.
But start reading about the world's use of water and the soundbites of information you'll find are enough to keep you up at night.”

From USA Today:

“Water has been a good investment in the past, says Joe O'Brien, president of WaterColorado.com. An acre-foot of water from the Colorado Big Thompson project cost about a dollar in the 1950s, O'Brien says. It's worth about $10,000 today. (An acre-foot is one acre of water, 12 inches deep, or 325,851 gallons.) ‘Water runs uphill to money,’ he says.

You can't just speculate in water rights: It's illegal in Colorado, says O'Brien. You could, however, buy real estate with water on the property, if you really wanted to cash in on Western water.

Robert Doll, chief investment officer for BlackRock, a New York investment manager, also thinks water is a good long-term investment. ‘It's a precious and rare resource,’ he says.”

From Money Week:

“Since 1950, the world’s population has doubled but the amount of fresh water available hasn’t actually budged at all. The result? According to the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one-third of the world’s population is short of water. What’s worse, this is a point that the planet was not expected to reach, according to previous reports, until 2025, implying that the situation is deteriorating – fast.”