ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to examine the challenges that the urban poor typically encounter in meeting their household water needs when the private sector has responsibility for service provision. It looks at how private-sector participation in water servicing, a process where water is treated as an economic good, affects its distribution as a human rights-based necessity to the urban poor. The chapter identifies potential opportunities within the privatisation process to better facilitate a sustainable and sensitive basis for serving the urban poor and allowing such groups to achieve household water security in the context of changing service administration and increasing resource depletion. Water scarcity has caused irreversible damage to the environment through land subsidence resulting in structural damage to buildings, and increased risk of water contamination through cracks. In Mexico City, the lowest-income households typically spend just over 5% of their total expenditure on water services, relative to just over 1.5% for the highest.
