ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on one of the key factors currently affecting the international water governance system, without which the actual profound transformations in the water sector cannot be fully understood. This is the recent rise and rapid expansion of transnational corporations (TNCs) in general and in the water sector in particular. While we are especially interested in the TNCs operating in the water sector, it is obvious that their evolution cannot be separated from the larger dynamics of globalisation, which has made the rapid growth and expansion of TNCs possible. In the first section we will therefore discuss the evolution of TNCs in relationship to economic globalisation, with a particular look at concentration among these TNCs. This will give us the general background against which the evolution of water TNCs must be seen.
