In a news item that appeared on the 31 January 2014 in the Guardian (an esteemed British newspaper) it is reported that in the Swiss mountain ski resort of Davos, Nestl ́e chairman Peter Brabeck addressed some criticisms pointed towards his alleged claims calling for the privatization of water:1

While Brabeck will have stoked the debate on climate change, he also sought to dampen the controversy last year in which he was accused by some NGOs of arguing for the privatisation of water and claiming is not a human right.

As a student seeking expertise in economics and having finished a serious general equilibrium course, evaluate this very question. (You could imagine that you are working in a newspaper and your editor gave that particular question for you to write about in the economics section.) Could privatization of drinkable water, hence markets, work for the human kind (even if access to drinkable water is not a “human right” as he allegedly claims)?2 Do not focus too much on whether or not this is a human rights issue, after all ours is not a law course. Evaluate whether or not his claims can be justified or trashed with the use of formal economics arguments that you have seen in this course.