The global bottled water market is priced at about $230 billion USD a year, and growing. Yet the growing phenomenon of consuming this vital liquid packaged in a plastic bottle seems ill-conceived given current global conditions of water shortage. Understanding the paradoxical global patterns of bottled water production, distribution and consumption necessitates explanation. In this talk, Raul Pacheco-Vega will discuss the global politics of bottled water markets and analyse whether commodifying the vital liquid is compatible with the global norm of the human right to water, as set by the United Nations’ 2010 resolution.

Raul Pacheco-Vega is a Research Professor at Flacso México. He has been full professor in the Public Administration Division of the Center for Economic Research and Teaching, Central Region Headquarters; Regional Director for Western Canada and Lead Researcher in Water and Climate Change, Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy.

His fields of interest are mixed methods, public policies, national and global environmental policies. Especially issues related to water governance, sanitation and wastewater policy, North American environmental policy, Latin American environmental policy. He also has interests in interscalar dynamics and human-environmental interactions, and spatial analysis. Other topics include: network governance across multiple scales, waste politics and geography, human geography (economic, urban) and environmental issues, regional development, public affairs and public policy, urban and industrial restructuring, regional spatial changes, land use and urbanization. He has also developed climate policy evaluation projects.