INTRODUCTION

Though the effects of globalization on marine systems (i.e., commercial fisheries) have received relatively more attention, freshwater ecosystems have been and continue to be profoundly affected by increasing human populations and changing global processes. Human activities now utilize more than half of the available surface fresh water (Postel 1999), and water consumption is doubling every 20 years (WWI 2003). Currently, four out of every ten persons live in river basins that experience water scarcity and it is estimated that by 2025, at least 50 percent of the world's population will face water scarcity (WRI 2000). The ecological effects of this demand on freshwater systems are already apparent. Biodiversity of freshwater ecosystems has declined by 50 percent globally over the 30-year period from 1970 to 1999 and current extinction rates of many freshwater taxa are more than 1000 times the normal “background” rate (Master et al. 1998). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has recognized that globalization, specifically the liberalization of trade and the promotion of markets and investment structures, is likely to have a large but uncertain impact on water resources (OECD 1998). These conditions illustrate the need for continued analysis of how globalization and associated policies drive environmental change in freshwater ecosystems.

“Globalization” is a nebulous concept, with different meanings for different people. Here, we limit our definition to the post-World War II era of transnational legal frameworks designed with the intention of reducing trade barriers between nations (International Forum on Globalization 2002) and the era of multinational corporate expansion (Korten 2001).