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IT MUST be something in the water. Environmental optimism seems to be catching, especially among experts fed up with gloom and doom. From curbing climate change with solar farms to global forest restoration projects, green redemption is the new narrative. But if there is a politics of protecting natural resources, who is writing the rules?

The latest convert to green optimism is US water guru Sandra Postel. She is the author of pessimistic texts on the global water crisis, such as Pillar of Sand. Now she brings us Replenish.

Postel remains opposed to the conventional infrastructure of water management in the 20th century, including most big dams and state irrigation projects. She hasn鈥檛 joined the eco-modernists who want to pour more concrete to save the planet. But she sees a world of water projects that 鈥渨ork with, rather than against, nature鈥�. Her optimism lies in the belief that governments and corporations are starting to get the message.

Some smell a rat. They fear her new world is all about privatising nature and putting a price tag on its bounty. I rather think they are right.

Water is one of the planet鈥檚 most important resources. We need it as much as the air we breathe. And not just for drinking and washing. Keeping the average US lifestyle afloat requires 7500 litres of water a day, says Postel, most of it to grow food. To sustain the needs of more than 7 billion people, dams now intercept more than a third of all river flows, while our pumping of underground water far exceeds the recharge from rainfall. No wonder water tables are in free-fall and many of the world鈥檚 rivers are running dry.

鈥淎t individual and civic levels, we use water with staggering inefficiency. It flows through our fingers鈥�

Water-short nations survive by importing water-thirsty crops like wheat, rice and cotton. But how much longer can this continue given that major exporters of this 鈥渧irtual water鈥�, such as Australia and the US, are themselves often running on empty? Especially when climate change makes the science of predicting where and when the rains will fall less and less reliable.

But Postel doesn鈥檛 think it has be like this. At individual and civic levels, we use water with staggering inefficiency. It flows through our fingers. We could do things much better, she argues, if only we stopped treating it like a birthright that falls from the sky and more like a precious resource that sustains all life on Earth. 鈥淭he water cycle is broken,鈥� she writes. 鈥淏ut one river, one wetland, one city, one farm at a time, we can begin to fix it.鈥�

But how? Some see the issue in religious terms. Not for nothing are many of the world鈥檚 rivers sacred. Others want new laws. Courts in several countries have recently given rivers a legal status as if they were human.

Postel finds some potent symbols to guide her agenda of replenishment. She devotes several pages to what happened when dam engineers on the Colorado river in the south-west US allowed a little water to escape across the border into Mexico to replenish the river鈥檚 shrivelled up delta. But that was a meagre start, and after a few weeks they turned the tap off again.

But for all her language about sharing and stewardship, Postel ultimately finds environmental salvation in the power of the dollar. She wants water to be owned, so it has a value to individuals and corporations. If they own and trade it, her argument goes, they will also safeguard it and use it well.

Her book focuses on examples where capitalism nurtures water. Most are in the US. She finds that water markets from California to New England deliver the precious resource to those who derive most economic value from it 鈥� almond farmers in California, city dwellers in New Mexico鈥檚 deserts or salmon fishers in the north-west.

From brief foreign trips, she lauds how farmers are trading water rights in Australia鈥檚 Murray-Darling basin, how Indian brewers secure sufficient barley supplies from a desert region by paying farmers to irrigate more efficiently, and how corporations from Quito to Kenya reforest watersheds to keep rivers flowing.

Is this the privatisation of nature? Some will say so. In many ways, it is just a reworking of the old saw of the American West that 鈥渨ater flows uphill toward money鈥�. And Postel is sometimes squeamish about consequences. For example, she seemed scandalised to discover that a Saudi company bought up water rights in the Arizona desert to grow alfalfa destined for feedlots outside Riyadh. The trouble is that when you place your faith in markets, the results aren鈥檛 always what you hope for 鈥� even in the US. The water cycle is certainly being marketised; it remains to be seen whether that becomes what Postel calls a 鈥渧irtuous cycle鈥�.

Those who are sceptical of this market agenda need to remember what can happen when rivers aren鈥檛 owned, but are just places to dump waste as cheaply as possible. That tale is told with scary verve by Financial Times journalist Victor Mallet in River of Life, River of Death, the story of his journey down the river Ganges.

No other river serves so many. Half a billion people live on its banks, including the inhabitants of two megacities, Delhi and Kolkata. Indians revere the river with an intensity rarely seen elsewhere. For them it is holy. Early this year, a court in northern India gave the Ganges the status of a 鈥渓iving human entity鈥�.

But Indians abuse it too. Famously, they consign cremated bodies to its waters. But that is the least of the river鈥檚 problems. On its way from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, it is emptied of clean water and refilled with raw sewage and industrial toxins. It is overwhelmed. When someone dropped a lighted match into its murky waters near the holy city of Haridwar, the river burst into flames that couldn鈥檛 be doused.

This reckless abuse is terrifying. But would the Ganges be cleaner if someone owned it? Would the river of death be transformed into a river of life? Or might the market dictate that its most productive use is as a free sewer?

Anthropologist Fiona McCormack asks a similar question of Earth鈥檚 oceans in Private Oceans. She charts their 鈥渆nclosure and marketisation鈥�, seeing this taking place through the assignment of fishing quotas to corporations, which effectively give them ownership of the oceans鈥� prime assets.

This 鈥渙cean grab鈥� is, she says, dispossessing the traditional custodians of fisheries, causing the collapse of small fishing communities around the world, for example, within Hawaii, the European Union and her homeland, New Zealand. Knowledge built up by communities over generations is being sidelined and the science of sustainability corrupted. What began as ecology ends up a stooge for maintaining property rights.

The narrative of privatising the oceans is the same as Postel鈥檚 for monetising water supplies. It holds that commonly owned resources are always trashed and destroyed, and that only private ownership can halt this 鈥渢ragedy of the commons鈥� by putting cash value on preserving natural assets.

But neoliberalism鈥檚 green face forgets one thing. As Nobel-prizewinning economist Elinor Ostrom and others argue, communities aren鈥檛 blind destroyers but are usually the best guardians of forests, animals and coral reefs. Things go wrong when control is stripped away from them and outside predators move in. The tragedy isn鈥檛 community control, but its breakdown by private asset strippers. Markets are the problem not the solution.

In an increasingly marketised world, it is hard for communities to exert the kind of control that McCormack sees as fundamental to successful management of natural resources. But from Trump鈥檚 US to New Zealand鈥檚 Maori fishing communities, and from Brexit Britain to the Amazon rainforest, the call to 鈥渢ake back control鈥� is being heard across all parts of the political spectrum. The tide may be turning. Perhaps there is something in the water.

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This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭hirst for change鈥�