The American stock exchange will start trading water futures this week following the example of oil and gold contracts. This it is said in the docs The CME Group Inc.
For the first time, plans to trade water futures became known in September 2020 amid wildfires that raged on the west coast of the United States. With the help of such contracts, American farmers, hedge funds and municipalities will be able to protect themselves from the risk of rising water prices due to its shortage, writes Bloomberg .
“Climate change, droughts, population growth and air emissions are likely to make water scarcity and rising prices for this resource a major topic for many years to come,” said the managing director and analyst RBC Capital Markets Deane Dray.
As explained in the CME, currently about two billion people on Earth live in countries that have already faced the problem of water shortages. Almost two-thirds of the world’s population may face a resource shortage in four years.