About Us
Our history
Conflicts about water privatisation in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Jakarta, Indonesia, inspired the Transnational Institute (TNI),spearheaded by Satoko Kishimoto, to join with a number of organisations and research similar developments in other regions of the world.
This resulted in a collection of 235 cases of water remunicipalisations between 2000-2015, affecting over 100 million people in 37 countries.
The research was published in the book in the run-up to the in South Korea in 2015.
Taking a look beyond the water sector revealed remunicipalisation was taking place in other sectors of the economy.
Participatory surveys and desk-based research found 835 (re)municipalisations across seven public service sectors worldwide, published in the book in 2017.
A growing network of trade unions, journalists, local politicians and researchers gathered 1,400 cases in 58 countries around the world. The subsequent publication was discussed and celebrated in an international conference in the City of Amsterdam in 2019.
Our experience from different places and sectors around the world is shared: privatising vital services and infrastructure puts our health and lives at risk.
Democratic public ownership is not just “remunicipalisation”. Communities and governments around the world reclaim agency and resume responsibility differently
Public Futures was launched in 2021 to provide open access to our findings and facilitate collaborative research on what is working where.
Our team
Our collaborators
Public Futures provides a commonly accessible online research environment for collaborative research. Public Futures is a collaborative initiative. The research is coordinated by the Transnational Institute (TNI) and the research project GLOBALMUN at the University of Glasgow. The research process was initiated by TNI in 2007.
The Transnational Institute is a research and advocacy institute based in Amsterdam and has been promoting public ownership at the local and community level since 2007.
The research project 'Global Re-municipalisation and the Post-Neoliberal Turn' (GLOBALMUN) is based at the University of Glasgow and funded by the European Research Council. The on-going, five year project is undertaking a transnational comparative study on re-municipalisation.
Public Futures is funded by the Transnational Institute and the Knowledge Exchange Fund of the University of Glasgow.
