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Culture Change e-Letter
#44
Overpopulation's toll
Water privatization
and the rising conflict
by Jan Lundberg
Your water is being stolen from you.
The latest, greatest crime is called privatization. That
people already have to pay for water through a utility seems outrageous,
if we stop and question it: To look at waste in tax revenue, water could
and should be free of charge. But in the U.S., for
example, hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted in such time-honored
programs as building new roads, making more weaponry, and chasing terrorists in
the wrong places.
People
accept such a screwing from government and its cronies just, in part, to be
patriotic and go with the mainstream. But even those who have observed trends critically find it is
shocking that among our rights that are diminishing, we are losing an
assured supply of water. If we are rich, we don't have to be
concerned. But over nine out of ten of us have to start worrying and
taking action. It's part of the war of the
rich against the poor.
Also during these modern times,
pollution of our water has increased to the point that in countless cities, a
person had better be able to afford a water filter or bottled water.
Many of us are long since dispossessed of our birthrights as human beings.
Didn't you grow up thinking ample, clean water was a right? Our masters wish us to
revise that notion. Because of so many similar developments in the
overall trend of corporate hegemony, the recent Culture Change Letter on nanotechnology
stated as its title,
"They're coming for you." Will you defend your land and water,
or are most of the elements of life mere abstractions thanks to consumerism?
No one has a right to own the
water. But this is what is well underway. Privatization used to mean that a government's transit department,
for instance, would be taken over by a company that supposedly runs things more efficiently. Now, water supplies and water delivery systems are bought and sold
by extremely large corporations that are often beyond any nation's laws.
Their handmaidens are governments, banks, and others.
"Water, say the World Bank and
the United Nations, is a 'human need,' not a 'human right.'... A human need
can be supplied in many ways, especially by those with money. No one can
sell or trade a human right." - Maude Barlow, co-author of Blue Gold:
The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World's Water.
Clean fresh water has been becoming scarce due to
overpopulation for several decades. It is also true that waste and greed
are creating artificial shortages of water, as happens with food. But, behavior
resulting in injustice is a symptom of overpopulation and
is aggravated by population growth. One sad result of greed, waste, and overpopulation is that
mismanagement and skewed priorities deprive over one billion people of access to
clean fresh water. More than twice that have poor sanitation for the same
reasons (source: International Rivers Network).
Water privatization turns out to be the
corporate agenda of the World Bank, the World Water Council, and other
globalization players. Their strategy is to speak of shortage and take
advantage of it whether it is manufactured or not. Their answer is to
build infrastructure oh so profitably. They want to double this kind
of spending to $180 billion a year.
If
the economy remains intact in the next two or three decades, between half and two-thirds of humanity are
forecast to be living
with severe freshwater shortages. As the world is clearly running out of
clean water, the solution, according to many governments and powerful corporations as well as international development banks,
is to privatize water
and let the market determine price and availability.
Critique of social justice tilt
While "Their" skullduggery is
abhorrent and must be fought, we have a bigger picture to keep in view.
The bottom line is that Population Growth + Climate Change = Exponential Water
Crisis. It seems that activists and foundations are seldom concerned with
all three parts of the equation, nor are
they able to connect the elements successfully for the public's consumption.
It is pointless to demand justice
for all thirsty people if we do not consider (1) how many of us are demanding
water and (2) what other species are being affected by our ongoing
demands. The world's people can cut water use equitably as a model for
the universe, but if they don't cut their numbers, according to logic,
eventually all is lost. That said,
we can look at details of the economic and ecological crisis that so few
observers tie to overpopulation. For example, water essential for growing
the population is pumped via nonrenewable energy, in the main (pardon
the pun).
Pumping water is almost always
a petroleum exercise which means adding to greenhouse gas emissions.
Petroleum-oriented agriculture wastes vast amounts of water, especially when
devoted to growing beef. But just having running water (even just cold) for households is never
questioned on ecological grounds despite how many people are engaging in this
unsustainable activity because there are so many rationalizations. One
chic rationalization for environmentalists running their taps and warming the globe is that driving a car is so much worse.
Because
piecemeal reforms are not enough, what's needed is to reject the entire
culture of materialism and technological excess. It is too late for reforms, due to so many years
of greed satisfied by violence. At best, the mass media and almost all
the alternative press offer the limited vision of reformers who
have no answers for the big picture. Activists are also understandably
distracted by various battles and brushfires.
Two of the more high-profile activists on the world
water-rights crisis, Maude Barlow and Vandana Shiva, seem to slough off one
of the obvious culprits in this crisis which is: overpopulation. Recently
in
Resurgence magazine, Barlow calls for "good governance" as the answer.
What about stabilizing and eventually reducing human population?
Ms. Shiva assumes that "[t]he culture of conservation of these 'common'
rights has supported human life and all life on Earth for millennia."
Actually, it was a low population size and little technological 'progress' that
were bigger factors.
Brushfires versus hope
A case study or two seems to always fit
into a pattern when commodification and greed are involved in
"investment."
In Bolivia, the giant U.S. engineering
corporation, Bechtel, took over the water system. Rates were hiked and
protests mounted violently. The company was thrown out of the country
because the citizens were thrown up against the wall and did not intend to die
of thirst or see their crops shrivel and die. However, Bolivia's water
privatization incident is not rare; it is part of an escalating trend.
Or look at Africa:
"Every day 30,000 children in the Third
World die of preventable causes. Many of them could be saved if they had
access to safe water. The World Bank argues that governments in
impoverished countries have to privatize their water supply and distribution
systems if they are to get the efficient delivery of water that is needed.
"On the face of it, the argument makes
sense. The adequate supply of water and other public services is too
often frustrated by inadequate funding, inefficient bureaucracy or lack of
political will. Promoters of private ownership say it brings investment
and cost-effective service.
"Experience and common sense say
otherwise. Private investors aren't attracted by poor and rural
communities. Any improvements that might come with private ownership are
in areas that generate profit. Private water, telecommunications and
electricity companies tend to focus on efficiency in collecting tariffs, but
not on improving service. Costs usually leap up quickly, annoying middle
class and wealthy customers but leaving the poor without service at all.
"According to the Congress of South
Africa Trade Unions, privatization has cost 200,000 people their jobs.
In poor Soweto neighborhoods, up to 20,000 homes a month are disconnected from
electric service for nonpayment." - by Wole Akande of
Yellowtimes.org
In India, reports Vandana Shiva, a
company has bought the rights to the river Shivnath so that no villages nearby can
obtain their traditional water. Wells within a kilometer from the river
have been forcibly shut down by the company.
If water is something only for the rich
to enjoy lavishly, how can poor people survive and put up with this? At
this rate, soon the growth in population will make sharing water
cooperatively more clearly a necessity. Social justice will more plainly be only about fighting about
insufficient resources instead of misapplication of plentiful resources.
There's no need to look to corporations
to help people with daily rights and needs. According to the report "Alternatives
to Privatisation: The Power of Participation":
Consumer co-operatives have proved an
excellent way to deliver clean water in many smaller communities around the
world, both in rural communities and in urban slum areas where the state fails
to supply basic services. The experience in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz
proves that co-operative models can also be very successful in major urban
centres. The citys water utility has been run by a consumer co-operative
since 1979... After studying the Santa Cruz experience, even the World Bank
has admitted "that cooperative solutions can be superior to either public
or private approaches to utility management." - Corporate Europe
Observatory (CEO)
The struggle includes vital issues
such as dams. Shiva reported that the waters of the
sacred River Ganges, "the lifeline of northern India and India's food
security, are being handed over to Suez (global water corporation) to quench the
thirst of Delhi's elite even as a hundred thousand people are being forcibly and
violently removed from their homes in Tehri for the Tehri Dam." Terhi,
capital of the ancient kingdom of Garhwal, is in the process of being submerged.
 Dams go hand in hand with water
privatization. At a recent World Water Forum, a report from International Rivers Network served as
a briefing kit. From its section on dams, a famous case from the Pacific
Northwest provided background on an infamous event that is expressed best by
this scene as photographed here. Thousands of adult salmon
were killed when
Klamath River water was returned to farmers in fall 2002 by the federal
government which knowingly violated environmental laws concerning the river and
its species. The Klamath flows from Oregon through the northern extremity
of California. Several Indian tribes lost their historic food supply, but
not much fuss was made commensurate with the crime. (Photo courtesy
of Defenders of Wildlife.)
Global perspective/background
Susan Bryce's indispensable article for the Australian Freedom & Survival Guide
(excerpt; see links at bottom) stated:
International discussions about the
world's water supplies began in 1977 when the United Nations held the first
World Water Conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina. The Conference declared
the 1980s to be the "UN International Drinking Water Supply and
Sanitation Decade." The altruistic goal was to ensure all people in the
world had access to adequate water supplies and sanitation within a decade.
Ten years later, the Brundtland Commission told the world that our approach to
development was unsustainable but it had little to say about water. Then, in
1992, the Rio Conference on Environment and Development, in its "Agenda
for the 21st Century" (known as "Agenda 21"), addressed fresh
water in chapter 18 of its report.
In 1996, the World Water Council, a
private think-tank, was formed. The founding members were Egypt's Ministry of
Public Works and Water Resources, the Canadian International Development
Agency and the French transnational water corporation Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux.
Other organisations supporting the start-up of the World Water Council were:
* International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage
* International Water Resources Association
* Istituto Agronomico Mediterraneo
* International Water Association
* United Nations Children's Fund
* United Nations Development Program
* United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization
* United Nations Environment Program
* United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
* Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council
* World Bank
* World Conservation Union
* World Health Organization
* World Meteorological Association
The World Water Council set about
developing The Long
Term Vision for Water, Life and Environment, better
known by its subtitle, World Water Vision. To turn the World
Water Vision into reality, the membership of the World Water Commission,
as it became known, began to read like a who's who of the ruling elite. The high
profile commissioners include:
* Dr Ismali Serageldin (Commission Chair), Vice President, World Bank, and
Chair of Global Water Partnership
* Margaret Catley-Carlson, President, Population Council
* Gordon Conway, President, The Rockefeller Foundation
* Mohamed T. El-Ashry, Chair and CEO of the Global Environment Facility
* Howard Hjort, former Deputy Director, FAO
* Enriquo Iglesias, President, Inter-American Development Bank
* Yolanda Kababadse, President, World Conservation Union
* Jessica Mathews, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, USA
* Robert S. McNamara, Co-Chair, Global Coalition for Africa
* Maurice Strong, Chair, Earth Council, member of Commission on Global
Governance, and a chief adviser in charge of the UN reform process
* Wilfred Thalwitz, former Senior VP, World Bank
* Jerome Mondo, Chair of the Supervisory Board, Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux
An international network
of citizens groups opposed global water privatization plans at the third World
Water Forum in Japan in March 2003. Groups used the conference to advocate an
alternate vision for resolving global water crisis. One of the tactics of
the corporate agenda of the water interests is to call privatization something
else: A policy writer for the World Water Council gave the meeting its
script; while claiming to be
independent, "the WWC supports the public-private partnership approach to
water supply, which is a euphemism for privatization.
Local accountability and control are often lost in privatization plans."
- Blue Planet Project, which calls for the launch of an international
campaign to
keep water as part of the global commons.
Conclusion
What are we dealing with? One of the top
three water corporations is Vivendi Environment which employs 295,000 people and
"earned" $12 billion in 2002. The implications of these
companies' activities, enforced by the World Bank's requirement of conversion of
public systems to private as a condition for loans, include higher prices for
water, cut-offs to customers who cannot pay, reduced water quality, and
political corruption.
What did Mohandas Gandhi say about exploitation,
centralization, and industrialization?
"Centralization as a system is inconsistent
with a nonviolent structure of society... the mania for mass production is
responsible for the world crisis... if there is production and distribution
both in the respective areas where things are required, it is automatically
regulated, and there is less chance for fraud, none for
speculation.
"I don't believe that industrialization is
necessary in any case for any country... it is machinery that has enabled
these nations to exploit others... What is the cause of the present
chaos? It is exploitation." - Mohandas Gandhi
A cultural revolution and its nonviolent methods
stands for equitable access to resources, non-exploitation of humanity, and the
right of nature to exist with intrinsic value. To get there,
non-cooperation with oppressive governments, corporations, and persons must be
combined with compassion for prevailing ignorance and fear. You are just
about ready to act in concert to do your part.
A local note with a strong message
The Mad River, flowing from Trinity through Humboldt Counties in northern
California, was almost going to have its relatively clean water regularly barged down to
the southern tip of the state in giant petroleum bags. The citizens of Arcata in
Humboldt overwhelmingly attacked the idea at a city council hearing and defeated
the scheme. Some pointed out the risk of allowing a global trade tribunal
to get jurisdiction over the water if the locals wanted to sever the deal.
The
company wanting to sell the water in this fashion was called Aqueous. Civil
rights activist Spring Lundberg objected to the scheme and told the council
members "not to acquiesce to Aqueous."
*****
References and recommendations:
- A new Gandhian movement is explored in a
prior Culture Change Letter, #42
- Transnational
Institute and water justice
- Corporate
Europe Observatory (CEO)
- International
Rivers Network briefing kit
- Recent water privatization articles are in Resurgence
magazine's July-August issue, available through the Resurgence
website.
- Jim Hightower on Bolivia
says No to Globaloney
- Susan
Bryce's history article from Nexus Magazine
- Waterways are a source of drinking water, and are being attacked and
defended. See WaterKeeper
Alliance.
- yellowtimes.org
regarding African water privatization
- Michigan stops Nestle's
spring water exploitation
- Global Warming Crisis Council
- Overpopulation:
Resources for Understanding and Taking Action
Back to Home Page
Jan Lundberg's columns are protected by
copyright; however, non-commercial use of the material is permitted as long as
full attribution is given with a link to this website, and he is informed of the
re-publishing: info@culturechange.org
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