Posted on 29-8-2002

No Water No Life

</bold>by Maude Barlow & Tony Clarke, www.thenation.com


"Water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th
century: the precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations."
--Fortune magazine


As the World Summit on Sustainable Development draws closer, clear lines
of contention are forming, particularly around the future of the world's
freshwater resources. The setting of the summit paints the picture.
Government and corporate delegates to the September meeting will gather
in the lavish hotels and convention facilities of Sandton, the fabulously
wealthy Johannesburg suburb that houses huge estates, English gardens and
swimming pools, and has become South Africa's new financial epicentre.
There, they will meet with World Bank and World Trade Organization
officials to set the stage for the privatisation of water.


At the same time, activists from South Africa and around the world with a
very different vision will gather in very different settings to fight for
a water-secure future. One such venue will be Alexandra Township, a
poverty-stricken community where sanitation, electricity and water
services have been privatised and cut off to those who cannot afford
them. Alexandra is situated right next door to Sandton and divided only
by a river so polluted that it has cholera warning signs on its banks.
There could not be a more fitting setting for Rio+10 than South Africa,
because neighbouring Sandton and Alexandra represent the great divide
that characterises the current debate over water. Moreover, South Africa
is the birthplace of one of the nucleus groups that form the heart of a
new global civil society movement dedicated to saving the world's water
as part of the global commons.


This movement originates in a fight for survival. The world is running
out of fresh water. Humanity is polluting, diverting and depleting the
wellspring of life at a startling rate. With every passing day, our
demand for fresh water outpaces its availability, and thousands more
people are put at risk. Already, the social, political and economic
impacts of water scarcity are rapidly becoming a destabilising force,
with water-related conflicts springing up around the globe. Quite simply,
unless we dramatically change our ways, between one-half and two-thirds
of humanity will be living with severe freshwater shortages within the
next quarter-century.


It seemed to sneak up on us, or at least those of us living in the North.
Until the past decade, the study of fresh water was left to highly
specialised groups of experts--hydrologists, engineers, scientists, city
planners, weather forecasters and others with a niche interest in what so
many of us took for granted. Many knew about the condition of water in
the Third World, including the millions who die of waterborne diseases
every year. But this was seen as an issue of poverty, poor sanitation and
injustice--all areas that could be addressed in the just world for which
we were fighting.


Now, however, an increasing number of voices--including human rights and
environmental groups, think tanks and research organisations, official
international agencies and thousands of community groups around the
world--are sounding the alarm. The earth's fresh water is finite and
small, representing less than one half of 1 percent of the world's total
water stock. Not only are we adding 85 million new people to the planet
every year, but our per capita use of water is doubling every twenty
years, at more than twice the rate of human population growth. A legacy
of factory farming, flood irrigation, the construction of massive dams,
toxic dumping, wetlands and forest destruction, and urban and industrial
pollution has damaged the Earth's surface water so badly that we are now
mining the underground water reserves far faster than nature can
replenish them.


The earth's "hot stains"--areas where water reserves are
disappearing--include the Middle East, Northern China, Mexico, California
and almost two dozen countries in Africa. Today thirty-one countries and
over 1 billion people completely lack access to clean water. Every eight
seconds a child dies from drinking contaminated water. The global
freshwater crisis looms as one of the greatest threats ever to the
survival of our planet.


<bold>Washington Consensus

</bold>

Tragically, this global call for action comes in an era guided by the
principles of the so-called Washington Consensus, a model of economics
rooted in the belief that liberal market economics constitutes the one
and only economic choice for the whole world. Competitive nation-states
are abandoning natural resources protection and privatising their
ecological commons. Everything is now for sale, even those areas of life,
such as social services and natural resources, that were once considered
the common heritage of humanity. Governments around the world are
abdicating their responsibilities to protect the natural resources in
their territory, giving authority away to the private companies involved
in resource exploitation.


Faced with the suddenly well-documented freshwater crisis, governments
and international institutions are advocating a Washington Consensus
solution: the privatisation and commodification of water. Price water,
they say in chorus; put it up for sale and let the market determine its
future. For them, the debate is closed. Water, say the World Bank and the
United Nations, is a "human need," not a "human right." These are not
semantics;the difference in interpretation is crucial. A human need can
be supplied many ways, especially for those with money. No one can sell a
human right.


So a handful of transnational corporations, backed by the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund, are aggressively taking over the
management of public water services in countries around the world,
dramatically raising the price of water to the local residents and
profiting especially from the Third World's desperate search for
solutions to its water crisis. Some are startlingly open; the decline in
freshwater supplies and standards has created a wonderful venture
opportunity for water corporations and their investors, they boast. The
agenda is clear: Water should be treated like any other tradable good,
with its use determined by the principles of profit.


It should come as no surprise that the private sector knew before most of
the world about the looming water crisis and has set out to take
advantage of what it considers to be blue gold. According to Fortune, the
annual profits of the water industry now amount to about 40 percent of
those of the oil sector and are already substantially higher than the
pharmaceutical sector, now close to $1 trillion. But only about 5 percent
of the world's water is currently in private hands, so it is clear that
we are talking about huge profit potential as the water crisis worsens.
In 1999 there were more than $15 billion worth of water acquisitions in
the US water industry alone, and all the big water companies are now
listed on the stock exchanges.


<bold>Water Lords

</bold>

There are ten major corporate players now delivering freshwater services
for profit. The two biggest are both from France--Vivendi Universal and
Suez--considered to be the General Motors and Ford of the global water
industry. Between them, they deliver private water and wastewater
services to more than 200 million customers in 150 countries and are in a
race, along with others such as Bouygues Saur, RWE-Thames Water and
Bechtel-United Utilities, to expand to every corner of the globe. In the
United States, Vivendi operates through its subsidiary, USFilter; Suez
via its subsidiary, United Water; and RWE by way of American Water
Works.


They are aided by the World Bank and the IMF, which are increasingly
forcing Third World countries to abandon their public water delivery
systems and contract with the water giants in order to be eligible for
debt relief. The performance of these companies in Europe and the
developing world has been well documented: huge profits, higher prices
for water, cut-offs to customers who cannot pay, no transparency in their
dealings, reduced water quality, bribery and corruption.


Water for profit takes a number of other forms. The bottled-water
industry is one of the fastest-growing and least regulated industries in
the world, expanding at an annual rate of 20 percent. Last year close to
90 billion litres of bottled water were sold around the world--most of it
in nonreusable plastic containers, bringing in profits of $22 billion to
this highly polluting industry. Bottled-water companies like Nestlé,
Coca-Cola and Pepsi are engaged in a constant search for new water
supplies to feed the insatiable appetite of this business. In rural
communities all over the world, corporate interests are buying up
farmlands, indigenous lands, wilderness tracts and whole water systems,
then moving on when sources are depleted. Fierce disputes are being waged
in many places over these "water takings," especially in the Third World.
As one company explains, water is now "a rationed necessity that may be
taken by force."


Corporations are now involved in the construction of massive pipelines to
carry fresh water long distances for commercial sale while others are
constructing supertankers and giant sealed water bags to transport vast
amounts of water across the ocean to paying customers. Says the World
Bank, "One way or another, water will soon be moved around the world as
oil is now." The mass movement of bulk water could have catalytic
environmental impacts. Some proposed projects would reverse the flow of
mighty rivers in Canada's north, the environmental impact of which would
be greater than China's Three Gorges Dam.


<bold>International Trade

</bold>

At the same time, governments are signing away their control over
domestic water supplies to trade agreements such as the North American
Free Trade Agreement, its expected successor, the Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA), and the World Trade Organization. These global trade
institutions effectively give transnational corporations unprecedented
access to the freshwater resources of signatory countries. Already,
corporations have started to sue governments in order to gain access to
domestic water sources and, armed with the protection of these
international trade agreements, are setting their sights on the
commercialisation of water.


Water is listed as a "good" in the WTO and NAFTA, and as an "investment"
in NAFTA. It is to be included as a "service" in the upcoming WTO
services negotiations (the General Agreement on Trade in Services) and in
the FTAA. Under the "National Treatment" provisions of NAFTA and the
GATS, signatory governments who privatise municipal water services will
be obliged to permit competitive bids from transnational water-service
corporations. Similarly, once a permit is granted to a domestic company
to export water for commercial purposes, foreign corporations will have
the right to set up operations in the host country.


NAFTA contains a provision that requires "proportional sharing" of energy
resources now being traded between the signatory countries. This means
that the oil and gas resources no longer belong to the country of
extraction, but are a shared resource of the continent. For example,
under NAFTA, Canada now exports 57 percent of its natural gas to the
United States and is not allowed to cut back on these supplies, even to
cut fossil fuel production under the Kyoto accord. Under this same
provision, if Canada started selling its water to the United
States--which President Bush has already said he considers to be part of
the United States' continental energy programthe State Department would
consider it to be a trade violation if Canada tried to turn off the tap.
And under NAFTA's "investor state" Chapter 11 provision, American
corporate investors would be allowed to sue Canada for financial losses
[see William Greider, "The Right and US Trade Law: Invalidating the 20th
Century," October 15, 2001]. Already, a California company is suing the
Canadian government for $10.5 billion because the province of British
Columbia banned the commercial export of bulk water.


The WTO also opens the door to the commercial export of water by
prohibiting the use of export controls for any "good" for any purpose.
This means that quotas or bans on the export of water imposed for
environmental reasons could be challenged as a form of protectionism. At
the December 2001 Qatar ministerial meeting of the WTO, a provision was
added to the so-called Doha Text, which requires governments to give up
"tariff" and "nontariff" barriers--such as environmental regulations--to
environmental services, which include water.


<bold>The Case Against Privatisation

</bold>

If all this sounds formidable, it is. But the situation is not without
hope. For the fact is, we know how to save the world's water: reclamation
of despoiled water systems, drip irrigation over flood irrigation,
infrastructure repairs, water conservation, radical changes in production
methods and watershed management, just to name a few. Wealthy
industrialised countries could supply every person on earth with clean
water if they cancelled the Third World debt, increased foreign aid
payments and placed a tax on financial speculation.


None of this will happen, however, until humanity earmarks water as a
global commons and brings the rule of law--local, national and
internationalto any corporation or government that dares to contaminate
it. If we allow the commodification of the world's freshwater supplies,
we will lose the capacity to avert the looming water crisis. We will be
allowing the emergence of a water elite that will determine the world's
water future in its own interest. In such a scenario, water will go to
those who can afford it and not to those who need it.


This is not an argument to excuse the poor way in which some governments
have treated their water heritage, either squandering it, polluting it or
using it for political gain. But the answer to poor nation-state
governance is not a nonaccountable transnational corporation but good
governance. For governments in poor countries, the rich world's support
should go not to profiting from bad water management but from aiding the
public sector in every country to do its job.


The commodification of water is wrong--ethically, environmentally and
socially. It insures that decisions regarding the allocation of water
would centre on commercial, not environmental or social justice
considerations. Privatisation means that the management of water
resources is based on principles of scarcity and profit maximisation
rather than long-term sustainability. Corporations are dependent on
increased consumption to generate profits and are much more likely to
invest in the use of chemical technology, desalination, marketing and
water trading than in conservation.


Depending on desalination technology is a Faustian bargain. It is
prohibitively expensive, highly energy intensive--using the very fossil
fuels that are contributing to global warming--and produces a lethal
by-product of saline brine that is a major cause of marine pollution when
dumped back into the oceans at high temperatures.


<bold>A New Water Ethic

</bold>

The antidote to water commodification is its decommodification. Water
must be declared and understood for all time to be the common property of
all. In a world where everything is being privatised, citizens must
establish clear perimeters around those areas that are sacred to life and
necessary for the survival of the planet. Simply, governments must
declare that water belongs to the earth and all species and is a
fundamental human right. No one has the right to appropriate it for
profit. Water must be declared a public trust, and all governments must
enact legislation to protect the freshwater resources in their territory.
An international legal framework is also desperately needed.


It is strikingly clear that neither governments nor their official global
institutions are going to rise to this challenge. This is where civil
society comes in. There is no more vital area of concern for our
international movement than the world's freshwater crisis. Our entry
point is the political question of the ownership of water; we must come
together to form a clear and present opposition to the commodification
and cartelisation of the world's freshwater resources.


Already, a common front of environmentalists, human rights and
antipoverty activists, public sector workers, peasants, indigenous
peoples and many others from every part of the world has come together to
fight for a water-secure future based on the notion that water is part of
the public commons. We coordinated strategy at the World Social Forum in
Porto Alegre, Brazil, last January. We will be in South Africa for the
World Summit on Sustainable Development in September and in Kyoto, Japan,
next March, when the World Bank and the UN bring 8,000 people to the
Third World Water Forum. There, we will oppose water privatisation and
promote our own World Water Vision as an alternative to that adopted by
the World Bank at the Second World Water Forum in The Hague two years
ago. We will stand with local people fighting water privatisation in
Bolivia, or the construction of a mega-dam in India, or water takings by
Perrier in Michigan, but now all of these local struggles will form part
of an emerging international movement with a common political vision.


Steps needed for a water-secure future include the adoption of a Treaty
Initiative to Share and Protect the Global Water Commons; a guaranteed
"water lifeline"--free clean water every day for every person as an
inalienable political and social right; national water protection acts to
reclaim and preserve freshwater systems; exemptions for water from
international trade and investment regimes; an end to World Bank and
IMF-enforced water privatisation's; and a Global Water Convention that
would create an international body of law to protect the world's water
heritage based on the twin cornerstones of conservation and equity. A
tough challenge indeed. But given the stakes involved, we had better be
up to it.