The Battle for Water |
by Tony Clarke and Maude Barlow
While there will
always be the same amount of water, we can render water unusable for
ourselves and for the planet. The growing scarcity of potable water stems
from a variety of causes. Per capita water consumption is doubling every
20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth, which
itself is exploding. Technology and sanitation systems, particularly those
in the wealthy industrialized nations, have encouraged people to use far
more water than they need. Yet even with this increase in personal water
use, households and municipalities account for only 10 percent of water
use. Industry claims 20 to
25 percent of the world’s fresh water supplies, and its demands are
dramatically increasing. Many of the world’s fastest growing industries
are water intensive. For example, in the U.S. alone, the computer industry
will soon use over 396 billion gallons of water each year. Nonetheless, it is
irrigation that is the real water hog, claiming 65 to 70 percent of all
water used by humans. Increasing amounts of irrigation water are used for
industrial farming. These water-intensive corporate farming practices are
subsidized by governments and their taxpayers, and this creates a strong
disincentive for farm operations to move to conservation practices such as
drip irrigation. Along with population
growth and increasing per capita water consumption, massive pollution of
the world’s surface water systems has placed a great strain on remaining
supplies of clean fresh water. Global deforestation, destruction of
wetlands, dumping of pesticides and fertilizer into waterways, and global
warming are all taking a terrible toll on the Earth’s fragile water
systems. The world is running
out of fresh water. By the year 2025, there will be 2.6 billion more
people on Earth than there are today. As many as two-thirds of those
people will be living in conditions of serious water shortage, and
one-third will be living with absolute water scarcity. Demand for water
will exceed availability by 56 percent. Water as a commodity The combination of
increasing demand and shrinking supply has attracted the interest of
global corporations who want to sell water for a profit. The water
industry is touted by the World Bank as a potential trillion-dollar
industry. Water has become the “blue gold” of the 21st century. The move to privatize
water coincides with the rise of the Washington Consensus as the dominant
world economic philosophy. This philosophy calls for trade and investment
liberalization, and turning responsibility for social programs and
resource management over to the private sector. In this case, it is an
assault on the ancient commons of water. Global trade
agreements have become perhaps the most important tool for corporations
trading in water and their allies. All of the multinational governing
bodies, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General
Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), and the World Trade Organization (WTO),
define water as a commodity. As a result, water is now subject to the same
rules and regulations governing other commodities like oil and natural
gas. Under these combined international rules, a country cannot prohibit
or limit the export of water without risking censure by the WTO. Nations
are also restricted from denying the import of water from any country.
NAFTA’s “proportionality clause” means that if a country turns on
the tap to export its natural resources, it cannot turn off the tap until
it runs out of that resource. In addition, the push
to privatize water services will be greatly enhanced by new rules
governing cross-border trade in services at the WTO, known as the GATS
(General Agreement on Trade in Services). Under the proposed GATS rules,
not only will governments face added pressures to deregulate and privatize
their water systems, but once a city’s water services have been taken
over by a foreign-based corporation, efforts to take these services back
into public hands will invite severe economic penalties under the WTO. Leading the charge for
privatization are three big transnational corporations based in Europe:
Vivendi, Suez, and RWE. All three have systematically bought out smaller
rivals to become the dominate powers in the business of water all over the
globe. The long-range strategy of these companies began with their efforts
to take over the public water systems in Third World countries where they
hoped to position themselves as the saviors of the water crisis. Instead,
a series of private-sector fiascoes in the Third World derailed their
plans. The case of Buenos
Aires is especially instructive. Buenos Aires was to be the flagship
operation of Third-World water privatization. Suez, through its subsidiary
Aguas Argentinas, took over the Buenos Aires water and sewage system in
1992. A common argument for privatizing water systems is that, unlike the
cash-strapped public sector, the private sector has the capital necessary
to update or refurbish aging water systems. But public sources like the
World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and other smaller banks supplied
97 percent of the $1 billion necessary for the Suez privatization
experiment. Suez did expand water and sewage service by a small increment,
but failed to meet its projected targets in both areas. Nonetheless, the
company managed to reap annual profits of around 25 percent in the
mid-1990s. Recently, Suez announced that it plans to pull out of Argentina
because the country’s currency crisis has cut into its profits. There
have been other private-sector fiascoes in places like Johannesburg, New
Delhi, Manila, and most famously in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The effort to
privatize Third World water systems has become a target of civil society
protests. Representatives of an international civil society network
appeared at a meeting of chief executive officers at the World Water Forum
in Kyoto, Japan, in March. The group took over the microphones and offered
a series of testimonials about the impact of water privatization around
the world. Toward the end of the event, a water activist from Cancun,
Mexico, stepped to the microphone and held up a glass of pitch-black,
putrid-smelling water. He explained that he had taken the water from his
home tap in Cancun, where Suez runs the municipal water system. He then
requested that the moderator pass the glass of black, smelly water up on
stage to the CEO of Suez, inviting him to drink it. Targeting First
World water The big water
companies are now changing their strategy and concentrating their
operations and their investment on more secure markets in North America
and Europe. Eighty-five percent of all water services in the U.S. are
still in public hands. That’s a tempting target for conglomerates like
Suez, Vivendi, and RWE. Within the next 10 years, they aim to control 70
percent of water services across the United States. They have positioned
themselves to move aggressively. Vivendi, Suez, and RWE have bought up the
leading U.S. water companies, U.S. Filter, United Water, and American
Water Works, respectively. These water companies had largely serviced
small towns and communities, but under the tutelage of the global giants
they have become the engines for privatization in the United States (see
page 16). When transnational
water conglomerates take over a municipal water system, it feels like a
local problem, but because the same corporate players are targeting
communities all over the world, we must build alliances and connections,
learn from one another, and start to build a frontal attack. At the Polaris
Institute, we propose a three-pronged strategy. First, develop a
water-alert network so we can know where companies are operating and where
they are going next. How are they going to move? And how can we get ahead
of them? Second, we need
water-action teams that bring citizens together to build local water-watch
coalitions and develop campaigns to protect their water supplies and
services from conglomerates. Then we should link those local campaigns
with the national campaigns of groups like Public Citizen or the Council
of Canadians. Third, we need to
offer alternatives. It is not enough to say we want to defend our public
water systems against private takeovers. There are problems with public
water systems, and we must find new ways of revitalizing them in our own
communities through citizen participation. Engaged citizens can act as
watchdogs for their local water systems. Our local actions
should be informed by three global principles. One is water conservation.
We cannot kid ourselves about water scarcity. Water may be abundant in one
place, but it’s scarce in others. Water conservation must be a top
priority. The second principle
is that water is a fundamental human right. People need water to live.
Water must be provided equitably to all people and not on the basis of the
ability to pay. The
third principle is water democracy. We cannot leave the management of our
most precious resource in the hands of bureaucrats in government or the
private corporations, whether or not they are well intentioned. We, the
people, must preserve this special trust, we must fight for it, and we
must take our proper role and demand water democracy.
Maude Barlow, national chair of the Council of Canadians, and Tony Clarke, director of the Polaris Institute, are co-authors of Blue Gold: The Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. This article is adapted from presentations made by the authors at the Water for Life conference in New York, September 2003, co-sponsored by Resurgence magazine and the Omega Institute. |