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 We are taught in school
that the Earth
has a closed hydrologic system; water
is continually being recycled through rain
and evaporation and none of it leaves the planet’s atmosphere. Not only is
there the same amount of water on the Earth today
as there was at the creation of the planet,
it’s the same water. The next time you’re walking in the rain, stop and
think that
some of the water falling on you ran
through the blood of dinosaurs or swelled
the tears of children who lived thousands
of years ago.
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.
Reprinted
by Wellness Goods under
expressed
permission of the authors.
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