water: human right or commodity for
trade?
ronnie hall, friends of the earth
england, wales and northern ireland
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“We need to build water
democracy,
not water markets.
We need to defend the
rights
of communities, not corporations.
We need to conserve water, not
consume
it wastefully or
destroy it.”
Vandana Shiva, Indian water
activist.
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It's sometimes easy to forget that water
- such an apparently abundant resource for
those who have it on tap – is scarce in
many regions of the world. Water is
essential to life in all forms: without
water, death takes only a matter of days.
Without rain or irrigation water, crops
fail and biodiversity dwindles. Without
clean drinking water and sanitation,
diseases and sickness spread rapidly.
Water's importance has been recognized
by governments time and time again, and one
aim of the United Nation's Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) is to halve the
proportion of people without sustainable
access to safe drinking water and basic
sanitation by 2015. However current trends
indicate that we have little chance of
meeting this goal, let alone ensuring safe
water for all, unless we fundamentally
change our approach to the use and control
of water.
Five years after the MDGs were
originally agreed, 1.8 million people still
die every year due to lack of hygiene,
sanitation and a decent water supply. A
further billion people – one in every six
people on the planet – lack access to safe
drinking water, and 2.4 billion still have
no toilets or other forms of improved
sanitation.
As springs, lakes and even seas dry up,
the planet loses the freshwater ecosystems
and wetlands that are critical to
biodiversity and help to control erosion
and store excess water. In addition,
export-oriented agriculture is increasing
levels of irrigation, causing erosion and
increased soil salinity which eventually
makes the soil unsuitable for agriculture.
All over the world, chemical and human
waste is increasingly seeping into
previously clean groundwater sources.
water as an economic good
However, water's scarcity in some
regions of the world is also turning it
into an immensely desirable commodity, and
water companies have now succeeded in
persuading most governments to adopt an
overwhelmingly commercial approach. In
1992, one of the four guiding principles
agreed in the Dublin Statement on Water and
Sustainable Development was that: “Water
has an economic value in all its competing
uses and should be recognized as an
economic good.”
By reducing water to an “economic
good”and further categorizing the water
economy as a “market economy”, this
approach makes water privatization and
commodification inevitable. By ignoring the
ecological and hydrological limits of water
availability, and allowing water access and
water distribution to be driven by
insatiable markets, the world's water
crisis is likely to deepen and access to
water will become even more
inequitable.
not a drop to drink
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Over 70% of the world's water is
now used for crop irrigation, and 60%
of that is wasted. Frequently, these
crops are destined for export to
wealthy consumers, and not for local
consumption. In the San Francisco
Valley in Brazil , for example, water
resources are primarily used to
irrigate fruit and sugar cane for
export. A further 22% of the world's
water is used by industry, with just
8% remaining for human
consumption.
Some governments have teamed up
with the private sector in order to
solve these problems, through
‘public-private partnerships'. They
argue that by bringing in private
investment and know-how they can
improve the situation without
spending public funds or threatening
domestic economic growth. Business is
happy with this approach: in the
1990s, water companies expanded,
merged and diversified to become
among the world's biggest and most
powerful transnational corporations.
Suez, RWE and Veolia Environnement
are among the largest, along with
beverage companies Nestlé, PepsiCo,
Coca-Cola and Danone, which now
dominate the rapidly growing and
highly profitable bottled water
market.
The carrot for these companies is
provided through the WTO and various
other trade and investment
negotiations. Governments, led by the
European Union, are trying to use
these negotiations to lever open and
lock in new water collection and
distribution markets for their
transnationals. There is, however,
plenty of evidence to suggest that
this approach doesn't work. As the
Transnational Institute and Corporate
Europe Observatory concluded in a
2005 report: “Almost without
exception, global water corporations
have failed to deliver the promised
improvements and have, instead,
raised water tariffs far beyond the
reach of poor households.”
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Companies need to make a profit, which
means that poor people who may have
previously had access to free or cheaper
water must pay. The principle of ‘universal
access' is also being abandoned. When the
water commons are enclosed, the poor and
the marginalized become further
excluded.
unhealthy water flows
Water is increasingly being exported
across national boundaries. Canada, for
example, exports water to the United
States, despite growing alarm about the
environmental impacts that this will have
on the Great Lakes. Similarly, the Plan
Puebla Panama investment project will
increase access to freshwater resources as
well as new markets in Central American
countries. Companies such as the American
Beverage Company (also known as AmBev, the
world's fifth largest brewer and Brazil's
leading beverage company) are the main
beneficiaries. Similarly, the Initiative
for the Integration of South America's
Regional Infrastructure (IIRSA) could allow
foreign bottled water companies to access
the subterranean waters of the Acuífero
Guaraní in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and
Uruguay. This potential drain on freshwater
resources could eventually reduce the local
availability of freshwater.
The impacts of trade liberalization upon
water urgently need to be recognized and
reversed. Access to water should be fully
recognized as a human right, as suggested
by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights in November 2002. Water
should be removed from trade liberalization
negotiations, and governments must remain
free to manage and deliver water as a
public service. A public water sector
should include both community-managed
systems as well as public utilities like
municipal water supply and irrigation for
sustainable food production to meet local
needs. Exports of water for wasteful
industrial and agricultural use and
unnecessary consumption need to be curbed,
freeing up water resources to provide clean
water for human consumption and sanitation,
the development of fair and sustainable
local economies, and the conservation of
vital ecosystems.
