This is the campaign being waged by international civil society movements in preparation for the Fourth World Water Forum (WWF) to be held from March 16 to 22 in Mexico City.
FYI: Some water facts:
* Only 0.008% of the planets water is available for human consumption.
* More than 70% of the worlds population live without clean water.
* More than five million people die from water-borne diseases annually, 10 times the number killed in wars worldwide.
* Corporations worldwide earn about USD 200 billion a year from operating or owning water systems, yet they serve only about 7% of the worlds population.* Twelve percent of the worlds population uses 85% of the worlds water, and none of them live in the developing world.
Source:
Shah, A. (2005, November 6). Water gets affected too. Retrieved from
<http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/Biodiversity/Water.asp>.
ActionAid, page 10 Water is big business
Human rights and other activists have reason to be alarmed: water is now included in trade agreements with developing countries, making it just another service open to management by transnational corporations.
Supporters of privatisation believe that when big businesses take over water management from inefficient governments, the poors access to potable water is maximised. However, the Institute for Food and Development Policy (also known as Food First) disagrees. These companies argue that privatising water is the best way to deliver it safely to a thirsty world (but) this is yet another area ofdisagreement.
Food First noted that while private companies have the resources to improve water management, their interests invariably prevail in the conflict between their need for profit and the peoples universal right to access to water. In a number of least developed countries whose water systems are privately managed, the poor continue to have difficulties in getting access to potable water. In Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, soaring water rates have led to massive civil unrest, even to violent protests and killings. Thus, the privatisation of such a vital resource denied many people a basic right.
When the Kanyamanze government in Africa privatised its water supply in 2001, the company installed new water metres and subsequently increased water bills by up to 4,185%, leaving most households waterless. This resulted to an increase in water-borne diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea and gastroenteritis, since residents had no choice but to drink unsafe water from the local river.
In the WWF held in Kyoto in 2003, civil society groups from South Africa, the Philippines, Pakistan, Ghana, Indonesia, El Salvador and India related experiences with privatisation where people had to contend with dirty water, an increase in diseases, exorbitant water prices, worker lay-offs, water wars and multinationals raking up profits from water.
Globalisation and privatisation
How is water privatised? Aside from being indirectly treated as a commodity in free trade agreements, transnationals also put pressure on national governments to privatise, deregulate, eliminate trade and investment barriers, boost exports, and relinquish state controls, said Maude Barlow of the US-based International Forum on Globalisation (IFG).
The privatisation of water systems is also imposed on developing countries through international aid, noted the World Development Movement (WDM), a London-based organisation. British aid money is used to push water privatisation on poor countriesmaking it less likely that clean water will ever get to the poorest people. And while poor people lose out, a group of big UK companies are profiting from this aid.
WDM added that transnationals further push privatisation in other ways: by acting as consultants who strongly advise governments to go private; by giving direct funding to countries to privatise; and by imposing conditions through the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund. Since a part of the transnationals strategy is to make the public see privatisation as the answer to the governments inefficiency in water management, public relations campaigns are conducted to make the poor accept the inevitability of water privatisation.
Of course, the fact that transnationals are also responsible for polluting water resources is not emphasised. According to Food First, economic globalisation is largely to blame for this water crisis. While transnationals overexploit water resourcesthey pollute the water table. Meanwhile, developing countrieshave to aggressively export their way out of debt (enforced by the WB), devastating watersheds and placing water supplies in danger.
Call to action
Civil society movements are now fighting for the water rights of people around the world. Activistscomprising of grassroots organisations, human rights and development workers, environmentalists, farmers and fisher folks, and groups against the excessive power of the WB and other international trade institutionsare calling on everyone to join the campaign to oppose water privatisation.
Barlow, the national chair of the IFG Committee on the Globalisation of Water, urged everyone to unite in Mexico City and to continue to advocate for water as a basic human right and not just a need, as the second World Water Forum in Netherlands in March 2000 described it.
The stakes are now very high. For a world running out of fresh water, the need for a democratic process over the future of this most important resource is paramount, Barlow appealed.
Sources:
Barlow, M. The World Water Forum and its civil society opposition. Retrieved from <www.blueplanetproject.net/cms_publications/TheWorldWaterForum.pdf>.
_______. The impact of globalisation. Retrieved from <http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Water/Blue_Gold.html>.
Cevallos, D. (2006, February 1). /New scuffles over water/. Retrieved from <http://www.ipsnews.org/news.asp?idnews=31998>.
Draft declaration: Save water from the WTO and other free trade agreements. (2005, October 27) from Retrieved from <http://www.waternotforsale.org/blog/_archives/2005/10/27/1328137.html>.
Kirby, A. (2004, October 19). Water scarcity: A looming crisis? Retrieved from <http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-
Shah, A. (2005, November 6). Water gets affected too. Retrieved from <http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/Biodiversity/Water.asp>.
The 
we!
WiA 
Isis Resource Center holds one of the largest feminist collections of materials in the Global South. With 40 years of publication experience, Isis holds a vast collection.