Water is a human right, not a commodity. It is the essence of life, sustaining every living being on the planet.
Without it we would have no plants, no animals, no people. However, while water consumption doubles every twenty years our water sources are being depleted, polluted and exploited by multinational corporations. Water privatization has been promoted by corporations and international lending institutions as the solution to the global water crises but the only one’s who benefit from water privatization are investors and international banks. The essential dilemma of privatization is that the profit interests of private water utilities ultimately jeopardizes the safeguarding of the human right to water.
Access to clean, sufficient and affordable water is a human right necessary for survival not a commodity for open markets.When I first started researching this topic I wanted to write about the pros and cons of water privatization but the more I researched the more I realized that there are no pros to privatization. How can a price be placed on a life sustaining resource? Currently 31 countries suffer from water scarcity and one billion people lack access to clean drinking water. The United Nations estimates that by 2035 two-thirds of the worlds population will suffer from lack of access to clean and safe drinking water.
#2However, not everyone seems to believe this. Our governments and their corporate allies now see water as the new cash crop of the future. They are promoting privatization and open markets as the solution to providing water to the worlds developing nations. At the same time international finance institutions, have made privatization a condition for loans to developing countries.
Undoubtedly, the same institutions that are given the task to alleviate the poor, such as IMF and the World Bank, are implementing policies that force people who live on a $1 a day to choose between food, shelter or water.As citizens of the richest country in the world we take for granted the fact that every time we turn on the faucet, clean, safe, drinkable water is readily available to us.. And that in most U.
S. cities a month supply still costs less than a monthly cable bill. Most of us don’t know where our water comes from, even less who owns it. I believe and I am sure most people would agree water is too precious a resource for anybody to own. But the rights to divert water from rivers and lakes are indeed becoming marketable commodities. And when demand exceeds supply, those are set to be some profitable commodities.
Not to long ago water privatization was exclusively a problem of the Third World. The World Bank required many of these countries to privatize their services as a condition of much needed loans. In 2000, out of 40 IMF loans distributed through the International Finance Corporation, 12 had requirements of partial to full privatization of water supplies. The hope was that multinational corporations would invest in the infrastructure to bring more water to more people in these countries and eradicate government corruption. But as evident in Cochabamba, Bolivia and in many places around the world all it created was higher water prices for consumers . In some places water prices were hiked up to 60%.
Making it impossible for the impoverished to afford water.These days the water giants have there sights set on a different target: countries with diminishing water supplies, aging infrastructure but better economies than countries like Bolivia. In the United States the EPA estimates that it would cost $300 billion dollars to repair our water infrastructure. However, the current White House administration has only allocated $6 billion dollars for the repairs. #2 So we can see where it seems lucrative for governments to delegate water management to the private sector. While it generates revenues for government budgets these governments are able to relinquish all their responsibilities of repairs, maintenance and most importantly universal access to the private water utilities.
But at what cost? At the cost of losing control over our precious resource.Globally the results of privatization have been detrimental. The problems have ranged from water quality, sewage spills, irreversible environmental effects, job cuts and lack of infrastructure investments. All in an effort to reduce operating costs and thus increase profits for shareholders.
There are basically three ways that water is privatized; bottled water, municipal services and bulk water sales. As a consumer of bottled water I wanted to research further and find out the truth about it. What I discovered was that we as consumers have been fooled by these water corporations. To begin with the cost of bottled water is two thousand times more than tap water.
I found it absolutely ludicrous that we are willing to pay such a high price for bottled water considering it costs close to nothing to drink water from the tap. In reality, as I found out, most bottled water which we believe comes from some exotic spring is actually filtered tap water from a U.S. city. According to Food & Water Watch one third of all bottled water comes from a public water source. #4The year 2007 seemed to be the beginning of unveiling the mask of bottled water.
That year Pepsi which has the number-one selling bottled water in the U.S. announced that it would be changing the label on its bottles of Aquafina to indicate that the water was in fact filtered tap water. Coca-Cola announced that its Dasani water came from a public water source. Nestle also disclosed that their Ice Mountain water was tap as well. So what does this mean? #1 This basically means that we are allowing corporations to take something that is basically free to us, processing it and selling it back to us for huge profits.
This is preposterous on so many levels.In the film “The Story of Bottled Water” the director Annie Leonard pointed out an outrageous marketing scheme created by corporations the so called “manufactured demand”. It is essentially a way to seduce, mislead and frighten consumers in to purchasing bottled water.#11 And it has proved to be highly profitable. While most people believe that bottled water is safer than tap, there is no such assurance.
Tap water is regulated by the EPA and held to high standards of quality, bottled water isn’t. It is regulated by the FDA, who currently has only one inspector overseeing the bottled water industry. So, the bottling companies basically do their own “inspections“. Therefore consumers should not assume that bottled water is safer than tap water.In 2006 the television news magazine 20/20 sent samples of New York City tap water and four brands of bottled water -Aquafina, Dasani, Poland Spring and Evian- to a microbiologist to test for disease causing bacteria such as E-coli and found that their was no difference whatsoever between the tap water and bottled waters#10.
The tests concluded that the tap water was just as safe to drink as the bottled water#10. However, in 2007 bottled water sales in the U.S. totaled an estimated $15 billion according to the Beverage Digest.#9It is estimated that the industry sees an increase in revenue of $1 billion a year. Worldwide water is a $400 billion industry.
The U.N. estimates it would take an additional $30 billion to provide access to clean drinking water to the entire planet. That’s one third of what the world spends annually on bottled water#1.
Another controversy of privatization is the lack of water quality protection. Since most of these water companies are unregulated the potential for hazardous pollution is imminent. It is because of agricultural and industrial uses that we need more and more water to grow things in places where they shouldn’t be growing. Moreover to grow all these crops there is a need to use chemicals and pesticides which pollute the ground water, rivers and streams.Here are some examples of how the pollution is affecting populations worldwide; In Mexico birth defects increase the closer you live to agricultural areas. In Europe fertility decreases in areas with heavy pesticide use.
In the River Seine tests conducted in a lab showed that the fish are changing sex. They found that the male fish were converting to female. In South Africa, when the water system broke down, people were forced to collect their water from polluted lakes and streams. As a consequence Africa was faced with one of its worst cholera outbreaks in history. Toxicologists in Texas have been finding high levels of the mediciation Prozac in samples of taken form all fish they tested. The toxins from industrial pollutants and waste end up in our water supplies and have been found in all kinds of species from fish, whales, seals and even Inuit mothers breast milk.
#5 Undoubtedly toxins in a mothers breast milk due to pollutants in her drinking water is an atrocity. And prime example of violation of human rights due to privatization.The environmental impact of privatization is of major concern. Since we use water for various reasons such as agricultural, domestic and industrial uses this has also lead to the corruption of our ecosystems. There are many reports indicating that shallow water wetlands around the world have been declining at a significant rate. 73% of the marshes in Greece have been drained.
60% of Spain’s original wetlands have been lost. More than 40% of global river discharge is now intercepted by dams. #3 These disruptions in ecosystems have a major impact on fish migration, fresh water biodiversity and the services it provides. It has also been reported that in some coastal sea areas the oxygen levels have sunk so low that it is unable to sustain most marine life.
This is mainly caused by fertilizers washed into the water ecosystems. It is very certain that the condition of inland waters and coastal ecosystems have been compromised by the private sector approach to water management, which, if continued will constrain progress to enhance human well being.So is it really possible for the planet to run out of water? Indian scientist and activist Vandana Shiva noted in the documentary “World Without Water” that “the water crisis is a human created crisis only in the last two decades or so“.#7 Meaning that it is not so much a water shortage crisis but a water management crisis.
In a 2009 Nobel Conference, researcher Asit Biswas, said he believed that the water crisis was a myth. He said that he didn’t see a world water crisis caused by physical water scarcity, but by water management - or rather, a lack of water management. He believes that there is plenty of water to go around as long as people manage their water better. He believes that if we give people the ability and the knowledge to locally sustain their water supplies that their will be enough water to sustain the planet for many years to come #8.
It is evident that water will be the new commodity of the 21st century if we allow these corporations to continue to buy our water rights. Our governments are the ones who should be held accountable and responsible for protecting our rights. There is no price that can be placed on a natural resource that is needed for survival by every living being on the planet. The right to water is a God given right. No one should ever have to go without because of the inability to pay for it.
And it is not in the interest of corporations to promote conservation efforts for a resource which is being depleted at an alarming rate. Therefore, I believe that water privatization is not the solution for the world water crises. The solution is to educated people about scarcity and the harm of placing this resources into the hands of corporate moguls. No resource that our life depends on should ever be controlled by the private sector.
Water is a basic human right and all people should be afforded the access to clean, safe and affordable water.
