Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource
November 2, 2010 |
Billions have been spent allowing corporations to profit from public water sources even though water privatization has been an epic failure in Latin America, Southeast Asia, North America, Africa and everywhere else it's been tried. But don't tell that to controversial loan-sharks at the World Bank. Last month, its private-sector funding arm International Finance Corporation (IFC) quietly dropped a cool 100 million euros ($139 million US) on Veolia Voda, the Eastern European subsidiary of Veolia, the world's largest private water corporation. Its latest target? Privatization of Eastern Europe's water resources.
"Veolia has made it clear that their business model is based on maximizing profits, not long-term investment," Joby Gelbspan, senior program coordinator for private-sector watchdog Corporate Accountability International, told AlterNet. "Both the World Bank and the transnational water companies like Veolia have clearly acknowledged they don't want to invest in the infrastructure necessary to improve water access in Eastern Europe. That's why this 100 million euro investment in Veolia Voda by the World Bank's private investment arm over the summer is so alarming. It's further evidence that the World Bank remains committed to water privatization, despite all evidence that this approach will not solve the world's water crisis."
All the evidence Veolia needs that water grabs are doomed exercises can be found in its birthplace of France, more popularly known as the heartland of water privatization. In June, the municipal administration of Paris reclaimed the City of Light's water services from both of its homegrown multinationals Veolia and Suez, after a torrent of controversy. That's just one of 40 re-municipilazations in France alone, which can be added to those in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America and more in hopes of painting a not-so-pretty picture: Water privatization is ultimately both a horrific concept and a failed project.
"It's outrageous that the World Bank's IFC would continue to invest in corporate water privatizations when they are failing all over the world," Maude Barlow, chairwoman of Food and Water Watch and the author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Fight for the Right to Water, told AlterNet. "A similar IFC investment in the Philippines is an unmitigated disaster. Local communities and their governments around the world are canceling their contracts with companies like Veolia because of cost overruns, worker layoffs and substandard service." More...
July 29, 2010
In Historic Vote, UN Declares Water a Fundamental Human Right
The United Nations General Assembly has declared for the first time that access to clean water and sanitation is a fundamental human right. In a historic vote Wednesday, 122 countries supported the resolution, and over forty countries abstained from voting, including the United States, Canada and several European and other industrialized countries. There were no votes against the resolution. We speak with longtime water justice activist, Maude BarlowJUAN GONZALEZ: The United Nations General Assembly has declared for the first time that access to clean water and sanitation is a fundamental human right. In an historic vote Wednesday, 122 countries supported the resolution, and over forty countries abstained from voting, including the United States, Canada and several European and other industrialized countries. There were no votes against the resolution.
Nearly one billion people lack clean drinking water, and over two-and-a-half billion do not have basic sanitation.
Bolivia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Pablo Solon, introduced the resolution at the General Assembly Wednesday.
AMY GOODMAN: Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solon, urging support for the resolution Bolivia introduced recognizing access to clean water and sanitation as a fundamental human right.
For more on this historic vote, we’re joined now here in New York by longtime water justice advocate Maude Barlow. She’s the chair of the Council of Canadians, co-founder of the Blue Planet Project and board chair of Food and Water Watch. Last year she served as senior adviser on water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
MAUDE BARLOW: So glad to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of this. If you asked people in this country, they would have no idea this has passed.
MAUDE BARLOW: I know, I know, which is why you matter, I just have to say. This is very, very distressing to know something this important happened and it’s been blanketed. There’s no media here; it’s just like it didn’t happen. It’s had media in other places.
There’s no human—there has been on human right to water. It wasn’t included in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. And then, more recently, when people have realized that it needed to happen, there were very powerful forces against it—powerful countries, powerful corporate interests and so on. But Ambassador Solon and a number of developing countries decided that they were going to move this, countries from the Global South, that they were going to move this through, and they just tabled it a month ago, and yesterday, at the vote at the United Nations, they won. Not one country had the guts to stand against them, even though lots of them wanted to do it.
And basically, for the first time, the United Nations General Assembly debated the right to water and sanitation—it’s very important both were included—and acknowledged and recognized the right of every human being on earth to water and sanitation. And this matters because—as you know, because we’ve talked so many times—we are running—a planet running out of water. Brand new World Bank study says that the demand is going to exceed supply by 40 percent in twenty years. It’s just a phenomenal statement. And the human suffering behind that is just unbelievable. And what this did was basically say that the United Nations has decided it’s not going to let huge populations leave them behind as this crisis unfolds, that the new priority is to be given to these populations without water and sanitation.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the countries that abstained, could you talk about—did any of them talk about why they were not voting "yes," or did they just remain quiet?
MAUDE BARLOW: Oh, it was the usual gang. It was the United States and Canada, the European—not the European Union—the United Kingdom—some of the European countries voted to abstain; some were wonderful—Australia, New Zealand. So it was all of the Anglophone, neoliberal, you know, bought into this whole agenda that everything is to be commodified, countries who are able to continue to supply clean water to their citizens, which makes it doubly appalling that they would deny the right to water to the billions of people who are suffering right now.
They used procedural language about this and that. There’s another process in Geneva with the Human Rights Council, which we support, and they used the excuse that we have to wait for that. But that’s a long-term process, and it could or could not end in something very specific. So they just cut through it. A bunch of brave countries from the Global South said, "We can’t wait. We need this now." And it’s not a surprise that it came from Bolivia, because, remember, Bolivia is suffering double whammy with a, you know, dearth of water, dearth of clean water, but also melting glaciers from climate change.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s go back to Bolivia. I want to go back to Bolivia’s UN representative, Ambassador Pablo Solon, at a speech he gave in Toronto, the event that you organized, Maude, last month, shortly before the G20 meetings. He outlined the need to support a UN declaration on the human right to water, referencing the long struggle for water rights in Bolivia, which successfully fought against Bechtel’s water privatization efforts ten years ago.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solon, speaking in Toronto. Which nations are not going to say that water is a human right? Well, you said the United States didn’t vote for this. Canada didn’t, though they didn’t vote against. What is their rationale?
MAUDE BARLOW: Well, it depends on the country. The United Kingdom says they "don’t want to pay for the toilets in Africa." That’s a direct quote from somebody who wouldn’t be quoted, from a senior diplomat in the government of Great Britain, that was in—quoted in a Canadian paper.
Canada hides behind the false statement that we might have to share our water, sell our water to the United States, which is nonsense. We’re in way more danger from NAFTA, which declares water to be a commodity.
The United States, as you know, has not been supporting rights regimes for decades now, so this is just a continuation. And I have to tell you, listening to the statement from the United States yesterday at the United Nations, I wouldn’t have thought there was any difference between George Bush and Barack Obama’s administrations. It was haughty language. They scolded Bolivia. Bolivia came under a lot of heat, a lot of insults yesterday from these countries.
New Zealand and Australia are both going private. Australia
You are here: The Right To Water : Real and present dangers...
In the news:
• RESPONDING TO REAL AND PRESENT DANGERS •
• FACILITATING SELF-MOBILISATION •
CHALLENGING DOGMA AND PROPAGANDA
• EFFECTIVE NETWORK •
AMBUSHING AN IMMINENT CONJUNCTION
• THE ENDURING IMPERATIVES •
OF THE PAN-AFRICANIST STRUGGLE
• CONSOLIDATION OF INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY •
Nearly one billion people lack clean drinking water, and over two-and-a-half billion do not have basic sanitation.
Bolivia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Pablo Solon, introduced the resolution at the General Assembly Wednesday.
- PABLO SOLON: [translated] At the global level, approximately one out of every eight people do not have drinking water. In just one day, more than 200 million hours of the time used by women is spent collecting and transporting water for their homes. The lack of sanitation is even worse, because it affects 2.6 billion people, which represents 40 percent of the global population. According to the report of the World Health Organization and of UNICEF of 2009, which is titled "Diarrhoea: Why Children Are [Still] Dying and What We Can Do," every day 24,000 children die in developing countries due to causes that can be prevented, such as diarrhea, which is caused by contaminated water. This means that a child dies every three-and-a-half seconds. One, two, three. As they say in my village, the time is now.
AMY GOODMAN: Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solon, urging support for the resolution Bolivia introduced recognizing access to clean water and sanitation as a fundamental human right.
For more on this historic vote, we’re joined now here in New York by longtime water justice advocate Maude Barlow. She’s the chair of the Council of Canadians, co-founder of the Blue Planet Project and board chair of Food and Water Watch. Last year she served as senior adviser on water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
MAUDE BARLOW: So glad to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of this. If you asked people in this country, they would have no idea this has passed.
MAUDE BARLOW: I know, I know, which is why you matter, I just have to say. This is very, very distressing to know something this important happened and it’s been blanketed. There’s no media here; it’s just like it didn’t happen. It’s had media in other places.
There’s no human—there has been on human right to water. It wasn’t included in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. And then, more recently, when people have realized that it needed to happen, there were very powerful forces against it—powerful countries, powerful corporate interests and so on. But Ambassador Solon and a number of developing countries decided that they were going to move this, countries from the Global South, that they were going to move this through, and they just tabled it a month ago, and yesterday, at the vote at the United Nations, they won. Not one country had the guts to stand against them, even though lots of them wanted to do it.
And basically, for the first time, the United Nations General Assembly debated the right to water and sanitation—it’s very important both were included—and acknowledged and recognized the right of every human being on earth to water and sanitation. And this matters because—as you know, because we’ve talked so many times—we are running—a planet running out of water. Brand new World Bank study says that the demand is going to exceed supply by 40 percent in twenty years. It’s just a phenomenal statement. And the human suffering behind that is just unbelievable. And what this did was basically say that the United Nations has decided it’s not going to let huge populations leave them behind as this crisis unfolds, that the new priority is to be given to these populations without water and sanitation.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the countries that abstained, could you talk about—did any of them talk about why they were not voting "yes," or did they just remain quiet?
MAUDE BARLOW: Oh, it was the usual gang. It was the United States and Canada, the European—not the European Union—the United Kingdom—some of the European countries voted to abstain; some were wonderful—Australia, New Zealand. So it was all of the Anglophone, neoliberal, you know, bought into this whole agenda that everything is to be commodified, countries who are able to continue to supply clean water to their citizens, which makes it doubly appalling that they would deny the right to water to the billions of people who are suffering right now.
They used procedural language about this and that. There’s another process in Geneva with the Human Rights Council, which we support, and they used the excuse that we have to wait for that. But that’s a long-term process, and it could or could not end in something very specific. So they just cut through it. A bunch of brave countries from the Global South said, "We can’t wait. We need this now." And it’s not a surprise that it came from Bolivia, because, remember, Bolivia is suffering double whammy with a, you know, dearth of water, dearth of clean water, but also melting glaciers from climate change.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s go back to Bolivia. I want to go back to Bolivia’s UN representative, Ambassador Pablo Solon, at a speech he gave in Toronto, the event that you organized, Maude, last month, shortly before the G20 meetings. He outlined the need to support a UN declaration on the human right to water, referencing the long struggle for water rights in Bolivia, which successfully fought against Bechtel’s water privatization efforts ten years ago.
- PABLO SOLON: In those days, I was a water warrior. Now I’m a water warrior ambassador. We have to have water declared as a human right in the UN. It is not possible to see that we have declared in the UN food, the right to food, the right to health, the right to education, the right to shelter, the right to development, but not the right to water. And we all know that without water, we can’t live. So nobody can argue that it’s not a basic and fundamental and universal human right. But even though, until now, it’s not recognized as a human right. So, we have presented, two weeks ago, a draft resolution so that this coming month, in July, we expect to have a vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations. And we want to see which countries are going to vote against that resolution. We want to go to vote to see which governments are going to say to the humanity that water is not a human right.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Bolivia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solon, speaking in Toronto. Which nations are not going to say that water is a human right? Well, you said the United States didn’t vote for this. Canada didn’t, though they didn’t vote against. What is their rationale?
MAUDE BARLOW: Well, it depends on the country. The United Kingdom says they "don’t want to pay for the toilets in Africa." That’s a direct quote from somebody who wouldn’t be quoted, from a senior diplomat in the government of Great Britain, that was in—quoted in a Canadian paper.
Canada hides behind the false statement that we might have to share our water, sell our water to the United States, which is nonsense. We’re in way more danger from NAFTA, which declares water to be a commodity.
The United States, as you know, has not been supporting rights regimes for decades now, so this is just a continuation. And I have to tell you, listening to the statement from the United States yesterday at the United Nations, I wouldn’t have thought there was any difference between George Bush and Barack Obama’s administrations. It was haughty language. They scolded Bolivia. Bolivia came under a lot of heat, a lot of insults yesterday from these countries.
New Zealand and Australia are both going private. Australia
You are here: The Right To Water : Real and present dangers...
In the news:
The Right To Water
GM Crops and Foods
Corporate, Foreign Government land grab
The United States Africa Command (US Africom)
Climate Reparations
• RESPONDING TO REAL AND PRESENT DANGERS •
• FACILITATING SELF-MOBILISATION •
CHALLENGING DOGMA AND PROPAGANDA
• EFFECTIVE NETWORK •
AMBUSHING AN IMMINENT CONJUNCTION
• THE ENDURING IMPERATIVES •
OF THE PAN-AFRICANIST STRUGGLE
• CONSOLIDATION OF INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY •
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