|
Is Water a Public Good
or a Commodity?
Thoughts on water privatization and related issues for poor populations By Massan d'Almeida, AWID |
Water is at the origin of life on earth. For a long time, it was considered an element. It was only in the eighteenth century that the physician Henry Cavendish conducted his analysis and discovered its double structure, a binary compound composed of oxygen and hydrogen. However, water can not be reduced only to what physicists and chemists may have to say about it. The biologists' stand point on the matter is just as interesting. "No living organisms can live without water
in any of its forms. The reason why is simple: our cells, all
living animals, ourselves included, live in an aqueous environment.
Therefore, there are constant chemical exchanges through the membranes
of our cells between the external environment composed of blood
and interstitial liquids and the internal environment composed
of various substances dissolved in water. Living organisms are
first and foremost composed of water since there is water inside
and outside of those cells." "We do not know the value of water as long
as the well isn’t dry." "Every eight seconds, somewhere in the world,
a child dies from a disease related to shortage in drinking water
and health services." More than 1.1 billion humans are indeed deprived of drinking water and 2.4 billion of health services. Already, more than half of the population in developing countries suffers from at least one of the six main water related diseases that kills more than five millions people every year, eleven thousands of whom are children who die every day, which is three to four times the number of victims of the World Trade Center attacks! How then is one to understand the deafening silence of the media and our own? Especially since this 'water woe' is stupidly, recklessly and greedily imposed upon millions of us, as Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke's book eloquently demonstrates: "States have indeed agreed at the Johannesburg Summit, to grant access to drinking water and health services by 2015 to half of the population deprived of that access, however, this was accomplished at the cost of a non-recognition of access to water as a basic human right, contributing thereby to this public good becoming a commodity for the benefit of the water cartel." Water needs an ethic for action. It must be guided by precautionary principles and principles of mutual respect as well as by ideas of justice and solidarity. And so far, a binding human right to water has only explicitly been mentioned in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and only in the context of access without discrimination. Today, the right to water derives essentially from the binding norms of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In this regard, the right to water is derived as a precondition to the right to life, the right to food, the right to health and the right to housing. This stance was translated in the FAO's slogan for the World Food Day in 2002: "No food without water". Therefore, it is clear that whoever is concerned with the future of humanity must irrevocably ponder on the issue of water. Water, this "blue gold", has become an unavoidable issue. According to the UNEP, the global water crisis is the biggest challenge facing the international community and the drinking water crisis has the same dimensions and presents the same potential threats than climate changes. The need for a convention on water is not a tokenistic exercise separate from the emerging reality as stated by a few experts. Fundamental questions underline this call for a binding right, questions which need to be dealt with as quickly as possible. Is access to water a human right? Is water a public good, like the air we breathe or is it a commodity? Who can assume the right to open or close the water tap: a relevant authority, the population (through public authorities or governments) or the invisible hand of the market? Lack of financial resources is at the top of the list of arguments produced by the international community to explain why billions of human beings continue to live in unacceptable conditions, deprived of water. The estimates of additional private means required to reach the Millennium Goals vary greatly. The UNEP calculated that we would need up to 180 billions dollars per year while the World Bank is talking about doubling annual investments to reach 30 billions dollars. The report called "Camdessus" presented at the third Global Forum on Water in Kyoto is also based on this argument. The primary originators of this report were the Global Water Partnership and the World Water Council. It had been drafted by a financial expert under the responsibility of the former Director of the International Monetary Fund, Michel Camdessus and must be used as a reference for donors' future policies. It speaks again of mega projects such as those which have been implemented in the last few years in many countries with all the fatal social and ecological consequences that we all know. According to advocates for the privatization of water supply services, additional financial resources would need to be mobilized through the private economy. We know the numerous examples of indebted developing countries who are pressured by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to privatize their water services in order to obtain new loans. Reality shows without any ambiguity that the privatization of water supply services is a dead-end path even when financial arguments are used. The Millennium Goals will never be reached this way. Multinationals are only interested in providing water services to mega cities, in other words areas with a clientele of a certain level of buying power and where there are great opportunities for profit. Cases such as Manila, Maputo, Togo, South Africa, etc., demonstrate that multinationals have no concern about backing out of their commitments when gains do not meet their expectations. It is then the State who is forced to pay the consequences. Public-private partnerships that have been subjects of countless praises and have been highlighted again in the Johannesburg Action Plan are also leading down the wrong path and have not thus far contributed to solving the water crisis. Rather, the reality is as follows: the majority of people who do not have access to safe drinking water live either in rural areas or in slums. Another far-reaching consequence of water privatization is higher water bills and drastic measures that are taken by companies against customers when they are not paid on time. Water, basis of all life, remains without global and autonomous protection embedded in international law. An international convention on water could be one solution, offering the following benefits:
Published in: Association for Women's Rights in Development © * This article originally appeared on our French-language e-list Carrefour, Volume 3, Number 16, May 25, 2004. It was translated to English by Cécile Grégoire. References:
|
 |
