Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.
For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.
Whose Water Is It, Anyway?: Taking Water Protection into Public Hands
160Overview
“Maude Barlow is one of our planet’s greatest water defenders.” — Naomi Klein, bestselling author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine
“This book is a blueprint for communities around the world to take back that responsibility and maintain water as a human right.” — David Suzuki
“This is a must-read.” — Jane Fonda
A call to action from former Senior Advisor on Water to the U.N., honorary chairperson of the Council of Canadians, chair of Washing-based Food and Water Watch, and councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council
The Blue Communities Project is dedicated to three primary things: that access to clean, drinkable water is a basic human right; that municipal and community water will be held in public hands; and that single-use plastic water bottles will not be available in public spaces. With its simple, straightforward approach, the movement has been growing around the world for a decade. Today, Paris, Berlin, Bern, and Montreal are just a few of the cities that have made themselves Blue Communities. In Whose Water Is It, Anyway? , renowned water justice activist Maude Barlow recounts her own education in water issues as she and her fellow grassroots water warriors woke up to the immense pressures facing water in a warming world. Concluding with a step-by-step guide to making your own community blue, Maude Barlow’s latest book is a heartening example of how ordinary people can effect enormous change.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781770414303 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ECW Press |
| Publication date: | 09/03/2019 |
| Pages: | 160 |
| Sales rank: | 648,057 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.40(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Maude Barlow is the international bestselling author of 19 books, including the bestselling Blue Water trilogy. She is the honorary chair of the Council of Canadians and of the Washington-based Food and Water Watch. She is on the executive committee of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and a councillor with the World Future Council. In 2008–09, she served as senior advisor on water to the 63rd president of the UN General Assembly and was a leader in the campaign to have water recognized as a human right by the UN. In 2005, she won the prestigious Right Livelihood Award, the “alternative Nobel.” She lives in Ottawa, Ontario.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Fight Against Corporate Control of Water
My obsession with water started in 1985. Brian Mulroney was the newly minted Canadian prime minister, a political ally of both U.S. president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the chief cheerleaders of economic globalization and its pro-corporate policies of privatization, deregulation and free trade. One of the first things that Prime Minister Mulroney did upon taking office was to address a gathering of blue-chip business elite at the Economic Club in New York City. There he announced that Canada was "open for business" and praised President Reagan, promising new military cooperation between the two countries and an end to restrictions on American investment in Canada.
So, it was no surprise that Reagan and Mulroney soon announced they were negotiating the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the first of the modern free trade deals and the model for the later North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the World Trade Organization and thousands of other bilateral trade and investment agreements between countries. Unlike free trade agreements of the past, this one would be less about taking down tariffs on the trade in goods — which were largely gone anyway — and more about establishing an integrated North American market where borders would be largely eliminated and governments would step aside on matters of business.
Ronald Reagan was deep into his agenda of increased military spending, deregulation of environmental protections, tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations and promoting the majority Judeo-Christian worldview. Fearing that a free trade agreement would give Reagan the power to challenge Canadian social security, foreign and resource policy, many of us in the Canadian social-justice movement came together to oppose it. We formed the Council of Canadians to promote independent social, resource, cultural and foreign policy for Canada and to resist the right-wing agenda of the Reagan administration. One area of particular sensitivity was whether this proposed trade deal would give Americans access to Canada's resources, especially energy and water. The latter was an issue I was beginning to monitor as fights over access to Canada's water reserves were heating up.
While reading the massive text that was the proposed free trade agreement, I stumbled upon the Annex, the material at the end of the agreement that listed all the goods to be covered and therefore subject to its rules. To my complete surprise, the Annex listed "water, including ... mineral waters ... ice and snow." Since the trade deal had made it clear that no signatory country could restrict the trade or export of any of the listed goods, alarm bells went off in my head and heart. Over a number of generations, various plans had surfaced to sell massive amounts of water to the U.S. through pipelines, aqueducts, tunnels and dams. But Canadians had, until then, successfully held off these gambits to commodify our water resources. That this had reared its head again — that the commercialization of water exports could be allowed and protected by a free trade agreement — frightened me and set me on a path of discovery.
I would turn out to be right that this and other free trade agreements indeed pose a grave threat to both the public control of water and water protection itself, but it was a number of years before that became evident.
Meanwhile, I asked myself, Who owns water and who is making decisions about this precious resource? I had always assumed that water belongs to us all. But I was about to learn that the world was straining its water resources even then and that a number of private corporations and interests were moving in to take control of and profit from growing water scarcity. I was setting out on a journey of discovery at the very time that the commodification of the world's water was beginning in a serious way.
Privatization of water services
In the late 1980s, Great Britain's prime minister Margaret Thatcher sold off the public water utilities of England and Wales as part of her government cutbacks initiative. Household water rates have soared more than 40% since then, and the corporations that had taken over the management of water services became infamous for their terrible record of pollution, astronomical CEO salaries and bonuses and their annual massive tax avoidance schemes. Thirty years later, the private water companies operating in Britain have paid out billions to their shareholders, as reported in a June 2017 Independent story, while deliberately racking up public debt to finance profits. They made a combined total post-tax profit of almost US$25 billion over the last ten years. At the time, however, water privatization was seen as a daring new frontier of economic globalization that would save governments money. Thatcher's experiment started a domino effect of water privatization schemes around the world.
The World Bank quickly jumped into the fray: water privatization became a condition for funding poor countries in the global South. This was part of a "structural adjustment" program designed to bring these countries into a global market economy by privatizing essential services in exchange for debt relief. Over the course of the 1990s, the World Bank and other regional development banksdramatically increased the number of loans they assigned based on an agreement by the recipient country to move to a private system of water management and delivery. In many cases, the banks chose the private water utility — often the water divisions of two French giants, Suez Environment and Veolia Water — and even signed the contracts, leaving the local governments out of the equation altogether.
Major institutions started to refer to water as a commodity. At a 1992 conference held in Dublin, the United Nations for the first time declared that water has an "economic value" in its "competing uses" and that it should be recognized as an "economic good." This definition is one used by the private sector to promote private water delivery and was the first signal that the UN would open the door to defining water as a commodity rather than a commons. Suez and Veolia joined the UN Global Compact — a contentious initiative that encourages some of the worst polluting corporations to adopt voluntary environmental and human rights standards — and soon entrenched themselves in the drafting of the 2000 UN Millennium Development Goals.
In 1993, the World Bank tabled a new policy that referred to the "unwillingness" of the poor to pay for water services and stated that water should be treated as an economic commodity with an emphasis on efficiency, financial discipline and full-cost recovery. The intent was to guarantee that private water corporations investing in poor countries would recover both the cost of their investment and enough money to give their investors a profit by raising water rates as needed.
And new institutions were born. The World Water Council, which calls itself an international water policy think tank, was formed in 1997 to promote the interests of private water companies. It is sponsored by the World Bank and some agencies and interests of the United Nations, giving it great credibility. All the big private water utilities are founding members, as well as many investment banks and the International Water Association that has more than 500 corporate members. Every three years, the World Water Council holds the World Water Forum, a gathering that serves as a showcase for the private water sector. Thousands of government officials come from all over the world to attend and learn about all the "benefits" of water privatization.
In 2008, the World Bank also created the 2030 Water Resources Group to advise it on water policy in the global South and how to implement the UN Sustainable Development Goal on water. Its partners include the major water service corporations, such as Suez; the big bottled water companies, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo; beer giants, such as Anheuser-Busch; and chemical companies, such as Dow. All are major transnational corporations that privatize, commodify, deplete and pollute the planet's water. They are given authenticity by the fact that the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Economic Forum (the outfit that invites corporate and government elites to Davos, Switzerland, every year) are also founding members of the 2030 Water Resources Group.
This history of water services privatization has been well documented. To make their profit goals, private water companies cut corners on water quality protection, delivery of services and investing in source water protection. They routinely raise water rates even when they have signed a contract to keep rates at a certain level, and on average they lay off one in three water workers when they take over a public facility.
The public and their communities lose when local government officials turn over the responsibility for and control of this vital public service. Private water companies are accountable to their shareholders, not to the people they serve, and they often restrict public access to information about their operations.
Private water services charge more. In a 2016 study, Washington, D.C.–based Food & Water Watch reported that privately owned water utilities charged 59% more for drinking water services and 63% more for sewage services than public utilities.
Although there has been fierce opposition to the privatization of water services, the companies continue to grow as they expand into new markets in countries such as India, Brazil and China. According to their websites, the water divisions of the two biggest transnational water corporations, Suez and Veolia, collectively employ 250,000 people and cleared profits of more than US$60 billion in 2017.
Rising water rates
The privatization of water services is contributing to the rise in water tariffs around the world, which in turn is leading to cut-offs to households that cannot pay theirbills. Global Water Intelligence is the leading publisher of the international private water industry; in its October 2017 annual report on global water rates, the group announced that water tariffs around the world are growing at twice the global rate of inflation.
In the U.S., according to a May 2017 survey done by Circle of Blue, a non-profit network of journalists and scientists who cover water issues, water rates have increased by 54% since 2010 and are becoming so onerous that as many as one-third of Americans may be unable to pay their monthly water bill.
Food & Water Watch reports that over the last 15 years, water bills in the U.S. have increased at three times the rate of inflation, whereas household incomes have fallen by more than US$3,500 per household between 2000 and 2014 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This has made low-income Americans vulnerable. In America's Secret Water Crisis, published in October 2018, the group reported that, at a conservative estimate, at least 15 million people in the U.S. experienced water shut-offs in 2016. Detroit, Michigan, has cut off water services to tens of thousands of residents in the last several years, mostly to the poor, the unemployed and African-Americans, who together make up around 83% of the population.
In poor countries, water cut-offs inevitably affect the most vulnerable first. During the severe 2014–2017 water shortage in São Paulo, Brazil, the residents of the favelas, already living in a day-to-day scramble to find clean water, were hit first and hardest. Water is not delivered to individual households but often through a single pipe to the whole community. Reduced water flows can mean no water at all for a community. But where water has been restricted to the whole city, the wealthy can afford to pay for private water sources.
Even families with indoor plumbing are vulnerable. I toured a working-class suburb in São Paulo at the height of the drought and met families that had bored holes in their basement in search of water. They had running water only twice a day for an hour, once at six o'clock in the morning and then again at ten o'clock at night. The quality of the water coming from their taps was often not safe.
The scene is set for a perfect storm: depleting clean water sources around the world, growing poverty and inequality among countries and within countries and rising water rates that put the price of water out of the reach of millions.
Plastic water
As I was learning and monitoring and writing about all of this, another source of water commodification took off. Bottled water is not new, of course, but it was initially created for the wealthy and served in glass bottles. What started as an upscale consumer product, mostly confined to Europe, became one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.
In the 1970s, about one billion litres of water were sold annually. By 2017, that number had risen to 391 billion litres and, according to Transparency Market Research, global annual bottled water consumption will reach 465 billion litres by 2020 with sales topping US$300 billion. Most bottled water is now sold in plastic bottles. A new trend in Latin America is selling water-filled small plastic bags — sold by the hundreds in large plastic bags — that people can just keep in their pockets so that they can be "hydrated" at any time.
Nestlé Waters is the number-one bottled water company in the world. Created in 1992, Nestlé has almost 34,000 employees in 34 countries and owns 49 distinct brands, such as Poland Spring, San Pellegrino, Perrier and Nestlé Pure Life, the largest bottled water brand worldwide. Nestlé Waters reports that its annual sales in 2017 amounted to almost US$8 billion.
The water divisions of other major companies, such as Coca-Cola's Dasani and Smartwater and PepsiCo's Aquafina, are growing so fast that, in 2016, they outpaced soft drink sales in the U.S. for the first time.
The bottled water industry defends itself from criticism by arguing that it uses less water overall than other large raw water users, such as agribusinesses. But the water they use to bottle and sell is taken from individual springs and wells and can deplete large local areas of water.
In 2000, Coca-Cola opened a bottling plant in Plachimada in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Over the next few years, local farmers noted that their groundwater supply was drying up and what was left was contaminated. I had the privilege of sitting for several mornings, back in 2004, with local village women who had been holding a protest vigil outside the plant every day for three years. Eventually their protest was successful: the plant was ordered to shut down three years later. To this day, the villagers say they have had no compensation for the loss of their livelihoods. Four more Coca-Cola bottled water plants in India have since been forced to close down as local communities faced severe water shortages.
Citizens in tiny Osceola Township in Michigan are in a battle to stop Nestlé from expanding its water-takings operation to 1,600 litres per minute from its current 900 litres. Already, reports a February 2018 Agence France-Presse story, residents say the local environment is being damaged by Nestlé's Ice Mountain plant and point to a dramatic drop in water levels of the town's Twin Creek River. Town manager Tim Ladd said that one doesn't have to be a geologist or a hydrologist to see how the water levels are affected. The community is particularly incensed that Nestlé pays just US$200 a year to the state of Michigan to pump out more than 520 million litres of its local water that it then seals in plastic and ships away.
Vittel, France, is home to Vittel Bonne Source, one of the world's most popular mineral waters. It has been operating since the 1850s, but many residents now want no more to do with the business. The brand has been owned by Nestlé since the early 1990s and currently bottles a billion litres of water per year, or two million bottles per day, from the groundwater beneath Vittel. The local water table is sinking as a result, according to an April 2018 story in The Telegraph. An investigation by the French government's geologic bureau found that the groundwater levels have been falling by 30 centimetres per year since 1990 and are down ten metres in the last four decades. If nothing is done to halt the water loss, the town may have to pipe in water from another village at a cost of over US$56 million. Residents know that they will pay for this with higher water rates.
Residents of Sululta, Ethiopia, cannot reconcile why half their population has to walk miles to find water from muddy wells when their area is booming with industry; the Abyssinia Springs bottled water plant and four other bottled water companies have access to so much water. As a May 2017 Guardian story reports, the situation is particularly galling because the town is situated in the highlands where rainfall is abundant. In fact, the government refers to Ethiopia as the "water tower of Africa." Abyssinia Springs, of which Nestlé owns a majority stake, pumps 50,000 litres an hour, while many residents must pay for contaminated water at private wells or walk great distances for free but unsafe water. Lack of access to clean water and other basic public services led to an uprising in November 2015. Human rights groups report that at least 600 people were killed by state security forces.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Whose Water Is It, Anyway?"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Maude Barlow.
Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 - The Fight Against Corporate Control of Water
2 – The Creation of a Global Justice Movement
3 – Blue Communities Take Root in Canada
4 – Blue Communities Give Hope in Europe
5 – Going Blue One Community at a Time
Customer Reviews
