Community | November 21, 2010 | 62 comments

Watch Out: The World Bank Is Quietly Funding a Massive Corporate Water Grab

source: http://www.alternet.org/water/148700watch_out%3A_the_world_b_is_quietly_funding_a_massive_co...

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JanforGore
Even though water privatization has been a massive failure around the world, the World Bank just quietly gave $139 million to its latest corporate buddy.

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."

The Philippines is an excellent example of water privatization's broken model. After passing the Water Crisis Act in 1995, the Philippines landed a $283 million privatization plan managed partially by multinational giants like Suez and Bechtel. After some success, everything fell apart after 2000, and it wasn't long before tariff prices repeatedly increased, water service and quality worsened, and public opposition skyrocketed. Today, some Filipinos still don't have water connections, tariffs have increased from 300 to 700 percent in some regions, and outbreaks of cholera and gastroenteritis have cost lives and sickened hundreds.

"The World Bank has learned nothing from these disasters and continues to be blinded by an outdated ideology that only the unregulated market will solve the world's problems," added Barlow.

cont.
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  2. tags:
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62 comments // Watch Out: The World Bank Is Quietly Funding a Massive Corporate Water Grab

  • JanforGore
    • +4
      JanforGore  

    • In my opinion the World Bank has precipitated much of the crises of this world, particularly regarding water. They have been giving loans to countries in the third world at exhorbitant rates that they cannot pay back. This only perpetuates the cycle of poverty and hunger and keeps them enslaved to the system. There must be a way to provide assistance to small rural farmers in developing countries to be able to have the tools necessary to grow natural food for their people without the intererence of all of these foreign markets and speculators causing the prices to also be out of the range of affordability for the people who need them the most.

      Any conference regarding food or any crisis surrounding it must also include discussion of the global water crisis. You cannot grow food without water, and in many areas of the developing world especially in Asia and Africa water is a resource that is becoming harder and harder to come by due to mismanagement, waste, pollution, climate change, privitization, and population increases.There is also too much power concentrated with organizations like the World Bank and the corporations they are in collusion with. When you have a central bank controlling everything, it appears more people have nothing.

      These crises could be addressed much more effectively if there were more regulation regarding loaning these countries money in regards to the rates they are charged on top of the loan along with other stipulations that make their contracts hard to fulfill (such as agreeing to loan money to lay water pipes on the stipulation that their water will be privitized.) How about forgiving all third world debt for a start? That in and of itself would free up funds that could then be used for sustainable development (solar and wind etc.) in these countries and allow people to gain access to small loans such as those provided by the Grameen Bank to start people in their own businesses. Making their own income not accountable to some World Bank that seeks to run their lives and tell them they must plant genetically modified foods to make their benefactors like Monsanto more profit would also ease much poverty in these areas and start people on the road not only to sustainability but life. Isn't that freedom?

      I don't claim to be an expert on any of this nor to have the answers. I do know however, that the food and water crises we now find ourselves in the midst of is the most important thing in concert with the climate crisis that all ties in together that we now face in this century, and we need new answers as the old ways do not appear to be working any longer. It is simply unconscienable to me that with the billions upon billions of dollars we have in this world to spend on bailing out greedy bankers, wage illegal wars, and continue to support corrupted systems that actually perpetuate these crises that we can't find some of those funds along with some compassion and political will to for once do the right thing. No child in any country should have to die because some pencil pusher in a government organization or a world leader a world away is holding back the food and water that child needs because of political or economic expedience.

      Feed the people and give them water. There is more than enough. What we need to do now is find that moral and political strength to do it and do it equitably. It shouldn't be hard if you have a heart and a conscience.

    • 1 year ago
  • crosiss
    • 0
      crosiss  
    • JanforGore:

      Research Resource Based Economy
      http://current.com/groups/the-future/92804844_do-you-want-to-end-poverty-hunger-...

      The major difference between a resource based economy and a monetary system is that a resource based economy is really concerned with people and their well-being, where the monetary system has become so distorted that the concerns of the people are really secondary, it they’re there at all. The products that are turned out are for: How much money you can get. If there is a problem in society and you can’t earn money from that solving that problem, than it won’t be done.

      The resource based economy is really not close to anything that’s been tried. And with all our technology today we can create abundance. It could be used to improve everyone’s livestyle. Abundance all over the world if we use our technology wisely and maintain the environment.

      “There is no human nature, there’s human behavior, and that’s always been changed throughout history. You’re not born with bigotry, and greed, and corruption, and hatred. You pick that up within the society.”

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
  • observer2121
  • littlwarrior
    • 0
      littlwarrior  

    • Water cannot be owned, we can make intricate laws and regulations about water and its use but in the end you cannot own the river, for the river is without time, its course will change, its power weaken or grow, the river is its own, refusing the advances of men and their machines. We can tame her for a time but she will win, she always does. Who has water and where it is, is a descision best left to nature, if we try to rule nature she will only spit in our faces in due time.

    • 1 year ago
  • CalgarC
  • CalgarC
  • resolute
  • CalgarC
  • chief_longhair
  • jennyrobin
  • crosiss
  • KSirys
  • chief_longhair
    • +1
      chief_longhair  

    • I think ALL natural resources obtained from public lands should be nationalized, corporations have raped the land owned by the American people for profits that have been funneled to a few very rich by lobbying our representatives for guaranteed profits from timber, coal, oil, gas, gold, silver, copper and someday maybe water!

    • 1 year ago
  • musicjohnny
    • 0
      musicjohnny  
    • chief_longhair:

      So you're saying that any sort of revenue that comes from the sale or use of natural resources should be distributed back to the people? But how do the people have more justification for deserving that money than the companies who actually put effort and their own resources in to harvesting and refining those natural resources do? As an example, if you're saying that since there's gold buried in American soil, you and I deserve income if that gold is used/sold (as it would be under a nationalized system). But how are we justified in deserving that? I didn't mine the gold, I didn't refine it, I didn't mold or cast it, I didn't market it to a consumer, I didn't pay a salesman to sell it...why should I get anything for that? It's only fair that the people who do the work and make the investments to collect and market these resources get to keep the profits. Do I think that there should be more regulation about how people do that (the collection and sale that is)? Absolutely. But I don't think it should be taken over and distributed to people who did nothing to deserve a return from it.

    • 1 year ago
  • resolute
    • +1
      resolute  
    • Image
    • musicjohnny:

      Are you saying only the producer and investor are to gain from the sale of a product or service? What about the consumer? Is not their part in the business deal worth something? This is what is wrong with our country. Things are out of balance. If you have a producer and an investor and a consumer, why shouldn't all three benefit?

      Look at REI. Share the benefits.

      http://www.rei.com/membership

    • 1 year ago
  • crosiss
  • musicjohnny
    • 0
      musicjohnny  
    • crosiss:

      Because I have no choice in the matter. I didn't choose to be born, but I was anyway, and one of the requirements for my continued existence is oxygen which my body will take in of its own accord unless I actively attempt to stop it. So then the argument becomes "what makes you think you deserve to live" (i.e. actively attempt to stop my intake of air) to which I would answer "inherently nothing". There's nothing I can offer to justify my existence on this earth other than what I can do and have done for others and an innate desire for self preservation.

      It's like asking "does a fish deserve water?" Technically no, it's done nothing to deserve it or earn it. It provides no value to the water, it does not replenish it, it does nothing but use it. However, it has no choice but to use it by virtue of necessity. It's a moot point really. Short of suicide there's no way for humans to quit using air.
      Other nonessential resources like you're referring to are different however. We've done nothing to deserve them AND even less to justify taking the profits of others who do put in work to make those things in to items that we can use.

    • 1 year ago
  • rodstradamus
    • -2
      rodstradamus  

    • Very, Quantum of Solace. No conspiracy though, right Jan? Luckily, the majority of the water is in the atmosphere and can be easily converted from gas to liquid. Too bad most people are too stupid to figure that out.

    • 1 year ago
  • Tayllerand
    • +1
      Tayllerand  

    • I would recomend to everybody here in this forum to watch the movie call ( The Corporation ) its a great documentary and youll see these companies buying even the rights of rain water.You can not collect rain water its a crime according to these companies.The last thing they would do is charge you for breathing.

    • 1 year ago
  • troyl2
  • navider
    • +4
      navider  

    • You think oil is a problem? Just wait till we fight over water!!

      To see this on a national scale just give it 20 years.........

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  
    • navider:

      People have been and are already fighting over it. And of course, the World Bank will make sure of that. Just wait until climate change kicks in when the tipping point is reached ( plans to own the Arctic are already in motion.) Those who agree with this post but are deniers will soon see the connection.

    • 1 year ago
  • resolute
    • -2
      resolute  

    • A good business deal is good for both parties. There is nothing wrong with selling people water. The problems arise when the business deal is only good for one of the parties.
      So it's not the selling of water that is the real issue. It's greedy businessmen who do not see the value of a good business deal.
      Unfortunately greedy businessmen have jobs today partly because greedy stockholders want profits and dividends for their retirement.
      If you could change the law to where only the buyer of goods and services can own stock in a company and only in the proportion to their purchase, well, look who would own everything.

    • 1 year ago
  • H2O_4U
    • +1
      H2O_4U  

    • Water is the most important thing on the planet, I should know, lol, it's in my name.
      It is also a human right and should be guaranteed to everyone!

    • 1 year ago
  • H2O_4U
  • ezrierin
    • 0
      ezrierin  

    • Yes! In addition, I will bet if some cub reporter wants to make a splash, they can find that US Gas Corporations already own the local bottled water franchise in areas were gas cracked from rock is polluting the water supply.

    • 1 year ago
  • keithponder
    • +6
      keithponder  

    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqHaUadsapc

      Well the U.S. Federal government already has jurisdiction to all rights to every drop of water in this country. ( See Senate Bill 787)

      Senate Bill 787, the Clean Water Resonation Act, is designed to "clarify" the jurisdiction of the federal government over the waters of the United States. The proposed clarification in S. 787 would remove the term "navigable" from the language of the original Clean Water Act of 1972, effectively giving the federal government jurisdiction over all surface water in the country.
      According to U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), the deletion of that single word - "navigable"-could facilitate "the largest federal land grab in our nation's history." By controlling all water (think intermittent streams and large puddles in fields after it rains), the federal government can control land use. We have come a long way since 1972 and we've still got work to do to preserve and protect our water, but we can do it without what Hutchison correctly describes as "an egregious infringement of private–property rights."

      I vehemently object to this proposition. As a citizen, I feel this Federal Land Grab is fundamentally wrong. They have no right to take private property because I have a pond, or even a puddle on it. But beyond my outrage as a citizen, I have serious concerns as a professional in the real estate industry. As a title insurance agent, I understand that this change would create huge problems in the transfer and insurance of real property in the United States, further impeding home ownership and debiliating an already suffering section of our economy.

      Please contact your Senators and tell them what you think of Senate Bill 787.

      Please also contact The Environmental Works Committee at 202-224-6176. They do not want this bill and are tabulating the support against it.

    • 1 year ago
  • Vierotchka
  • keithponder
  • JanforGore
  • keithponder
  • Dagum
  • mik661
    • +2
      mik661  

    • But here in America with our libertarian hating goverment we seem to have a fairly decent water supply system. Or we did until we cut taxes instead of investing in maintaining our infrastructure.

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
  • addie340
    • -5
      addie340  

    • Isn't Al Gore part of bilderberg which kinda controls the banking elite. All these groups a nothing but crooks and liars. All they want is your money and to control the general public by what ever means necessary. The World bank does like to be green because it's just another way of control.

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
    • +4
      JanforGore  
    • addie340:

      No, he is not part of BIlderberg you hateful person. I am so sick of you and others following me around on these threads with your childish Al Gore harassment. Grow the hell up and see the real enemy for once, you fool.

    • 1 year ago
  • Nephwrack
  • dalistuff
  • artemis6
    • +1
      artemis6  

    • Water is life . It is not that they don't learn from the past , I don't think . It is that water is THE ULTIMATE cash cow . More valuable that weapons in time of war . That and they haven't figured out a way to charge people for air yet .

    • 1 year ago
  • Nephwrack
  • JanforGore
    • +11
      JanforGore  

    • http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=World_Bank#cite_note-0

      The World Bank also supports coal projects which use great amounts of water and exacerbate climate change which contributes to the very drought leading to water scarcity.

      "In 2007, World Bank President Robert Zoellick committed the lending institution to "significantly step up our assistance" to fight climate change through its loans. Instead, the World Bank increased its financing of fossil-fuel projects worldwide. One example is the coal-powered Tata Ultra Mega power plant in western India, a $4.14 billion project scheduled to go online in 2012. When it is fully operational, it will become one of the world's 50 largest greenhouse-gas emitters and "will emit more carbon dioxide annually than the nation of Tunisia," according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The World Bank decided to provide "$450 million in loans and guarantees for the project and also will buy a $50 million stake in it." At the same time the U.S. insisted that developing countries cut greenhouse gas emissions, the World Bank -- over which it has tremendous influence -- supported projects that do the opposite. "The World Bank's lending record does not match up to Zoellick's rhetoric," says Heike Mainhardt-Gibbsof the Bank Information Center, a World Bank watchdog group. "The institution is simply not slowing down its significant funding to fossil-fuel projects that will emit greenhouse gases for 20 to 40 years."[1]

      In September 2010, the World Bank reported that US $3.4 billion ($3.6 billion) - or a quarter of all funding for energy projects - was spent from January to June 2010 helping build new coal-fired power stations, including the controversial Medupi Coal Plant in South Africa. This was record sums into coal by the World Bank, despite international commitments to slash the carbon emissions causing climate change. Over the same period the bank also spent US $1 billion on looking and drilling for oil and gas. The Bank Information Centre, which examined the spending, said the figure invested in coal was actually US $4.4 billion, due to the World Bank not including in its figure a US $1 billion project in India which is funding power transmission networks for coal-fired power stations rather than the stations themselves. Environmental campaign groups said spending on coal in that period was 40 times more than five years ago, and said there was an incoherence at the heart of the World Bank's thinking about energy that would damage long-term attempts to cut emissions of carbon.["

    • 1 year ago
  • im1mjrpain
  • Dagum
  • JanforGore
    • +11
      JanforGore  
    • im1mjrpain:

      Well I never expect you to actually have a coherent comment about the subject matter. I have been a water justice advocate for years and speaking out for water as a human right and have never heard Mr.Gore speak against water as a human right. So unless you actually have a point to your unnecessary barb, why not try actually staying on topic for once especially since people have DIED due to these policies.

    • 1 year ago
  • VoyagerFilms
  • Dagum
  • JanforGore
  • CitizenHill
  • Ihatethemall
    • 0
      Ihatethemall  
    • JanforGore:

      SHIT, Another thing I agree with you on.

      Yes I know who owns my water. Mother Earth and I pump it out of her from my own well but I use it responsibly.

      Just a side note. I think if I had published this story I would have been called a nut or conspiracy theorist.

    • 1 year ago
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