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Join the open public debate on water commoditization-Economist.com
You can register there and give your opinion in an open debate on water commoditization up to October 10th. Vandana Shiva represents the con side, and someone named Steven Hoffman represents the pro side. This is a good opportunity to let your voice be heard about commoditization of water resources. And of course, it isn't any surprise to see DOW Chemical sponsoring this especially since they wish to buy desalination plants and probably wants to see privitization to hold back resources to spur the building of such plants. There is an all out assault on our resources by corporate America for profit now and we must fight it for our own survival. I firmly believe that now, and this open debate is where you can make your opinions known. I am registered there as 'waterahumanright.' Please participate and give the water justice movement and environmental democracy a hand.
Currently, the voting is: pro 40% / con 60%.
Thanks! You can register there and give your opinion in an open debate on water commoditization up to October 10th. Vandana Shiva represents t... more -
To Neglect Water...Is To Give It to Multi nationals
Serious and extremely worrying evidence indicates that water supplies are steadily being used up. And the causes of water scarcity are much the same as those of the food crisis: demand exceeds a finite supply.
The world's population is projected to grow from 6 billion to 8.5 billion by 2030 and unless we change the way we use water and increase water productivity — ie. produce more 'crop per drop' — we will not be able to feed them. That is the conclusion of the IWMI's recent Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture and its book, Water for Food, Water for Life, which drew on the work of 700 scientists.
end of excerpt.
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In all of the time I have been posting to this blog on the subject of water scarcity, this message has been the priority. Investing in water infrastructure and educating people in developing countries regarding irrigation methods that save water as well as planting conventional crop varieties that are not as water intensive. However, even though these are the main goals one of the priorities here as well that was also not mentioned in this article is stopping the commoditization and corporatization of water that keeps it from being used by the people as the human right it is.
I have been reporting recently on Current.com (linked here in the column) about Monsanto and its plan to spread GM foods across the globe. Foods which biotech makeup has been linked to possible health effects not only in humans but in cows through Posilac (Bovine growth hormones) in milk, and the environmental affects on waterways through the use of Roundup Herbicides. It is an insidious plan wherein they are buying up seed companies globally and binding farmers to only plant seeds in one season without permission to replant next season unless they continue to buy seed from Monsanto at a huge profit to the company. Monsanto has even gone so far as to 'patent' seed and pursue litigation against farmers they accuse of replanting seeds (as has been done in agriculture from its inception centuries ago) and even harrassing farmers who are innocent due to pollen from other fields landing on their crops. They are also lobbying state legislatures to not label foods that contain bovine hormones and GM ingredients.
But not only is Monsanto in the business of monopolizing seeds of the world and taking away the consumer's right to know, they are also involved in pursuing the privitization of water. Currently they have such projects in India and Mexico which will bring them millions in revenues.They are cornering the market on food and water in developing countries and in the US and by their methods putting farmers in great debt to the point that they are committing suicide in India due to BT cotton.
Therefore, while other explanations for food and water shortages certainly are relevant and deserving of our utmost attention, stopping multi nationals as well from patenting and stealing life is also one of the most important and crucial environmental and moral fights we will have in this century. For whoever controls the food and water controls the world.
So again, we do have enough food and water to feed and sustain the world if we start now to work on plans for the future that conserve these resources and address overpopulation. We don't need The World Bank to continue to scaremonger about this for profit. We don't need Monsantos to take advantage of us for profit. We need a plan that actually educates people about conservation and effective irrigation and infrastructure, and we need to give farming back to the farmers and water back to the people. Serious and extremely worrying evidence indicates that water supplies are steadily being used up. And the causes of water scarcity are... more -
The Privitization Of Our Water Not Covered By The MSM
Imagine, that we are beyond the energy crisis-in that we are used to paying double or triple prices for what in the previous century was a small part of the family budget. But now we are faced with a new shortage that taps another precious resource. Water only comes through the tap fours hours a day and we are forced to pay ten to hundred times what we paid in the 90s. Welcome to the world of privatized water, where fresh water is treated like a commodity, traded and sold in the international market to the highest bidder.
No longer can you assume a God-given right to drink from a mountain spring, but instead you will have to pay a toll to drink from Enron Springs, Monsanto Wells or receive tap water from Bechtel Water Works. Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth. According to the United Nations, more than one billion people already lack access to fresh drinking water. If current trends persist, by 2025 the demand for fresh water is expected to rise by 56 percent more than the amount of water that is currently available.
Multinational corporations recognize these trends and are trying to monopolize water supplies around the world. Monsanto, Bechtel, Enron and other global multinationals are seeking control of world water systems and supplies. The World Bank recently adopted a policy of water privatization and full-cost water pricing. This policy is causing great distress in many Third World countries, which fear that their citizens will not be able to afford for-profit water.
Last year in a little known case of high scale international water marketing, a supertanker was reported to have filled up with water from Lake Erie and after paying the Canadian Government they shipped the water to Southeast Asia. Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, Canada's largest public advocacy group, states, "Governments around the world must act now to declare water a fundamental human right and prevent efforts to privatize, export, and sell for profit a substance essential to all life. Research has shown that selling water on the open market only delivers it to wealthy cities and individuals. The finite sources of freshwater (less than one half of one per cent of the world's total water stock) are being diverted, depleted, and polluted so fast that, by the year 2025, two-thirds of the world's population will be living in a state of serious water deprivation."
Governments are signing away their control over domestic water supplies by participating in trade treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). These agreements give transnational corporations the unprecedented right to the water of signatory countries.
Monsanto plans to earn revenues of $420 million and a net income of $63 million by 2008 from its water business in India and Mexico. Monsanto estimates that water will become a multibillion-dollar market in the coming decades.
This international water crisis news story was selected by over 150 faculty and student researchers at Sonoma State University's Project Censored in California as the number one most censored news story for 2000.
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And this is still being censored by the MSM. Just as multinationals move to control our food, they are doing the same to "own" water which is a human right and the MSM is an accomplice to it by not educating the public to what is going down. The MSM is however more than happy to advertise "clean coal" and nuclear, and propaganda by oil companies making us believe they care about this planet as they ravage it. So, for me Current is the only place where this news can be seen to hopefully bring awareness about what is going down... we are being bought and sold and the very substance of our survival along with it. So the question is: what are we going to do about it? Imagine, that we are beyond the energy crisis-in that we are used to paying double or triple prices for what in the previous century w... more -
Living with water scarcity: world must act now
Only if we act to improve water use in agriculture now will we meet the acute water-environment-poverty challenges facing humankind over the next 50 years. "With earth's water, land and human resources it is possible to produce enough food for the future - but it is probable that today's food production and environmental trends will lead to crises in many parts of the world" says David Molden Deputy Director General of the International Water Management Institute.
This is the opening prognosis given in the Earthscan publication Water for Food, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. The Assessment, the first of its kind, brings together the work of over 700 specialists from hundreds of institutes around the world into the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of water and food ever written, critically examining policies and practices of water use and development in the agricultural sector over the last 50 years.
Spearheaded by International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one of 15 CGIAR agricultural research centres striving to increase food production, increase rural incomes, and safeguard the environment, the report is co-sponsored by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), FAO, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and the Convention on Biological Diversity in a bid to find solutions to the challenge of balancing the water-food-environment needs.
The assessment finds that 1/3 of the world's population live in areas where water scarcity must be reckoned with. While much of this water scarcity cannot be avoided, water problems can be averted through better water management.
Growing cities take more water, and environmental concerns are rising. A water-food-environment dilemma. Water use in agriculture is recognized as one of the major drivers of ecosystem degradation, causing habitat loss, drying up of rivers, and reduction in groundwater levels. Flows in the Colorado River in USA, the Yellow River in China, the Indus in India and Pakistan - all important food producing areas - dry up because of the water needed for irrigated agriculture. Clearly limiting agricultural water use is key for environmental sustainability. Therein lies the dilemma. More people require more water for more food; more water is essential in the fight against poverty; yet we should limit the amount of water taken from ecosystems.
snip
Since climate change is expected to hit these areas hard, better water systems will be a key to helping people cope with dry spells. Poverty, hunger, gender inequality, and environmental degradation continue to afflict developing countries not because of technical failings but because of political and institutional failings. There is need for drastic reform in the water sector. Governments must lead the reform process, but ironically state institutions themselves are in greatest need of reform. While water scarcity is here to stay, many of the problems associated with water scarcity can be avoided.
This will require that we deal with difficult choices and tradeoffs. Reconciling competing demands on water requires informed negotiations by the many stakeholders involved in water with transparent sharing of information. "The hope is in realizing the unexplored potential that lies in better water management along with non-miraculous changes in policy and production techniques" says Margaret Catley Carleson, Chair of the Global Water Partnership, "but world leaders must take action now." As Sunita Narain, 2005 Stockholm Water Prize Winner says, "this issue must become the world's obsession." Only if we act to improve water use in agriculture now will we meet the acute water-environment-poverty challenges facing humankind ov... more -
Water flowing back into public hands
The announcement by the Paris municipality that water services will return to public hands by 2010 is in line with a global trend of ending privatisation of such services.
Mayor Bertrand Delanoë announced Jun. 2 that the municipal administration would regain control of all water services for the city, ending a private monopoly that has lasted more than 100 years.
The contracts with the world’s two biggest water service companies, Suez and Veolia, will not be extended after Dec. 31, 2009.
“We want to offer a better service, at a better price,” Delanoë said. “We also promise that prices would be stable.”
Delanoë said his administration will encourage other municipalities in the Ile de France region around Paris to end privatisation of water services.
“That France, once known as the heartland of water privatisation, is embracing a return to public management of water services, is a strong signal in this new pattern,” Olivier Hoedeman of the Water Remunicipalisation Tracker told IPS. The group, a sub-division of the Amsterdam-based Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and the Transnational Institute, documents the decline of water privatisation.
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This is good news and a good trend we need to see across the globe. Water is a public trust. Hopefully, the information put out about the effects of water privitization has helped this along.
Read my entries here as well:
http://water-is-life.blogspot.com/ The announcement by the Paris municipality that water services will return to public hands by 2010 is in line with a global trend of e... more -
Is water becoming the new oil?
Public fountains are dry in Barcelona, Spain, a city so parched there’s a €9,000 ($13,000) fine if you’re caught watering your flowers. A tanker ship docked there this month carrying 5 million gallons of precious fresh water – and officials are scrambling to line up more such shipments to slake public thirst.
Barcelona is not alone. Cyprus will ferry water from Greece this summer. Australian cities are buying water from that nation’s farmers and building desalination plants. Thirsty China plans to divert Himalayan water. And 18 million southern Californians are bracing for their first water-rationing in years.
Water, Dow Chemical Chairman Andrew Liveris told the World Economic Forum in February, “is the oil of this century.” Developed nations have taken cheap, abundant fresh water largely for granted. Now global population growth, pollution, and climate change are shaping a new view of water as “blue gold.”
Water’s hot-commodity status has snared the attention of big equipment suppliers like General Electric as well as big private water companies that buy or manage municipal supplies – notably France-based Suez and Aqua America, the largest US-based private water company.
Global water markets, including drinking water distribution, management, waste treatment, and agriculture are a nearly $500 billion market and growing fast, says a 2007 global investment report.
But governments pushing to privatize costly to maintain public water systems are colliding with a global “water is a human right” movement. Because water is essential for human life, its distribution is best left to more publicly accountable government authorities to distribute at prices the poorest can afford, those water warriors say.
“We’re at a transition point where fundamental decisions need to be made by societies about how this basic human need – water – is going to be provided,” says Christopher Kilian, clean-water program director for the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation. “The profit motive and basic human need [for water] are just inherently in conflict.”
Will “peak water” displace “peak oil” as the central resource question? Some see such a scenario rising.
end of excerpted article noted in entry.
My comments;
This is a scenario that some including myself have been warning about for the last twenty years. The prognosis that increasing population and lack of proper maintenance of infrastructure along with destructive corporate policies that pollute and waste this precious resource will culminate to bring us to a point where there will not be enough potable water to sustain this world's population.
snip
The water justice movement in this world is now just starting to make headway with bringing people to that consciousness regarding water and the impending repercussions we will most certainly face upon not giving this crisis the attention and action it deserves on a global scale. Drought (caused by waste but now also caused predominantly by climate change and the burning of fossil fuels at a rapacious pace unprecedented) is a silent killer that is creeping across this planet very stealthily in search of more land to suck dry, which is now putting the lives of millions in the Horn of Africa and in other parts of this world including the United States at risk. And in that process, where will that leave the poorest in our world? At the mercy of corporate conglomerates that will charge them unsurious rates to have a substance they cannot live without? How can anyone claim this is even moral let alone legal?
more at the link. Public fountains are dry in Barcelona, Spain, a city so parched there’s a €9,000 ($13,000) fine if you’re caught watering your flowers... more -
Our Water Future
Since I began posting to this blog almost two years ago, we have seen much happen in the world of water. We have seen the steady decline of water safety and democracy worldwide with glacier melt threatening the water supplies of millions becoming more prevalent. Drought is an affliction that has now enveloped close to 40% of our planet. We have seen the effects of ethanol production as it now is revealed to be nothing more than a corporate/political scam set upon us to deplete our food and water sources which has caused riots in many developing areas of the world. Corporatization of our public trust is increasing, with political power looking to gain control over world water resources as they did oil. The outlook after seeing all of this may seem bleak.
However, we have seen some positive things come about as well. More people than ever are becoming aware of the global water crisis and water justice movement. More are standing up to the bottled water interests and demanding not only accountability but boycotting the bottle and they are feeling the pinch. The effects of citizen activism are being felt worldwide as information and truth seeps its way across the Internet to the hearts and minds of people who are now more awakened and empowered to take action to preserve this planet and our precious resources.
And that must continue, for the task before us is monumental. For times are bleak across much of the world particularly in Africa and Asia where water resources become scarcer due to corruption, mismanagement, climate change, and pollution, and where the ability to speak out against it is but a dream. Therefore, caring about water and its future is a global duty.
It is incumbant upon all of us as citizens of the world to ask questions, research, demand accountability, and work for water justice. That includes clean, safe, healthy sources that seek to bring not only health but peace to areas of the world where running water is the greatest gift they could have to sustain their bodies, their minds and their souls, which is true freedom.
So while I look out on the landscape of the planet and see an encroaching crisis, I also see an unprecedented opportunity for the human race to find within itself the will and courage to save itself. And the continued flow of information, truth, and opportunity will surely aid in that goal.
We must not relent in seeing an international convention on water declaring it a human right and setting the standards for addressing this right and fulfilling the goals and obligations that will lead to true water justice.
As Maude Barlow states here, "the right to water is an idea whose time has come."
UN ConventionTo The Right To Water
That time is now. Since I began posting to this blog almost two years ago, we have seen much happen in the world of water. We have seen the steady decli... more -
Sales of bottled water decline after environmental backlash
After ten years of soaring business, the tide is starting to turn against bottled water.
Shop sales were down by 9 per cent in the year to March to £284million, according to the retail analysts TNS.
This follows a widespread backlash by environmentalists who condemn it as wasteful and even immoral.
UK sales of bottled water had been growing at more than 6 per cent annually for more than a decade, reaching 2billion bottles a year.
One reason for its success is that many claim not to like the taste of what comes out of the tap. In some parts of the country there is a chlorine taint.
However, blind taste tests by Decanter magazine put London tap water ahead of many brands transported at a premium price from as far away as Fiji.
Fashionable labels such as Evian, Perrier and Volvic have recently faced a combined onslaught from Government ministers, consumer groups and green campaigners.
A 500ml bottle of Evian typically costs 42p in a supermarket, or 84p a litre. That is 840 times the price of tap water, which comes in at 0.1p a litre.
Among the environmental costs of bottled water are the energy needed for production, transport and disposal of the bottles. Compared with tap water, it generates more than 5,000 times the amount of carbon emissions per litre.
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Music to my ears. After ten years of soaring business, the tide is starting to turn against bottled water. ... more -
Fighting The Corporate Theft Of Our Water
The article linked in the entry noted above is a most comprehensive look at the schemes involved in buying up our public trust to keep us hostage. And it is happening now, and in this country under the radar.
With their insatiable desire, for profit corporations globally are going too far regarding infringing on a resource that is not their own. What gives a corporation the right to come into any state and take the ground water and use it to make a profit for themselves by selling it elsewhere? A resource that is a fundamental human right? This will happen more and more in the United States however, as water resources become more depleted elsewhere and demand for bottled water increases. It is a problem we must deal with now, especially also in light of changes predicted from the climate crisis should conditions remain the same or worsen as governments collude with corporations to control dwindling resources in order to extort higher prices to make a profit.
Just look at the climate crisis and the affects of it already being felt globally (with Darfur a clear example of how far environmental devastation can go and its effects.) The Bush regime knows full well the truth about this crisis and the extent of it, and that is why I believe they are purposefully fronting a disinformation campaign to keep doubt in the minds of people as to its true repercussions in order to buy up the water resources in the meantime before people enmasse truly wake up.
This is why the politics of fear and secrecy is so important to address and fight, because it is affecting our very ability to survive.
And it is not only the privitization of our resources that we must be concerned about. The water bottling industry in this country alone is a 400 billion dollar industry. It pulls in three times more than the pharmaceutical industry and demand is rising. So as population rises and demand rises with it worldwide freshwater resources will begin to dwindle to satisy the demand, and once it's gone it's gone. One in six Americans drink only bottled water. Moreso, bottled water is often not what it appears to be.
Corporations spend millions of dollars promoting it as safe, clean, healthy, and superior in quality to tap water, while many popular brands actually come from our public taps. A Natural Resources Defense Council study found that bottled water is no more "pure" or safe than tap water. The bottled water industry is also the least regulated industry in the US. And it can be seen by the price which in many cases is marked up to cost more per gallon than gasoline! Which of course makes those in this industry very happy, but at what price to us in the costs it brings to our land and to our global environment? Do they truly have the universal right to simply use this precious resource for their own profit over the needs of others?
It was Coke, Pepsi, and Nestle which sponsored the World Water Forum which took place last March, and they account for half the global bottled water market. And they are also pushing for privatization of water resources with the World Bank backing them up. I think you get the picture.
Water should remain a public trust controlled by local government at the behest of the taxpayers. It should also be declared a fundamental human right. It is the utter insensitivity and indifference of these companies overshadowed by their greed that makes this all so unfair and so morally wrong. I believe there need to be more stringent guidelines in allowing just anyone with a permit to take water out of the ground. Again, the taxpayers of any state should have rights over corporations who come in simply to raid their water resources for profit and privitize their systems. So we must keep fighting to see the day when water, that most sacred, beautiful, and life sustaining force is treated with the respect it should be treated with and used to give life to all equally who need it. The article linked in the entry noted above is a most comprehensive look at the schemes involved in buying up our public trust to keep... more
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