The Globalists (owners of multinational corporations) are making great efforts to make profit from selling air and water to people.
Air and water are the fundamental elements provided by Nature at no cost to all life on our planet.
Under disguise of an environmental crisis, unrestricted, greedy corporations are already making huge profits from selling water and air to the people…
Crooked politicians are trying to extend the carbon tax to breathing (since people and farm animals exhale carbon dioxide).
Idiocy and absurdity of justifications for such taxes offered by politicians to the public is obvious.
Globalists already profit from selling air, water and health services ( see mandatory vaccination programs forced by Big Pharma in 2021 )…
While the Latin America’s available resources could provide each person with close to 110,500 cubic feet of water every year, the average resident has access to only 1,010 cubic feet per year. This compares to North America’s annual average of 4,160 cubic feet and Europe’s 2,255.6
An influx of private, for-profit corporations into the region over the last decade has exacerbated the problems of scarcity, urbanization, pollution and inequitable access. Private water companies, determined to take advantage of Latin America’s water crisis, are operating or planning to operate in most countries of the region, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Uruguay.
Most of these companies are local subsidiaries of the three largest multinational water service companies—Suez and Vivendi of France, and RWE-Thames Water of Germany (the “Big-3”). A decade ago, the Big-3 serviced only 51 million people in just 12 countries. Together, the three now deliver water and wastewater services to almost 300 million customers in over 130 countries. Suez and Vivendi control over 70% of the existing water service market worldwide. Their revenues have kept pace with their growth. Vivendi, for example, earned over $12 billion in 2002 compared with just $5 billion a decade ago. All three are ranked among the wealthiest 100 corporations in the world with combined annual revenues in 2002 of almost $160 billion and an annual growth rate of 10%, outpacing many of the national economies in which they operate.
Often, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) facilitate the aggressive entry of these companies into Latin American markets. Both Suez and Vivendi use their considerable clout among multilateral lenders to make private water delivery a “condition” for debt relief or new loans.
— Quote from 2007 article cited below
Below is one of many articles on this subject.
Bolivia’s Water War Victory (2000)
At 10am, President Hugo Banzer places Bolivia under martial law. This drastic move concludes a week of protests, general strikes and transportation blockages that have jerked the country to a virtual standstill, and follows the surprise announcement of government concession to protesters’ demands to break a $200 million contract selling Cochabamba’s public water system to foreign investors.
The water system is currently controlled by Aguas del Tunari, a consortium led by London-based International Water Limited (IWL), which is itself jointly owned by the Italian utility Edison and US-based Bechtel Enterprise Holdings. Upon purchasing the water system, the consortium immediately raised rates by up to 35 percent. That untenable hike sparked the protests.
In January, “Cochabambinos” staged strikes and blocked transit, effectively shutting their city down for four straight days. The Bolivian government then promised to lower rates, but broke that promise within weeks. On February 4, when thousands tried to march in peaceful protest, President Banzer had police hammer protesters with two days of tear gas that the 175 people injured and two youths blinded.
Ninety percent of Cochabamba’s citizens believed it was time for Bechtel’s subsidiary to return the water system to public control, according to results of a 60,000-person survey conducted in March. But it seems that the government has come to Bechtel’s rescue, insisting the company remain in Bolivia. President Banzer, who ruled Bolivia as a dictator from 1971-78, has suspended almost all civil rights, banning gatherings of more than four people, and severely limiting freedom of the press. “We see it as our obligation, in the common best interest, to decree a state of emergency to protect law and order,” Banzer trumpeted.
Local radio stations have been closed or taken over by military. News paper reporters have been arrested. Police conducted nighttime raids searching homes for water protesters and arresting as many as 20 people.
The local police chief has been installed as state governor. The “emergency government” now consists of a president (Hugo Banzer), a governor (Walter Cespedes) and a mayor (Manfred Reyes Villa), each of whom is a graduate of the notorious School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia (infamous for training foreign military personnel in terror and assassination techniques).
Rural blockades erected by farmers have cut some cities off from food and transportation. Large crowds of angry residents armed with sticks and rocks are massing in the city centers, where confrontations with military and police escalate.
Tear gas has engulfed thousands of demonstrators in downtown Cochabamba, while a large military operation is mobilizing to clear the highways in five of the nation’s nine provinces.
All this puts Cochabamba on the front-line in the battle against a globalization of water resources. The Coordiadora de Defense de Aguay la Vida (CDAV, Coalition in Defense of Water and Life), a broad-based collaborative including environmental groups, economists, lawyers, labor unions and local neighborhood organizations, spearheads the campaign to prevent loss of local control over water systems. Its leaders either have been arrested or driven underground.
Bechtel Crumbles, Flees Bolivia
It has been one hell of a week here. The CDAV, led by 45-year-old machinist Oscar Olivera, has kicked the Bechtel Corporation out of Bolivia! (I’d like to see a consumer revolt in my home state of California match that!) The people stood up to President Banzer and martial law. I am in awe at what we were able to accomplish together, all across the globe, using the Internet. Hacking away at this keyboard in a corner of the Andes that few people in other places ever think about, we sent the news of what happened here out to many thousands of people around the world. In a matter of hours, we transformed the Bechtel Corporation from “the invisible hand behind the scenes” to a corporation right smack on the hot seat.
Thousands of emails streaming into its San Francisco headquarters from Mexico, England, Canada, Iceland, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Nepal, Australia and the US forced the corporate behemoth to respond. Bechtel’s equivocating public relations statement generated caustic headlines in Bolivia and caused the Bolivian government to state definitively that Bechtel’s water company isn’t coming back.
Bechtel is a global giant, posting more than $12.6 billion in revenue in 1998 – $2.4 billion on Latin American projects alone. IWL is its arm through which it pursues water-privatization schemes such as Aguas dei Tunari. Bechtel, Inc., has trumpeted that IWL “with its partners, is presently providing water and wastewater services to nearly six million ‘customers in the Philippines, Australia, Scotland, and Bolivia and completing negotiations on agreements in India, Poland, and Scotland for facilities that will serve an additional one million customers.”
The World Bank’s Role
On Wednesday, a Finnish news reporter forced World Bank Director James Wolfensohn to comment directly on the Bolivia water protests. Wolfensohn argued that giving public services away leads inevitably to waste, and said that countries like Bolivia need to have a “a proper system of charging.” The former Wall Street financier claimed Bank-backed privatization of the Cochabamba water system was by no means directed against the poor. In La Paz, Bolivia, protest leader Oscar Olivera responded, “In Mr. Wolfensohn’s view, requiring families who earn $100 per month to pay $20 for water may be ‘a proper system of charging,’ but the thousands of people who filled the streets and shut down Cochabamba last week apparently felt otherwise.”
In a June, 1999 report, the World Bank stated, “No subsidies should be given to ameliorate the increase in water tariffs in Cochabamba,” arguing that all water users including the very poor should receive bills reflecting the full cost of a proposed expansion of the local water system. (Water-users in wealthy suburbs surrounding Washington, DC, home to many World Bank economists, pay approximately $17 per month for water, less than what many Colombians were asked to pay after water was privatized in one of South America’s poorest countries.)
Olivera continued, “I’d like to meet with Mr. Wolfensohn to educate him on how privatization has been a direct attack on Bolivia’s poor. Families with monthly incomes of around $100 have seen their water bills jump to $20 per month – more than they spend on food. I’d like to invite Mr. Wolfensohn to come to Cochabamba and see the reality he apparently can’t; see from his office in Washington, DC.”
The past week’s uprisings in Bolivia provide a leading example of the abuses of international economic policies, including the privatizing public enterprises such as drinking water.
Bechtel Blames “Narcotraffickers”
In 1999, the Bolivian government, under heavy pressure from the World Bank, sold Cochabamba’s public water system to Bechtel’s Aguas del Tunan. Details of the deal remain secret, with Bechtel claiming the numbers constitute “intellectual property”
That Bechtel’s subsidiary was intent on obtaining maxi mum returns on its investment, as quickly as possible, is clear. Within weeks of hoisting their corporate flag over local water facilities, Aguas del Tunari hit up water-users with rate hikes of double and more. Families earning a minimum wage of less than $100 per month were dunned for $20 and more and threatened with having the water shut off. Tanya Paredes, a mother of five who supports her family as a clothes-knitter, was hit with an increase of $15 per month – equal to her family’s entire food budget for ten days and a 300 per cent increase over her previous bill.
On April 8, 17-year-old Victor Hugo Daza was shot thorough the face and killed: The ultimate penalty for challenging Bechtel’s control of local water supplies. As protest leader Oscar Olivera remarked in the aftermath of this needless tragedy, “The blood spilled in Cochabamba carries the fingerprints of Bechtel.”
Bechtel, seeking to pin the blame on anything but its own irresponsible corporate venality, released a statement claiming that “a number of other water, social and political issues are the root causes of this civil unrest.” Moving to shift the blame, Bolivian government spokesman Ronald MacLean told reporters the “subversive” protest was “absolutely politically financed by narcotraffickers.”
But the uprising had nothing to do with drugs: It was all about water. And the real culprits are not narcotraffickers hiding deep in la selva, but the well-groomed executives of the Bechtel Corporation sitting smugly in their San Francisco Financial District offices a hemisphere away.
Bechtel Speaks, We Respond
A series of editorials I wrote for several US papers triggered a public response from Didier Quint, head of the Bechtel subsidiary that oversaw the fiasco in Bolivia, in which he accused me of misrepresenting the facts. I do not take accuracy lightly My reports from Cochabamba were based on eyewitness accounts and extensive interviews drawn from the center of the action, sometimes at significant personal risk. Bechtel’s response, written from far-off London, was riddled with numerous, profound and documentable misstatements of fact.
Quint’s interpretations confirmed what Bolivian water-rights protesters have been saying for months: The contract made with Bolivia’s government was a dud from the very beginning, a virtual guarantee that thousands of poor families would be hit with water rates they could not afford. Bechtel now complains bitterly about that contract, but the fact remains that they negotiated it, signed it and implemented it. It was in negotiations for that same contract that Bechtel’s companies demanded, and won, a provision guaranteeing the company an average 16 percent annual return on its investment, leaving Bolivia’s poor to bear all the financial risk.
According to Quint, “Several wealthy interests paid poor people to demonstrate against the concession.” Apparently, Quint’s local contacts failed to relate that during the seven days of protests, all highways in and out of Cochabamba were blocked, with no ground transportation functioning. Many protesters traveled by foot from rural communities, some from as far as 40 miles. No mysterious unnamed interests paid them to do so – they came to reclaim control of their water.
Quint claimed that the Coordinadora, the civic alliance that led the protests, was composed of “people and organizations having an interest in the parallel water market or being part of the most affluent sector of the population.” In fact, the coalition is led by a union representing minimum wage factory workers and including peasant farmers, environmentalists and youth.
Quint alleged that “opposition to the proposed new water law also came from coca leaf growers… supported by their cocaine connection.” The best response to that comes from local taxi driver Franz Pedrazas, whose water rates rose last January from $10 per month to $20, an increase equal to more than what he earns driving a cab for 12 hours. “I’m not a narcotrafficker,” Pedrazas protested. “If I were, why I would I be driving a cab? The farmers aren’t narcotraffickers either.”
Quint also claimed that “The typical rates for water and sewage services rose 35 percent. Low-income residents were to pay 10 percent more and the largest hikes (106 percent) were reserved for the highest volume users, the most affluent.” After four months, I am still looking without success for someone who had a rate hike of just 10 percent. Even among the poor, rate increases of at least 100 percent were common and many people suffered increases much higher. Local newspaper investigations confirm the extreme rate hikes.
As did other journalists here in Bolivia, I attempted to reach Bechtel’s local representative, Geoffrey Thorpe, for his comments during the seven days of the uprising. None of my calls was returned. On several occasions, Thorpe is reported to have hung up on the few journalists who did manage to reach him by telephone.
Cochabamba suffered four months of upheaval because of Becthel’s conduct. A 17-year-old boy is dead, two youths are blinded and more than 100 others were injured. Those who opposed the water privatization scheme had their homes ransacked and some were flown off to a remote rainforest jail in an effort to silence them. While the people of Cochabamba were having their blood spilled on the streets, Quint’s subordinates were busily removing the water company computers and financial and personnel records. Bechtel’s fleeing administrators left behind emptied bank accounts and more than $150,000 in unpaid bills. On top of all this suffering and damage, Bechtel now has the audacity to demand a compensation payment of $12 million from Bolivia.
If Bechtel wants to recover a shred of its decimated corporate good will, it has got to stop spinning out misinformation and disinformation. It must return what it has stolen, reconcile its unpaid bills and withdraw its outrageous demands for $12 million more from people who owe it nothing – not even a drink of water.
To protest Bechtel’s water policies, contact: Riley Bechtel [rbechtel@bechtel.com] or Didier Quint Idplquint@iwltd.com] and Bechtel’s Public Relations Division, 456 Montgomery St., San Francisco, CA 94104 [globrep@bechtel. com, www. bechtel. com.
https://thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/Bolivia_WaterWarVictory.html
The Struggle for Latin America’s Water
September 25, 2007
Latin America is blessed with an abundance of fresh water. The region contains four of the world’s 25 largest rivers—the Amazon, Paraná, Orinoco and Magdalena—and their combined run-off of 5,470 cubic miles almost equals the combined run-off of the other 21. Some of the world’s large lakes are also located in Latin America, including Maracaibo in Venezuela, Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia, Poopo in Bolivia, and Buenos Aires, shared by Chile and Argentina. Twenty percent of global runoff—the renewable water source that constitutes our fresh water supply—comes from the Amazon Basin alone. With one-fifth of the globe’s water resources, Brazil on its own has more water than any other country.1 The region as a whole has one of the highest per capita allocations of fresh water in the world—a little less than 110,500 cubic feet per person per year. Geography, pollution and social inequality, however, badly skew Latin Americans’ access to water, and very few consume anything near their full personal allocation.
As a relatively parched country, Mexico has a miniscule potential supply of approximately 13,000 cubic feet per person. Natural desert is merging with a spreading human-induced desert over much of the Valley of Mexico, the country’s cradle of pre-conquest civilization and present-day home of the nation’s capital. Once called the “Venice of the New World” due to its being built atop a lake and intersected with canals, Mexico City is now sinking in on itself as it drains the last of its accessible aquifers from the lakebed below. This is a legacy of the conquering Spanish, who used slave labor to dismantle the more sustainable water systems of the original inhabitants.
In South America, human-induced salination is causing desertification in significant parts of Peru, Bolivia and northwestern Argentina. In total—factoring in the large natural deserts of Patagonia in southern Argentina and the Atacama in northern Chile—about 25% of Latin America is now arid or semi-arid. Most of the Caribbean is also fresh water deprived, since the islands are too small to have substantial rivers.2
Poor farming practices, unregulated industrialization and urban poverty have massively and negatively affected Latin America’s water resources. Booming, concentrated populations in Latin America’s mega-cities are devouring and contaminating their water supplies, forcing officials to seek out increasingly distant sources. In most large cities, over 50% of the water supply is lost through infrastructure leakage. Some cities lose almost 90% through leaky pipes.3 Mexico City now depends on aquifers for 70% of its water and is mining these underground sources up to 80 times faster than they are naturally replenished.4 Meanwhile, São Paulo is threatening residents with water rationing. The city is relying on sources farther and farther away, hiking the cost of delivery beyond many peoples’ ability to pay for it.
Throughout the region, water basins and aquatic habitats are routine dumpsites for garbage, mining effluent, and industrial and agricultural waste. Pollution in the waterways along the U.S.-Mexico border is so bad that some refer to it as a “2,000-mile Love Canal,” in reference to an upstate New York neighborhood that was declared a federal emergency in 1978 because of chemical contamination. The region’s heaviest polluter is Brazil—the country with the most water. Brazil allows massive chemical and industrial pollution, including mercury dumping from its gold mining industry. Only parts of Eastern Europe and China exceed Brazil’s levels of waterway contamination. Most of Latin America’s wastewater still flows untreated back into its rivers, lakes and canals.
Rampant poverty is another factor. After years of structural adjustment imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, as a region, Latin America has the most inequitable income distribution in the world. Mirroring this is a pattern of tremendously unequal access to water. More than 130 million people have no safe drinking water in their homes, and only an estimated one out of every six persons enjoys adequate sanitation service.5 The situation worsens as policies favoring industrial agriculture drive millions of subsistence farmers into the cities’ overpopulated slums every year.
The destruction of water sources, combined with inequitable access, has left most Latin Americans “water poor.” And millions live without access to clean water at all. While the region’s available resources could provide each person with close to 110,500 cubic feet of water every year, the average resident has access to only 1,010 cubic feet per year. This compares to North America’s annual average of 4,160 cubic feet and Europe’s 2,255.6
An influx of private, for-profit corporations into the region over the last decade has exacerbated the problems of scarcity, urbanization, pollution and inequitable access. Private water companies, determined to take advantage of Latin America’s water crisis, are operating or planning to operate in most countries of the region, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Uruguay.
Most of these companies are local subsidiaries of the three largest multinational water service companies—Suez and Vivendi of France, and RWE-Thames Water of Germany (the “Big-3”). A decade ago, the Big-3 serviced only 51 million people in just 12 countries. Together, the three now deliver water and wastewater services to almost 300 million customers in over 130 countries. Suez and Vivendi control over 70% of the existing water service market worldwide. Their revenues have kept pace with their growth. Vivendi, for example, earned over $12 billion in 2002 compared with just $5 billion a decade ago. All three are ranked among the wealthiest 100 corporations in the world with combined annual revenues in 2002 of almost $160 billion and an annual growth rate of 10%, outpacing many of the national economies in which they operate.7
Often, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) facilitate the aggressive entry of these companies into Latin American markets. Both Suez and Vivendi use their considerable clout among multilateral lenders to make private water delivery a “condition” for debt relief or new loans. According to Public Citizen, the IDB alone holds about $58 billion of debt in the region, giving it tremendous power to impose water privatization on desperate municipalities. The IDB’s current projects have slated more than $1 billion in funding for privatized water and sanitation services. In fact, some of the largest IDB loans of the last decade went directly to transnational water companies for the operation of private water concessions in countries like Argentina, Bolivia and Honduras.
Meanwhile, the World Bank has decided to triple its annual financing commitments to global private sector water projects. After a decade of lucrative assistance from the World Bank, the Big-3 are now demanding guaranteed financing to insulate themselves from foreign currency fluctuations before making any new investments in developing countries. At the same time, the major water privateers are facing mounting and fierce public opposition to their operations in many parts of Latin America. As in the rest of the world, the damaging effects of water privatization are well-documented: rate hikes, cut-offs to customers who can’t pay, reduced water quality, huge profits for corporate investors, secret contracts, bribery and corruption.
In the Maldonado province of Uruguay, water prices soared and supplies became contaminated when Uraqua, a subsidiary of the Spanish water company Aguas de Bilboa, received the concession to deliver water on a for-profit “full cost-recovery basis.” Uruguayans successfully launched a binding national referendum, scheduled for October 2004, seeking the constitutional protection of water as a human right, a public good and outside the reach of for-profit companies.
In Puerto Rico, where Suez holds a 10-year, $4 billion contract to deliver water services, Solicitor General Carlos Lopez decried the company’s performance. Lopez claims Suez has paid much attention to improving billing and fee collection, but has made “no improvement” in the delivery of potable water to consumers.
Arguably, the best-known reaction to water privatization occurred in Cochabamba, Bolivia when the engineering giant Bechtel set up its subsidiary, Aguas del Tunari, in early 2000 and immediately raised the price of water beyond the reach of the vast majority of the population. Its contract even gave the company the right to charge people for the water they took from their own wells and to send collection agents to homes to charge for rainwater collected in cisterns on roofs. Consumers were hit with up to 200% rate increases as the company planned for annual profits of $58 million.8 Public protests forced the government to reverse this privatization effort, but Bechtel is now suing Bolivia for $25 million in lost profits. Despite the fiasco in Cochabamba, the Bolivian government is still pursuing several other privatization schemes, including plans to export and sell bulk water to neighboring Chile for use in its mining industry. If last October’s attempted exportation of gas through Chile is any indication, this plan is bound to provoke a negative response from the Bolivian public.
The nudge towards water privatization in mexico provides yet another alarming example of how governments, the international financial institutions and private water companies work in concert, with little regard for public well-being. The government of Mexico, along with others in the Global South, is laying the groundwork for the corporate takeover of the country’s water system.
Back in the 1990s, a series of constitutional and legislative changes already started shifting water services to private hands in Mexico. In 1992, for example, the Salinas administration modified the Constitution to allow foreign-based corporations to obtain water contracts and concessions and introduced a new national water law permitting global corporations to invest in Mexico’s water utilities. Later, as part of its national development agenda, the Zedillo government handed over responsibility for water and sewage services to municipal governments.
As a result, the past decade saw 20% of Mexico’s water system privatized. The main corporate players have been the two leading French-based water giants, Suez and Vivendi, along with U.K.-based United Utilities and the Spanish company Agua de Barcelona. For these corporations, the prime targets for takeover have been water services in larger tourist areas and urban centers, leaving the smaller, less populated and less lucrative municipalities to governmental stewardship.
Current Mexican President Vicente Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive, has been even more aggressive in pursuing privatization. In the wake of September 11, his administration declared water a matter of national security. This allows the full powers of the state, including military operations and anti-terrorism measures, to be applied, if necessary, against anyone seen as opposing the government’s plans for restructuring and privatizing the water sector.
Also in 2001, the Mexican government created the Program for the Modernization of Water Management Companies (PROMAGUA) to advance privatization. The World Bank and the federal government provided the $250 million needed to jumpstart the project.9
PROMAGUA coordinates the massive restructuring of Mexico’s water systems by providing generous subsidies to projects and attracting private investment. It facilitates the corporate takeover of public water utilities by authorizing contracts or concessions—valid for periods ranging from five to 50 years—between local governments and private water companies, targeting urban centers with a population of 50,000 or more. By 2002, PROMAGUA had coordinated the signing of agreements with 28 of Mexico’s 30 states, including 687 municipalities encompassing 70% of the country’s urban population.
PROMAGUA established a national data bank to help foreign corporations decide where to invest in Mexico’s water utilities. It achieved this with help from the World Environment Center (WEC), a New York-based non-profit organization that promotes industry-government partnerships and is supported by some of the world’s largest transnationals. The WEC works closely with PROMAGUA to obtain the information and intelligence required for this data bank. At the same time, PROMAGUA set up a center on the outskirts of Mexico City to train people for work in water systems. Co-sponsored by some 40 companies based in France, the center has prepared over 3,000 people for work in Mexico’s revamped and privatized water system. Suez and Vivendi, of course, are among the most prominent and active supporters of PROMAGUA’s training facility.
In addition to government funding, PROMAGUA receives hefty support from international financial institutions including the World Bank, the IDB and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In 2003, for example, the World Bank announced it would pump $5 billion into Mexico over the following two years. Although earmarked for a variety of infrastructure development projects, a considerable portion of the loan will fuel the corporate takeover of public water utilities through the Bank’s International Finance Corporation.
Mexico City illustrates vividly what happens when for-profit corporations collude to carve-up public water utilities. In 1993, the government divided the city’s water delivery system into four administrative quadrants. Suez and Vivendi each took control of one quadrant, while the U.K.-based companies United Utilities and Severn Trent captured the remaining two. The companies then proceeded to charge Mexico City residents different and, therefore, inequitable water rates. Furthermore, when the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) assumed municipal office and called for a uniform water rate across the metropolitan area, the corporations initially protested. They later relented so as not to risk losing these valuable concessions.
Beyond unjustified billing rates, privatized water services in Mexico City and elsewhere in the country have brought countless other problems. Those residents who are unable to pay escalating water bills face frequent service cut-offs as well as long delays from company officials in dealing with their complaints. In 2001, for example, Vivendi increased its Mexico City rates by 60%, which led to payment defaults and, consequently, service cut-offs mostly effecting poor residents in that quadrant. Flooding has dramatically increased due to neglect of pipes and infrastructure. For the most part, the big water corporations have been unwilling to make substantial investments to improve water infrastructure, though they seem eager to pass on mounting debts to municipal governments.
All across latin america, fierce resistance to this theft of public water is growing. In communities large and small, citizens are taking to the streets, organizing referenda and petitions, and fighting for their right to water. Latin American activists and academics are on the front line of the global water justice movement, speaking at international conferences, protesting World Bank policies and organizing for a binding UN Convention on the right to water.
On August 22, 2003, 47 grassroots organizations from 16 countries in the Americas met in San Salvador where they launched a new movement called RED VIDA. This Inter-American network of water activists issued the San Salvador Statement for the Defense of and the Right to Water. Many of the member groups of this new network played pivotal roles at the World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan in March 2003, where the World Bank and the big water companies tried unsuccessfully to sell their privatization “consensus” to the world. When the Big-3, the World Bank and their allies tried to convince the Forum participants in Kyoto to adopt “public-private partnerships” as the best model for the delivery of water services, civil society organizations and water activists from around the world formed an alliance to obstruct this agenda. Calling themselves “water warriors,” alliance members went on to effectively challenge the predetermined “consensus” as it applied to nine other theme topics of the Forum. RED VIDA also played a prominent role in launching the Peoples’ World Water Movement, which took place at a summit in New Delhi on the eve of the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai, India. RED VIDA members forged strong alliances with Indian groups that are also battling the invasion of private water companies.
For almost 20 years, the people of Latin America have been combating neoliberalism, with varying degrees of success. But the move to commodify their water for the benefit of faraway investors has injected new life into this effort. It is as if a line in the sand has been drawn. Because people cannot live without water, there is a distinctive urgency and tenacity to this struggle. Their demand for water democracy will not be silenced.
About the Authors:
Maude Barlow is Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and Tony Clarke is the Director of the Polaris Institute. Their book, Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water (New Press, 2003) is now available in Spanish, Oro azul: Las multinacionales y el robo organizado de agua en el mundo (Ediciones Paidós Ibérica, 2004).
NOTES:
1. Marq de Villiers, Water (Toronto: Stoddart Publishing, 1999).
2. Armando Chávez, “Latin America: Poor Distribution of Water and Even Worse Use,” in 2004 Express, http://www.barcelona2004.org/eng/actualidad/publicaciones/focus/html/f041366.htm, citing the Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean.
3. World Resources, 1998-99 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
4. Mario Osava, “Mega Cities Squander Water Resources,” Inter Press Service, March 19, 2004, citing the Global Environment Outlook study by the UN.
5. Press Release, Pan American Health Organization, October 3, 2002.
6. World Resources, 1998-99 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
7. “The Water Barons,” Center for Public Integrity, 2003, http://www.icij.org/water/default.aspx.
8. Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water (New York: New Press, 2002).
9. The following paragraphs on PROMAGUA in Mexico are based on research conducted by Alejandra Peña of the National Autonomous Univeristy of Mexico (UNAM) while on a study assignment at the Polaris Institute in Canada, 2003-2004.