BK7_3 Summer 2001 Vol 7 #3 Water as Commodity

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BACKGRO
SUMMER 2001
VOLUME 7 • NUMBER 3 • SOc
Water as CommodjtyJhe Wrong Prescrjptjon
MAUDE BARLOW, NATIONAL CHAIRPERSON, COUNCIL OF CANADIANS
he world is poised to make crucial and irrevocable decisions about water. When world
J leaders and civil society representatives gathered at the tenth Stockholm Water Sym)
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posium in August 2000, there was little disagreement about the urgent nature of the water
crisis facing the world.
All the attendees agreed that the human race has taken water for granted an d massively misjudged the capacity of the earth's water systems to sustain the demands made upon
it. Our supply of available fresh water is finite
and represents less than half of one percent
of the world's total water stock. Thirty-one
countries are facing water stress and scarcity and over a billion people lack adequate
access to clean drinking water. By consensus, the group recognized the terrible reality that by the ye ar 2025, as much as
two-thirds of the world's population will be
living with water shortages or absolute
water scarcity.'
The Stockholm Water Symposium also
acknowledged that instead of taking great
care with the limited water we have, we are
diverting, polluting, and depleting it at an
astonishing rate as if there were no reckoningto come.
But there is profound disagreement Water as a fundamental right is guaranteed in
among those in the "water world," around the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
the nature of the threat and the solution to
it. A growing movement of people believe that the imperatives of economic globalizationunlimited growth, a seamless global consumer market, corporate rule, deregulation, privatization, and free trade-are the driving forces behind the destruction of our water
systems. These must be challenged and rejected if the world's water is to be saved.
continued on page 2
cases, such as the world's 850 free trade zones
they
either look the other way as environmental
Econo mi c g lobalization integrates th e
laws are broken and waters are criminally poleconomies of nation-states into a single unified
or actually set lower standards in these
luted
market and carries industrial production to
zones than for the rest of the country.
new levels. It intensifies natural resource
Throughout Latin America and Asia, masexploitation and exacerbates every existing
sive industrialization in rural communities is
environmental problem. The imperative of
affecting the ba lance between humans and
globalization is unlimited growth, making it
nature. Water use is being diverted from agriimpossible for paliicipating countries to make
culture to industry. Huge corporate factories
preservation a priority.
are moving up the rivers of the Third World,
Developing countries have restructured
them dry as they go. Agribusinesses
sucking
their economic systems to pay their debt and
growing crops for export are claiming more of
export their way to prosperity. destroying both
water once used by family and peasant
the
natural ecosystems and environmental regulafarmers for food self-sufficiency. The global
tions. Economic globalization has also resultexpansion in mining and m an ufacturin g is
ed in the exp onential increase in the
use of
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increasing the threat of pollufossil fuels, dams and diver,
tion of underground water
sions, massive transportation
supplies
and contaminating
Under the current
systems needed to carry out
th
e
aquifers
that provide
global trade, and roads carved
system of market-driven
mo r e than 50 percent of
out of wilderness. In the globeconomic globalization,
domestic supplies in most
al market, running out of a
there are no limits placed
Asian
countries.
local resource can be quickly
To fe e d th e vo r acious
on where capital can go
rectified: when East Coast cod
glob
al consumer market,
to 'harvest' nature.
are d epleted, we just move on
China h as transformed its
to Chilean sea bass.
entire economy, massively
In the new economy, everydiverting water use from communities and
thing is for sale, even those areas of life once
local
farming to its burgeoning industrial secconsidered sacred, like seeds and genes, cultor. As the big industrial wells consume more
ture and heritage, food, aif, and water. As never
water, millions of Chinese farmers have found
before in history, the public space, the vital comtheir local wells pumped dry. Eighty percent of
mons of knowledge and our natural heritage,
China's major rivers are now so degraded, they
has been hijacked by the forces of private greed.
no longer support fish. Economic globalization
As environmental leader Paul Hawken says,
and the policies that drive it are proving to be
"Given cu rrent corporate practices, not one
totally unsustainable.
wildlife reserve, wilderness, or indigenous culture will survive the global economy. We know
THE WATER TRANSNATIONAL$
that every natural system on the planet is disThis leads to a second area of potential disintegrating. The land, water, air, and sea have
agreement, the role of transnational corporabeen functionally transformed from life-suptions in determining the future of water. Just
porting systems into repositories for waste.
as governments are backing away from their
There is no polite way to say that business is
regulatory responsibilities, giant transnationdestroying the world."
al water, food, energy, and shipping corporaIn the race to compete for foreign direct
tions are acquiring control of water through
investment, countries are stripping their envithe ownership of dams and waterways. These
ronmental laws and protection of natural
corporations are gaining control over the burresources, including water p rotection. In some
ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION
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