Apr
10
Week 6: Turning Water to Gold
April 10, 2008 | | 1 Comment
By Elmy Lung
In my last post I wrote about how the “World Water Day” was mentioned because Ariel was using it in a timely manner to further market its products. It got me thinking if commercializing something is the way to attract attention and to make it “newsworthy”, then no wonder the privatization of water has been much reported. The CBC News has a page with in-depth articles and audio clips on the topic. Where there’s money to be made, there will surely be a group of wide-eyed readers eager to get tips to make a few bucks. If that’s the case, perhaps it may just lure more walking money-magnets in Hong Kong to actually pay some notice to problems caused by water privatization.
When talking about water privatization, it is commonly associated to the South American region. The abundance of fresh water seems more like a curse than a blessing. Although it is mentioned in Maude Barlow & Tony Clarke’s The Struggle for Latin America’s Water, “The region as a whole has one of the highest per capita allocations of fresh water in the world’s a little less than 110,500 cubic feet per person per year” but uncareful developments have caused great pollution (salination of water making it unconsumable), pipe leakages (up to 90% water lost in some cities), over reliance on water aquifers. All of these problems mean Latin Americans’ access to water is significantly decreased, failing to meet the allocation potential that its water resources are capable of delivering.
And private water companies waste no time in capitalizing on the situation. Between 1998- 2004, the number of people in the South who gets their water from such companies skyrocketed 17 fold. Some analysts have also estimated that by 2015, 60% of the billion people worldwide purchasing water will be from Latin America. Of course, with the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund often applying a water privatization policy as a precondition before countries can receive lending, the number of people who have no choice but to surrender to European-based water firms could actually be higher. How just how much do the number of users translate to, in monetary terms?
Suez, Veolia Environnement (both French companies) and RWE-Thames Water (German), known as the “Big Three”, are all ranked among the top 100 corporations in the world, with “combined annual revenues in 2002 of almost $160 billion and an annual growth rate of 10%”. In that regard, their powers could probably rival or even surpass than of the original “Big Three” (Churchill,Stalin and FDR) during the Second World War. Veolia Environnement alone, had its earnings jump from $5 billion to $12 billion in 2002 within ten years. And making money from water is what Michael Goldman calls the spread of “green neoliberalism“.
There is no sign of this green neoliberalism from stopping either. Private water companies are already operating or have plans to, from Colombia all the way down to Argentina. With this, there is growing frustration among the public that water is fast becoming an expensive commodity they cannot afford. But it’s not always been easy to battle against the aggressive and money-savvy private companies.
Uruguayans had to initiate a binding national referendum in 2004 to halt the Spanish water company Aguas de Bilboa (whose guerkin-like headquarters in Barcelona have quickly became a new landmark among many of Gaudi’s famous architectures), who was bagging from soaring water prices- citing that water is to be protected by the consitution as a human right that should be out of reach for making a profitting on.
Only last month did American engineering company Bechtel dropped their case to sue Bolivia for $25 million in lost profits when protests turned violent in the city of Cochabamba in 2000, that had led the government to stop the privatization. It’s not difficult to understand why the protests got heated then. The company, in an attempt to boost its annual profits to $58 million, pumped water prices up by 200% which was way more than what people could afford.
There are other negative effects from this influx of private water companies securing the resources for profits. Among others are lowered water quality, secret dealings, corruption and bribery. All of these problems accelerate the inequality gap creating more social issues.
But then these aren’t real concerns are they? The fact that people are drowning in poverty, have narrowing access to clean and safe water, have resources that are being utilized and manipulated by foreign companies contain no meaning. As long as some opportunists gain control of water before rivers run dry, have little conscious, stay as long as they can to make big money before getting rebelled by the people to leave- then that would be good enough to earn them respect in the capitalist world which is all that really matters. I don’t think so.
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Nice post Elmy. It would be good to look at the other side, and see if there are any instances of privatization of water supplies bringing any benefits to people ( other than the company owners).