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dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/20/the-privatization-of-water-and-the-impoverishment-of-the-global-south/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/20/the-privatization-of-water-and-the-impoverishment-of-the-global-south/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The Privatization of Water and the
Impoverishment of the Global South</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/q7netaje/"
rel="nofollow">Julian Vigo</a> - March 20, 2018<br>
</span></div>
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<p>Argentina just experienced its <a
href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-28/worst-drought-in-30-years-adds-to-argentina-s-economic-woes">worse
drought</a> in thirty years; California recently
suffered its worse drought since the 1400s according to
ring tree research carried out by the <a
href="https://www.water.ca.gov/-/media/DWR-Website/Web-Pages/Water-Basics/Drought/Files/Publications-And-Reports/UofAZ-SoCal-tree-ring-report-dec-2017.pdf">University
of Arizona</a>; Oregon Governor Kate Brown just signed
an executive order over the dire conditions of drought
in the Klamath Basin, agriculture disaster was recently
declared by the <a
href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/arkansas/articles/2018-03-14/usda-ag-disaster-from-drought-in-4-states">U.S.
Department of Agriculture</a> in four states
(Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas) due to
drought, concentrated in to a total of 25 parishes and
124 counties; last week Iranian <a
href="http://en.apa.az/world-news/asia-news/iranian-farmers-stage-protest-in-drought-hit-isfahan.html">farmers
in Isfahan</a> protested the government’s failure to
act on a drought that has plagued the region for over a
decade; farmers in Maharashtra, India protested over
loan waivers, prices, and land rights with state
ministers due to the <a
href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43368050">growing
problem of drought</a> in the region; on Tuesday,
Kansas Governor, <a
href="http://www.farmtalknewspaper.com/news/governor-s-drought-declaration-assists-farmers-and-ranchers/article_2598f818-27a7-11e8-8a56-3b8049cbea3a.html">Jeff
Colyer</a>, signed a drought declaration for all 105
counties in the state of Kansas; and also on Tuesday the
South African government declared that the drought
afflicting Cape Town and other parts of the country is a
<a
href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nobody-knows-what-s-next-for-cape-town-s-water-supply-so-some-are-preparing-for-the-worst-1.4576576">national
disaster</a>.</p>
<p>These are just a few facts regarding the mounting
problems of water supply around the world with Cape Town
being one of the more serious cases. Aside from the
obvious problems of climate change where drought poses a
threat to <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/14/worlds-great-forests-could-lose-half-of-all-wildlife-as-planet-warms-report">green
spaces and wildlife</a>, to the <a
href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/economy-faces-paralysis-if-govt-doesnt-act-urgently-on-water-crisis-report-20180315">local
economy</a>, and <a
href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2018-03-13-cape-towns-tourism-and-agriculture-sectors-most-exposed-by-drought-says-moodys/">tourism</a>,
the more obvious danger is to <a
href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/business/2018-02-26-how-western-cape-farmers-are-being-hit-by-the-drought/">agriculture</a>
as well as to <a
href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nobody-knows-what-s-next-for-cape-town-s-water-supply-so-some-are-preparing-for-the-worst-1.4576576">health
and sanitation</a>. In its third year of consecutive
drought, Cape Town residents are limited to 50 liters of
water per day and “<a
href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cape-town-drought-day-zero-climate-change-global-warming-south-africa-a8236511.html">Day
Zero</a>,” said to arrive on 9 July of this year, is
that moment when the water supply is so low that
three-quarters of the population will have its water
shut off.</p>
<p>While droughts are a natural phenomenon in the <a
href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cape-town-drought-day-zero-climate-change-global-warming-south-africa-a8236511.html">Western
Cape</a>, climate change has exacerbated the
conditions for inhabitants of this region and it is
widely believed that climate change is playing a
principle role in the devastation. While global warming
has already resulted in extreme conditions in this
region and beyond, scientists underscore the need for
humans to adapt to this new reality where, for instance,
in the Western Cape, the weather is expected to warm by
around 0.25C over the next decade. This fact alone means
that the likelihood of drought will increase sevenfold
and affect the state of health, hygiene, and food
insecurity in the region.</p>
<p>One strange player that has come to the “rescue” in the
Western Cape is Coca-Cola Peninsula Beverages, in
partnership with the Coca-Cola Foundation and suppliers.
Attempting to provide millions of liters of water to the
Western Cape and the City of Cape Town during the water
crisis, providing free “prepared water” in 2-liter
recyclable PET bottles marked “Not for resale.” South
Africa is the only country in the world which has a
Constitution that guarantees the right to water in the
Bill of Rights but this right is not only being denied
to millions of residents of the country. In the <a
href="http://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/water-crisis-dire-provinces-not-just-western-cape/">Western
Cape and other provinces</a>, over 1 million people
have been affected by water shortages and water
restrictions with many having to walk tens of kilometers
to source drinking water. So the protection of South
Africa’s constitutional guarantee of water has become
especially dear to many.</p>
<p>Back in the early 2000s, townships surrounding the
cities of <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/who-owns-water/">Johannesburg
and Durban</a> became politically mobilized in
protesting water privatization given the fact that at
the time over 10 million residents had their water cut
off by the government’s implementation of a World
Bank-inspired “<a
href="http://wsp.org/sites/wsp.org/files/publications/CSO-SouthAfrica.pdf">cost
recovery</a>” program. This program made water
availability dependent on a company’s ability to recover
its costs plus a profit and more than 100,000 people in
<a href="http://www.umgeni.co.za/media_centre/drd.asp">Kwazulu-Natal</a>
province became ill with <a
href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119381/">cholera</a>
after water and sanitation services to local communities
were cut off for nonpayment.</p>
<p>In their brilliant exposé of this situation in South
Africa and beyond, “<a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/who-owns-water/">Who
Owns Water?</a>”, Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke give a
scathing explanation of what was at stake back in 2002,
the situation far more aggravated today. They identify
the ten major corporations making a profit from
freshwater beginning with France’s Vivendi Universal and
Suez whom they label the “General Motors and Ford of the
global water industry.” Barlow and Clare go on to
characterize how these two and other companies:</p>
<p><i>deliver private water and wastewater services to
more than 200 million customers in 150 countries and
are in a race, along with others such as Bouygues
Saur, RWE-Thames Water and Bechtel-United Utilities,
to expand to every corner of the globe.” In the United
States, Vivendi operates through its subsidiary,
USFilter; Suez via its subsidiary, United Water; and
RWE by way of American Water Works.</i></p>
<p>But what about the World Bank and its’ “cost recovery”
programs? Aren’t they working? The short answer is
yes: they are working to help increase the coffers of
theWorld Bank and the IMF as poor countries continue to
become poorer and <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/who-owns-water/">Barlow
and Claire</a> elaborate:</p>
<p><i>They are aided by the World Bank and the IMF, which
are increasingly forcing Third World countries to
abandon their public water delivery systems and
contract with the water giants in order to be eligible
for debt relief. The performance of these companies in
Europe and the developing world has been well
documented: huge profits, higher prices for water,
cutoffs to customers who cannot pay, no transparency
in their dealings, reduced water quality, bribery and
corruption.</i></p>
<p>In a country where the minority of white farmers (six
hundred thousand) consume 60 percent of the country’s
water supplies for irrigation, it is no surprise that
the country’s 15 million black citizens have no direct
access to water. Labor unions like the South African
Municipal Workers Union have collaborated with township
activists to organize neighborhood actions where
citizens are connecting water up themselves and ripping
out water meters. The injustices of foreign-owned
companies coming into South Africa are being addressed
but all too slowly as residents’ water is cut off,
rarely is it the water of white South Africans.</p>
<p>Such is life in the twenty-first century when older
trade deals such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement) saw governments signing away their control
over domestic water supplies and the later failed
attempt to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA), and also the the World Trade Organization. It
is increasingly clear given the current state of drought
which bodies have access to water, which ones do not.
And despite our desire to “fix” these problems thought <a
href="https://www.computerworld.com/article/2487813/emerging-technology/california-fights-drought-with-big-data--cloud-computing.html">hackathons
in the Nevada Desert</a> or by adjusting the
Computerized Maintenance Management System (<a
href="https://limblecmms.com">CMMS</a>) which can be
used to address <a
href="http://www.mintek.com/industries/home-owners-association/hoas-can-cope-drought/">drought</a>
structurally, the reality is that there is a lot of
neo-colonial control over those areas of the world in
conditions of severe draught, and a load of white,
western institutions making money over the death and
hardships of <a
href="https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=history_theses">dark-skinned
bodies</a>. So of course, it is not surprising to see
<a
href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2017-10-03-lets-put-coca-cola-in-charge-of-water/#.WqtR6WaZMWo">white
South Africans</a> asking that Coca-Cola be put in
charge of its water supplies!</p>
<p>Skip over the Indian Ocean to the Indian state of <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/01/indian-traders-boycott-coca-cola-for-straining-water-resources">Tamil
Nadu</a> and a similar story has erupted in recent
years. Indians have been protesting the condition of
drought that has been pushed to the hilt by Pepsi-Cola
and Coca-Cola depleting local water resources. Amit
Srivastava, director of India Resource Centre, an
ecological NGO, estimates that it takes 1.9 liters of
water to make one small bottle of Coca-Cola only if you
don’t factor in the use of sugar. Sugarcane uses a lot
of water to cultivate for which Coca-Cola is the number
one purchaser of sugarcane and Pepsi-Cola number three.
If you account for the water used to create all
ingredients in Pepsi-Cola or Coca-Cola, then it actually
takes 400 liters of water to make a bottle of cola.</p>
<p>The move against fizzy drinks in Tamil Nadu gained
momentum in March, 2017 when the <a
href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-03/02/c_136097143.htm">High
Court rejected</a> rejected the request by petition to
ban the use of water from the Thamirabarani River used
to produced Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. This effectively
has nullified a previous injunction passed by a court in
November, 2016. Petitioners have argued that thousands
of farmers in Tamil Nadu have been suffering from <a
href="https://actions.sumofus.org/a/coca-cola-wastes-water-while-tamil-nadu-suffers-drought">water
shortage and drought</a> while both companies freely
used the river water for their commercial gains.
Coincidental to the Supreme Court’s decision in the
Spring of 2017 was another ban on <i>jallikattu</i>, a
local form of bullfighting, pronounced in January 2017.
The momentum from these two court decisions resulted in
a reinvigorated mass <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/01/indian-traders-boycott-coca-cola-for-straining-water-resources">protest</a>
against both Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. And in the state
of Kerala in March 2017, <a
href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/pepsico-coca-cola-face-boycott-in-second-indian-state-on-water">retailers
voted to ban</a> the sale of sodas.</p>
<p>In 1999, Coca-Cola established a bottling plant in the
village of Kaladera in Rajasthan, a desert state where
farmers rely on groundwater for the cultivation of their
crops. Since this time, these farmers have been
confronted with a steep decline in water levels whereby
the irrigation of land and the sustenance of crops is
nearly impossible. <a
href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/at-kaladera-farmers-battle-beverage-giant/article5606745.ece">Official
documents</a> from the government’s water ministry
show that water levels remained stable from 1995 until
2000: “According to data compiled by the Rajasthan
Groundwater department, in the 16 years from 1984 the
groundwater levels at Kaladera dropped from 13 to 42
feet, at an average annual rate of 1.81 feet. But from
2000 to 2011, the drop was sharp from 42 to 131 feet at
the rate of 8.9 feet a year.”</p>
<p>India and South Africa are not alone in this usurpation
of public resources for the private sector. In San
Felipe Ecatepec in the state of Chiapas, a Coca-Cola
factory run by FEMSA is draining wells which forces
local residents to buy bottled water. It is reported
that this <a
href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coca-cola-mexico-wells-dry-bottled-water-sucking-san-felipe-ecatepec-chiapas-a7953026.html">bottling
plant </a>“consumes more than a million liters of
water a day.” FEMSA claims to be “committed to the
sustainable development of its associates, communities
and the environment,” but little action is seen to
demonstrate this. And in Brazil, Guatemala, Colombia,
and Mexico, PepsiCo faces similar problems with
criticism for depleting water resources in these areas.
Both Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola seek out the clean image
it needs to win over public opinion, much most of their
claims are theatre. While Coca-Cola claims to <a
href="https://www.greenbiz.com/article/coca-cola-and-bottlers-achieve-replenishment-all-water-they-use">replenish
the water</a> it removes from the ground, the fact is
that the water is never replaced at the source of its
original removal. And as much as these companies try to
rebrand and <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/dec/22/pepsico-challenges-coca-cola-with-latin-america-water-plan">“green
up” their image</a>, you will never win over a
population whose water you steal while selling the
public their own water back to them. For instance,
Ethiopia’s East African Bottling Company has introduced
<a
href="https://addisfortune.net/articles/east-africa-bottling-to-launch-coca-cola-branded-water-to-ethiopia/">Dasani</a>
to its market which is more rinse and repeat of the same
old for Africans: Coca Cola owns Dasani.</p>
<p>In 2017, <a
href="http://www.care.org/emergencies/global-hunger-crisis">81
million people</a> in the world experienced severe <a
href="http://www.who.int/emergencies/famine/en/">food
insecurity</a> or shortage. Approximately 80 percent
of those affected live in Africa. The reality of food
and water shortage is one that can be addressed and
rectified, but we can do neither if our societies do not
recognize the need to understand how the privatization
and abuse by corporations of public resources is adding
to or creating conditions of drought. The human
contributions leading to the credible risk of famine and
thirst experienced in countries such as Ethiopia,
Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, and South Sudan, though more
pronounced, are emblematic as to what is happening in
South Africa, India, Mexico and beyond.</p>
<p>There is a <a
href="https://books.google.de/books?id=7B03DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT248&lpg=PT248&dq=Treaty+Initiative+to+Share+and+Protect+the+Global+Water+Commons&source=bl&ots=a0V5_Osye1&sig=7rkPfvoN1fDy-f7lf1JJCrAxdcE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCvYjHgvHZAhUICywKHTXvDPcQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Treaty%20Initiative%20to%20Share%20and%20Protect%20the%20Global%20Water%20Commons&f=false">corporate
takeover of public resources</a> and we need to
support a Global Water Convention now such as the
proposed model, <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=VMv4t6-2S4UC&pg=PA274&lpg=PA274&dq=treaty+initiative+to+share+and+protect+the+global+water+commons&source=web&ots=zHsCN4ZYsh&sig=X-80aXN1-5p4xRgHFaXUfS8iMrE"><i>The
Treaty Initiative: To Share and Protect the Global
Water Commons</i></a><i>, </i>penned by Maude
Barlow and Jeremy Rifkin that lays out what we must do
to secure the right of access to water. There are also
others proposals for a <a
href="https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0ahUKEwjux5i1h_HZAhXBkCwKHY6TCEUQFghVMAg&url=https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/1146.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3I21wsbK1kqZZOsWjnlQ4l">Global
Water Convention</a> similar to the model suggested by
Barlow and Clarke in their 2002 <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/who-owns-water/"><i>Nation</i>
article</a>. Still, so many people around the planet
have not mobilized towards a legal decree obligating the
sharing of water resources and the end to corporate
encroachment upon public resources. As water is the 21st
century’s most precious commodity, we need to act
quickly to ensure that the limited resource of water
does not translate to the limited resource of life.</p>
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