2003/03/10
Water Privatisation Stirs Up Access Problem
Inter Press Service (IPS)
Privatisation of water services has
had negative consequences in many countries, says the
environmental network Friends of the Earth International, which
urges global resistance to the commercialisation and
commodification of this essential resource.
GENEVA, Mar 10 (IPS) - Friends of the
Earth, with offices in 68 countries and some million members,
presented its report Monday in which it outlines the precedents
and outlook for the 3rd World Water Forum, to meet in the
southwestern Japanese city of Kyoto, Mar 16-23.
The water
question is centred on its scarcity in many parts of the world, a
situation aggravated by human activities that contaminate or
degrade the water sources. Degradation is attributed to the
effects of big hydroelectric dams, urban and industrial pollution,
deforestation, widespread use of farm chemicals, waste disposal
and mining.
Other factors limiting water availability are the
transformations of the global ecosystem caused by climate
change and desertification, says Friends of the Earth (FOEII) in
Water Justice For All: Global and local resistance to the control
and commodification of water.
The average human needs some
50 litres of water each day to drink, to grow and cook food, to
wash and for sanitation. A person living in the United States
uses an average of 250 to 300 litres a day, while the average
Somali makes do with less than nine litres of water per day, says
FOEII, highlighting the dramatic inequalities in water
consumption. In 2000, there were 1.1 billion people on earth
who did not have regular access to potable water, and 2.4 billion
without sanitation services, according to United Nations
estimates.
The Friends of the Earth study stresses that a major
problem today is the privatisation of water sources and
distribution. The UN Commission on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights issued a declaration in November 2002 that
water should be considered a social and cultural good, not
primarily as an economic commodity. But international financial
institutions, along with multinational water corporations, are
paving the way towards privatisation by making it a condition
for granting loans to poor countries, says FOEI.
Michel
Camdessus, former managing director of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), led a group entrusted with studying the
financing of the global water infrastructure, which will present
a report at the Kyoto meeting next week. The group's mandate
was to produce a plan for achieving one of the Millennium
Development Goals established by the UN: by 2015 halve the
proportion of people who did not have access to safe drinking
water in the year 2000. Camdessus says in the report that the
dream of clean water for all is within humanity's reach -- if the
efforts pledged for 2015 are extended another 10 years...
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