Water Barons Exposed

21-Mar-2003: (By Singy Hanyona/Zambia in Kyoto for planets-voice.org) --- The ghost and wrinkle of globalization has twisted to mega corporations being involved in buying up the rights of access to drinking water by poor people around the world.

A U.S based Center for Public Integrity, has released
a ground breaking report on how three world’s richest
water companies are looting water resources from the
poor, in the name of privatisation.
The report released at the ongoing 3rd World Water
Forum in Kyoto-Japan, reveals how a handful of
powerful European
corporations and the World Bank seek to privatize the
world's water resource.
A year-long investigation shows that the world’s
largest water companies ; France’s Suez and Vivendi
Environment and British-Based Thames Water, owned by
Germany’s RWE AG, have since 1990 expended into every
region of the world. In their pursuit for profits from
water, they have raised concerns that the three
corporations could soon control a large chunk of the
world’s vital resource.
The report entitled : “Water Barons”, say the
privatisation of public water systems around the
world, is increasing despite tragic results, citing
South Africa’s experience with privatization and
subsequent cholera outbreaks.
One of the report’s authors Jacques Pauw, from South
Africa, says making people pay the full cost of their
water is the direct cause of cholera epidemics.
For instance, in 1998,South Africa’s local councils in
the Dolphin Coast, began commercializing their water
works ‘by forcing residents’ to pay the full cost of
drinking water.
“But many of the millions of people living in the
tin-roof slums of the region couldn’t afford the
rates.
“Cut off the tap, people were forced to find water in
steams, ponds and lakes polluted with manure and human
waste”, reads the Water Baron report.
By January, 2002, when the worst cholera epidemic in
South Africa’s history ended, it had infected more
than 300,000 people. By some estimates, it had killed
almost 300, spreading as far as the country’s
commercial
hub-Johannesburg, 300 miles away.
The report says while private companies still run only
about 5 per cent of the world’s water works, their
growth over the last 12 years has been enormous.
“In 1990, private water companies were active in about
a dozen countries, by 2002, they were operating in at
least 56 countries and two territories”, says the
report.
But two major British NGOs have dismissed as
irrelevant the private sector’s involvement in solving
problems in developing countries.
WaterAid and TearFund launched their attack on
business in a report titled : “Does Private Sector
Participation Benefit the Poor?”
The 35-paged report by the two groups says “the 3rd
World Water Forum, ”was wasting time discussing the
issue of privatisation”.
Joanne Green of Tearfund, and one of the report’s
authors, said the international community must stop
arm-twisting countries to give access to private
sector companies, as
Condition for receiving development aid, grants and
loans.
WaterAid Deputy director Stephen Turner adds:
“Frankly, I find it appalling that we are spending so
much time at this forum discussing the role of private
companies, while they are really irrelevant to solving
the water problems of poor people”.
Turner asserts that the success privatization of water
utilities in industrialized nations like Britain,
cannot be repeated in poor developing countries that
lack clear regulation and strong governments.
With billions of dollars in revenue growth, the three
corporations have reportedly joined forces with the
World Bank and the United Nations to create an array
of international think-thanks, advisory commissions
and forums that have dominated the water debate and
established privatization as the dominant solution to
the world’s water problems.
“What we have seen during the 1990’s has been the
setting-up of a kind of global high command for
water”, Richardo Petrella, a leading researcher on the
politics of water, wrote in the French Daily Le Monde
in 2000.
The Water Barons report reveals that the leading
think-thank on water issues and the principal adviser
to the World Bank and the United Nations, is the World
Water Council (WWC), which has organized the 3rd World
Water Forum in Kyoto.
The WWC was established in 1996 by the World Bank and
the United Nations and is headquartered in Marseille,
France. One of the three WWC founding members is Rene
Coulomb, a former Suez Vice President.
Men with strong privatization backgrounds run the
World Commission on Water (WCW), created by the WCC in
1998.
These include former Suez Chief Executive Officer
Jerome Monod, Enrique Iglesias, President of the
Inter-American Development Bank and Mohamed
T.El-Ashry, CEO of the World Bank/U.N.Global
Environment Facility (GEF). Ends….