The 3rd World Water Forum

Barlow on Kyoto 
 
The 3rd World Water Forum: A Civil Society Backgrounder

by Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians

From March 16-22 of this year, an estimated 8,000 people from all over the
world will gather in Kyoto, Japan, to attend the 3rd World Water Forum.
There, decisions will be made about the future of the world's freshwater
resources that will affect every living being on the planet. This memo is
offered as a brief history of the events and players instrumental in the
lead-up to this forum and is a critique of the private sector interests that
have developed around the control of water.

The Backdrop

The world is running out of fresh water. Humanity is polluting, diverting
and depleting the finite wellspring of life at a startling rate. Our per
capita use of water is doubling every 20 years, at more than twice the rate
of human population growth. A legacy of factory farming, flood irrigation,
the construction of massive dams, toxic dumping, wetland and forest
destruction and urban and industrial pollution has damaged the earth's
surface water so badly that we are now mining the underground water reserves
far faster than nature can replenish them.

Quite simply, unless we dramatically change our ways, between one-half and
two-thirds of humanity will be living with severe fresh water shortages
within the next quarter century. The global fresh water crisis looms as one
of the greatest threats ever to the survival of our planet.

Tragically, this global call for action comes in an era guided by the
free-market principles of what has been called the "Washington Consensus."
This includes an unprecedented assault on the commons. Everything is now for
sale, even those areas of life, such as social services and natural
resources, that were once considered the common heritage of humanity. Faced
with the suddenly well-documented fresh water crisis, governments and
international institutions are advocating the privatization and
commodification of water. Price water, they say in chorus; put it up for
sale and let the market determine its future.

At the same time, governments are signing away their control over domestic
water supplies to regional trade agreements like NAFTA and the World Trade
Organization (WTO). These global trade institutions effectively give
transnational corporations unprecedented access to the fresh water resources
of signatory countries. Already, corporations have started to sue
governments in order to gain access to domestic water sources and, armed
with the protection of these international trade agreements, are setting
their sights on the commercialization of water.

The Corporate Players

There are ten major corporate players now delivering freshwater services for
profit. Between them, the two biggest - Vivendi and Suez of France - deliver
private water and wastewater services to over 200 million customers in 150
countries, and are in a race, along with the others such as Bouygues SAUR,
RWE-Thames Water and Bechtel-United Utilities, to expand to every corner of
the globe.

The performance of these companies in Europe and the developing world has
been well documented: huge profits, higher prices for water, cut-offs to
customers who cannot pay, little transparency in their dealings, reduced
water quality, bribery and corruption. They are aggressively accelerating
their operations in Third World countries where debt-struck governments are
forced to abandon public water services and hand over control of local water
supplies to private interests. Based on the market policy known as "full
cost recovery," the water companies are able to impose rate hikes that are
devastating to millions of poor people who cannot afford privatized water.

A new type of water consortium has emerged in Germany which may be a
prototype for the future. Companies such as AquaMundo put together giant
investment pools using overseas government aid, private bank investments and
public utilities funds in the recipient country. Then, in an arrangement
called "cross-border leasing," they hire local contractors to run the water
services. Some keep their money in tax havens, thus allowing them to avoid
paying national taxes; this lets them offer a "deal" to local cash-strapped
municipalities.

Transnational water companies have become so powerful that they now share in
decision making with governments in international meetings. United under the
banner of the corporate lobby group, Business Action for Sustainable
Development, the water companies played a pivotal role at the World Summit
on Sustainable Development that was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, last
August 26-September 4. There, with governments and the United Nations, they
launched a "new" strategy for the delivery of efficient water and sanitation
services to the world's poor which accelerates public-private partnerships,
guaranteeing the companies a steady profit from public funds.

Water for profit takes a number of other forms. The bottled water industry
is growing at an annual rate of 20 percent. Last year, nearly 100 billion
litres of bottled water were sold around the world - most of it in
non-reusable plastic containers, bringing in profits of $22 billion to this
highly-polluting industry. Fierce disputes, especially in the Third World,
are being waged between local communities and companies like CocaCola and
Nestle, aggressively seeking new supplies of "boutique water." As one
company explains, water is now "a rationed necessity that may be taken by
force."

Corporations are now involved in the construction of massive pipelines to
carry freshwater long distances for commercial sale while others are
constructing supertankers and giant sealed water bags to transport vast
amounts of water across the ocean to paying customers. The mass movement of
bulk water could have catalytic environmental impacts. Nevertheless, the
World Bank says that, "One way or another, water will soon be moved around
the world as oil is now."

The Institutional Players

Private water companies are aided and abetted by a number of powerful
international institutions with whom they work closely. The main source of
financing of private water services in the Third World comes from the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), which demands private water services in
exchange for debt relief, the World Bank, which can withhold project funds
unless a country cooperates, and a myriad of regional banks, such as the
European Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian
Development Bank, and the African Development Bank.

The World Bank serves the interests of water companies through the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which provides loans
to governments and can impose conditions in exchange for money, and the
International Finance Corporation, which provides direct capital funding.

The World Trade Organization is another powerful institution that promotes
the commodification of water. The WTO is mandated to remove tariff and
non-tariff barriers to the free flow of goods, including water, across
national borders and is negotiating free trade in water services through the
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The big water corporations
have strategically positioned themselves to play an effective role in the
WTO through two powerful lobby groups - the U.S. Coalition of Service
Industries and the European Forum on Services.

The United Nations has also been working closely with the big water
corporations. In July, 2000, the UN announced a "Global Compact" with a
number of global transnational companies, including Suez. And it is through
UN conferences and forums that three important new international
organizations promoting water-for-profit have been created.

The Global Water Partnership was established in 1996 to reform water utility
systems and water resource management around the world and is funded in part
by the World Bank. The World Water Council, also formed in 1996, sees itself
as a policy think tank whose main task is to provide decision makers with
advice and assistance on global water issues. Made up of 175 member groups,
the WWC organized the 2nd World Water Forum in The Hague in March, 2000.

The World Commission on Water for the 21st Century, formed in 1998, is
composed of 21 "eminent" persons and is mandated with fostering sustainable
use of water resources.

Representatives of the global water corporations are strategically placed at
the top levels of all three of these agencies. Their industry association,
the International Private Water Association, works closely with the World
Water Council, the World Bank and the UN.

The 2nd World Water Forum

All of the above were major players at the 2nd World Water Forum held in The
Hague in March, 2000, and are intimately involved in preparations for the
3rd World Water Forum to be held in Japan in March, 2003. From the
beginning, the 2nd World Water Forum, which was attended by over 5,000
people, was designed to be a showcase for public-private partnerships and to
create a "consensus" among all the "stakeholders" that privatization and
full cost recovery are the answers for the world's water crisis. World Bank
and water corporation officials dominated the positions of power in every
session; civil society groups were not even given a place to meet.
Translation services for the myriad of non-English speaking delegates were
non-existent.

The World Water Council presented its pre-written World Water Vision report
endorsing an aggressive water-privatization agenda to the Forum as a "fait
accompli." The Vision, which also recommended a corporate model of
agriculture, was adopted by the powers that ran the event, even though the
statement was opposed by the majority of civil society groups present.

As well, pushed by corporate representatives, the 140 governments officials
who attended the Ministerial Conference attached to the Forum, agreed to
weaken their final declaration. Instead of water being declared a "basic
human right" (which would mean that governments were responsible for
ensuring that all their citizens have access to water on a not-for-profit
basis), the government delegates agreed only that water is a "basic human
need," thereby opening up the water market to companies on a for-profit
basis.

However, it was not so simple for the organizers of the event. A new
international coalition of civil society organizations and trade unions came
together in the Hague to challenge the corporate "consensus." The Blue
Planet Project, made up of groups from many countries, launched an
"international effort to stop the privatization of the world's fresh water"
and challenged the Forum organizers from the floor, at press conferences,
and with a "NGO Major Group Statement" to the Ministerial Conference. This
statement rejected the World Water Council's Vision, asserted that water is
a basic human right and called for the decommodification of water.

The 3rd World Water Forum

Since The Hague, civil society groups have been growing and consolidating
their work. They met at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in January,
2002, and at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, in
August, 2002. With international groups present, Japanese civil society
organizations met in March, 2002, to plan their strategy toward the 3rd
World Water Forum. There, they agreed to participate in the Forum as long as
the goal was to put forward a clear alternative vision and strategy to the
World Water Council.

This planning was further evolved at an international strategy meeting held
in Ottawa in October, 2002. Here participants agreed that the main goals
would be to split the World Water Council "consensus" on a corporate model
of water governance and to promote a new democracy model of water
governance. It was understood that the Forum, unlike a meeting of the World
Bank or the WTO, will attract thousands of people who might actually agree
with the emerging civil society consensus around water and that it is
essential to put forward an alternative vision at the event.

The 3rd World Water Forum in Kyoto will play a major role in determining the
future of the world's freshwater resources. Civil society must be there in
strength. Future generations depend on it.

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http://www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/cmep_Water/articles.cfm?ID=9130