from Sunday Herald, 22 March 2009
The multinational water industry has been accused of running a covert campaign to privatise water in Scotland and around the world, threatening rising costs and more pollution.
Researchers at Strathclyde University allege that there has been a “concerted, clever and tacit” attempt by businesses, legislators and regulators to turn Scottish Water into a private company “in all but name”. Internationally “aggressive privatisation” is making the world water crisis worse, they say.
Today is water’s big day. It has been designated by the United Nations as World Water Day, and it sees the end of deliberations at the 156-nation World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey - where the stress has been on the advantages of working with the private sector.
But for many experts, trade unionists and campaigners, it is the encroaching influence of water corporations that is the problem. They fear that public benefits may lose out to private profits.
Tommy Kane, who is researching water governance at Strathclyde University, argues that Scottish Water is being quietly prepared for privatisation. “By changing its corporate structure, outsourcing contracts to private companies and tapping into the Private Finance Initiative a public sector body has been almost overwhelmingly commercialised,” he says.
“Evidence from here and around the world indicates commercialisation is bad for consumers, bad for workers, bad for democratic control and bad for the environment, because it means higher costs, poorer working conditions, decreasing citizen participation and more pollution.”
Most of Scottish Water’s £2.5 billion capital investment programme is now managed and delivered by Scottish Water Solutions, a partnership involving eight major water companies. Last year for the first time, businesses in Scotland were allowed to pay private companies to supply their water and sewerage services.
Last week’s World Water Forum is “illegitimate and “undemocratic”, according to another Strathclyde University researcher, Kyle Mitchell. “It is founded and facilitated by some of the most powerful players in the water industry including transnational water corporations that have a vested interest in the promotion of privatisation,” he says.
He is backed by the trade union, Unison, which is calling for a new international forum on water. “Across the world communities are rejecting the privatisation of water services,” says Unison Scottish organiser, Dave Watson. “Yet in Scotland, despite the economic crisis, we still have a few supporters of market madness who champion this cause.”
Scottish Water points out that its ownership is a matter for the Scottish Parliament. Its increasingly commercial approach was succeeding in “ensuring value for money for Scottish Water’s five million customers”, a spokesman says.
Aquafed, the International Federation of Private Water Operators representing 300 water companies in 40 countries, defends privatisation. Creating divisions between the public and private sectors is “a waste of time and detrimental to the poor,” it contends.
“The priority of the international community is to bridge the existing divides not to create useless ones,” says AquaFed’s president, Gérard Payen. “All capacities must be mobilised to bring satisfactory access to safe water to all.”
But the World Development Movement (WDM) and Friends of the Earth Scotland (FoES) both argue that the current financial crisis has betrayed the folly of the private sector model. “Water is too important to be left to the private sector to control,” says WDM’s Vicky Cann.
FoES’s chief executive, Duncan McLaren, adds: “It is utterly hypocritical and foolhardy to be urging privatisation and deregulation as a solution to the world's water problems. Access to safe water must be defended as a human right, not sold off to multinational corporations and wealthy elites.”
The water crisis
“Water is a gift from Earth,” says the Bolivian activist, Oscar Olivera. “We need to take care of it and preserve it so the next generation can live. If we don’t, the cost is the people, it is us.”
Knowing that the world was facing an unprecedented water crisis, in 2000 world leaders made a major commitment. The United Nations agreed to halve the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.
We now know that this promise, one of the Millennium Development Goals, is going to be broken. A UN report, published last week to coincide with the World Water Forum in Istanbul and World Water Day today, confirms that this is the case.
Although progress has been made in improving sources of drinking water, there are still 340 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lacking access to safe water, the report says. Half a billion Africans don’t have access to adequate sanitation, and other regions are also trailing behind.
Altogether more than five billion people – 67% of the world population – may still be without access to adequate sanitation in 2030. “Current efforts will need to be doubled if we are to achieve the goals,” said a UN spokesman.
Almost 80% of the diseases in developing countries are associated with water, causing some three million early deaths, the UN report says. About one tenth of all illnesses worldwide could be avoided by improving water supply, sanitation, hygiene and management.
Rising populations, growing demand and the increasing number of supply disruptions caused by global warming are all combining to make the water crisis worse. Large amounts of water are also wasted or polluted.
The problem is not helped by government corruption, which the report estimates could have added $50 billion to the cost of achieving the Millennium Development Goals on water and sanitation. “Typical examples include falsified meter readings, favouritism in public equipment purchases, and nepotism in the allocation of public contracts,” it says.
The report estimates that 30% of budgets can be siphoned off in some countries. “With increasing shortages, good governance is more than ever essential for water management,” says Koïchiro Matsuura, the director-general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
Water wars
In the past countries have gone to war for many reasons - land, oil, power, protection. In the future they will be fighting over water.
Nearly four billion people live in countries where there is serious political tension over lakes and rivers that cross international borders. Current hotspots include some of the most volatile regions in the world: India and Bangladesh; the Middle East; and China and its neighbours.
According to Fred Pearce, author of the book, ‘When the Rivers Run Dry’, water is one of the defining crises of the 21st century. “As more and more countries run short of water, the threat of wars over water will grow,” he warns.
Bangladesh, for example, is downstream of India and relies entirely on water that flows through that country. But Bangladeshis are worried that they will be deprived of water by Indian plans to dam rivers to generate electricity.
In the Middle East there is a tense relationship between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine over the limited supplies of water from the Jordan river. There also been tension between Turkey, Syria and Iraq over the Euphrates river.
The scarcity of water has inflamed existing conflicts in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan. And in south America, Paraguay is struggling to retain its essential water supplies under threat from developments in Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia.
The International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka argues that water shortages and rationing in cities could trigger water wars. “The cost in dollars would be enormous,” says the institute’s director general, Dr Colin Chartres. “The cost in environmental damage and human suffering would be impossible to calculate.”
This Thursday an award-winning new film, ‘Blue Gold: World Water Wars’, is to be given its Scottish premiere at Strathclyde University (7pm, McCance Building). It is based on the groundbreaking book, ‘Blue Gold’ by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke.
“Wars of the future will be fought over water, as they are today over oil, as the source of all life enters the global marketplace,” says the film’s blurb. “Past civilisations have collapsed from poor water management. Can the human race survive?”
Water shortages
Without water, we die. We cannot grow food, we cannot make things and we cannot survive.
Yet water shortages are getting worse. The United Nations (UN) forecasts that by 2030 nearly half of the world’s population will be living in areas of “high water stress”.
Populations are growing but water supplies are decreasing. Disruptions to the climate caused by pollution will cause droughts in some areas, and floods in others, scientists say.
Disappearing glaciers mean that a sixth of the world’s population could lose a major water source. Millions of poorer people who rely on freshwater lakes and rivers could be hardest hit.
In Africa alone between 75 and 250 million people may experience increased water stress due to climate change by 2020, according to a UN report released last week. Areas of very dry land have more than doubled since the 1970s, and more intense droughts have been observed over the last ten years.
Water scarcity in some regions will have major impacts on migration, displacing as many as 700 million people, the report warns. Some 64 billion cubic metres more water would be needed every year just to meet the needs of the growing world population, it says.
Rising demand for energy and meat will also exacerbate water shortages, the report argues. It needs four times more water to produce a kilo of beef than a kilo of wheat.
“Water shortages will be one of the most devastating impacts of climate change,” predicts Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland. “The world's rich countries, having caused the problems, must directly provide the money to help poorer countries adapt.”
Vicky Cann, policy officer at the World Development Movement agrees that the greatest impact of climate change would be on water. “Whether it is increased floods or greater droughts; rising sea levels or faster glacier melt - it will all come down to water,” she says.
Water pollution
When water gets polluted, it gets dangerous. Whether it’s sewage, animal wastes, chemicals or pesticides, it’s not good for human health.
Experts say that a child dies every 17 seconds somewhere in the world as a result of water borne diseases. That makes it the biggest killer of children under five.
Rivers, lakes and coastal areas are polluted because over 80% of the sewage in developing countries is discharged without being treated. Many sewage plants have ceased to work because of inadequate maintenance.
“In three out of four cities in the developing world, farmers are irrigating food crops with polluted water,” says Dr Pay Drechsel from the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka. An survey of 53 cities by the institute showed that over 700 million people are eating fruits and vegetables irrigated with dirty water, which could pose a serious health hazard.
A report published last week by the United Nations warns that water pollution globally is on the rise. The worst problem was overloading with nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen from fertilisers and other sources.
As many as 140 million people in 70 countries could be at risk from arsenic contaminating their water supplies, the report says. In Bangladesh alone 70 million people are exposed to water containing unsafe levels of arsenic.
Heavily polluting industries such as leather and chemicals are moving from developed to developing countries. But the problems are not confined to the poorer countries.
A recent study on drinking water in France estimated that more than three million people were exposed to water quality that does not meet World Health Organisation (WHO) safety standards.
In Scotland, according to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, more than a third of waterways fail to meet good environmental standards. And last year 13 bathing waters were so polluted with sewage that they breached basic safety limits.
Water wastage
Sometimes it’s just a dripping tap, or a leaking pipe. Other times it can be gushing mains, bursting embankments or neglected waterholes.
However it happens, water wastage is frustrating, pointless and potentially disastrous. Water is one of our most precious resources, and it doesn’t make sense to see it pouring away down the drain.
One example highlighted last week graphically illustrates the problem. The health of millions of people in Africa has been put at risk by a failure to maintain rural water projects in Africa, according to a new report.
Experts from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) say that up to half a billion dollars has been wasted on the schemes, which are going to rack and ruin.
Up to 50,000 boreholes in rural areas have fallen into disrepair, and deprived whole communities of water. Although governments and charities initially funded the facilities, they have since ignored the need to maintain them, the report says.
Of 52 deep water borehole and supply systems built since the 1980s in Senegal's Kaolack region, only 33 still function today. More than half the water supply points in northern Ghana needed repair, and in western Niger 13 out of 43 boreholes have been abandoned and the rest didn’t function all the time.
“It is not enough to drill a well and walk away,” says the IIED’S Jamie Skinner. “Water projects needs to support long term maintenance needs and engage local communities. Without this, it is like throwing money down the drain.”
In the Mediterranean, it is estimated that 25% of water is lost in urban areas. In Scotland more than 900 million litres of water a day leaked from old and decaying pipes in 2007-08. Though this is down from the billion litres a day wastage the previous year, it failed to meet the 855 million litre target set by the Water Industry Commission for Scotland.
Water in numbers
40 billion: hours women in Africa spend fetching water every year
3 billion: people worldwide still have no access to tap water
924 million: litres of water leaked from old pipes in Scotland in 2007-08
700 million: people in 53 cities who are are eating fruit and vegetables irrigated with polluted water
500 million: people in Africa lack access to adequate sanitation
340 million: people in Sub-Saharan Africa who lack access to safe drinking water
2 million: people, mainly children, who die every year from polluted water
28,000: participants at 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul
5,000: children die every day from diarrhoea
3,600: treaties on international water resources between AD 805 and 1984
1,600: litres of water needed to produce one kilo of meat
600: dollars to register for the World Water Forum in Istanbul
263: lakes and rivers that cross the borders of 145 countries
150: litres of water used by each person in the UK every day
75: percentage of the earth covered with water.
70: percentage of the human body made up of water
37: cases of reported violence between states over water
3: percentage of the earth’s water available to drink
I wonder if it'll ever be possible to privatise air?
Posted by: Sandra | 22 March 2009 at 12:34 PM