From : Nelson Daily News, Aug 13, 2003
Letters to the editor

The Politics of Water

Further to Councillor Mungall's editorial of Aug 01, 2003.

We need to educate ourselves about this issue.

I believe that American gov'ts and corporations see Canada as an unlimited supply of natural resources for their use, and as pointed out in "Blue Gold", some Canadians fear that when the US starts to run out of water and we refuse to sell them all they demand, they may view this as tantamount to a declaration of war. At the start of the G-8 meeting in Genoa, Italy in 2001, George W. Bush remarked that he saw Canadian water as an extension of Canada's energy reserves, to be shared with the US by pipeline in the near future.

So who does have the right to water? "Is water simply a basic human need or is it a fundamental human right?"

This was debated by 5,700 attendees to the World Water Forum in The Hague in March 2000, sponsored by the Global Water Partnership, the World Bank, major corporate lobby groups and leading for -profit water corporations. Their focus was selling water to markets around the world and maximizing the profits. UN officials and representatives from 140 countries were there, but the forum was run by some of the world's largest corporations, global water giants like Vivendi and Suez (of the canal fame) and bottled water titans like Nestle and Unilever. The conveners of the forum wanted water to be officially designated as a "need", that the private sector, through the market, would have the right to provide water on a for-profit basis. The representatives of environmental, labour and public interest groups wanted water designated as a universal human right, with governments ensuring all people have access to water on a nonprofits basis. Our government reps deferred to corporate interests and signed a statement declaring water to be a basic "need".

After WWII , corporations in the US promoted a new ideology, the "Washington Consensus" which called for massive government deregulation of, trade, investment and finance. This ideology holds that the interests of capital take priority over the rights of citizens and rejects the precedence of peoples' democratic rights. The Trilateral Commission of the 1970's brought together 325 of the worlds top economic and political elites. One of their first major papers, "The Crisis of Democracy" declared that the central political problem of our times was the current model of governance, that there was an "excess of democracy" in the system. This commission created the WTO in 1995, aimed at creating a borderless world. This led to the imposition of Structural Adjustment Programs on third world countries, so poor they can't even service their debts, so the IMF and the World Bank began forcing these countries to change their socio-economicl policies in accordance with global free market priorities.

And so, the commodification of water. Sales go to the highest bidder. As CEO Gerard Mestrallet of Suez says "Water is an efficient product, it is a product which would normally be free, and our job is to sell it". At the World Water Forum , one corporate executive said "as long as the water was coming out of the tap, the public had no right to any information as to how it got there." How did our govt's let this happen? Suez is a good example, it is a political machine in its own right. CEO Gerard Mestralett has held positions in the French government's ministries of transport, economy, and finance. Another director at Suez, Jerome Monod, was chief of staff to ex-Prime Minister Jacques Chirac.

Over the last 25 years, major transnationals have change governments dramatically. Our social systems and national security are being replaced by the corporate security state.

We need to understand that Globalization and free trade agreements are transforming the role of our governments from protecting and providing security for it citizens, to providing a secure place and climate for profitable transnational investment.

Could you wake up one day to discover that, as is the case in some parts of India, the cost of water has gone through the roof because your town or city decided or was forced to sell its water rights to a private company? Check it out online at WaterBank.com, here you will find a listing for the Kootenays, to sell water rights. Or for lots of info type "Water for profit" into Google.

Grant Clubine
Gr. 10, C3, RR#1
Winlaw, BC, V0G 2J0
250-226-7656
gclubine@telus.net