The Global Crisis: Food, Water and Fuel (Privatization of Water) by Michel Chossudovsky

....Continued...

The Privatization of Water

According to UN sources, which vastly underestimate the seriousness of the water crisis, one billion people worldwide (15% of the World population) have no access to clean water "and 6,000 children die every day because of infections linked to unclean water" (BBC News, 24 March 2004)

A handful of global corporations including Suez, Veolia, Bechtel-United Utilities, Thames Water and Germany's RWE-AG are acquiring control and ownership over public water utilities and waste management. Suez and Veolia hold about 70 percent of the privatized water systems Worldwide.

The privatization of water under World Bank auspices feeds on the collapse of the system of public distribution of safe tap drinking water: "The World Bank serves the interests of water companies both through its regular loan programs to governments, which often come with conditions that explicitly require the privatization of water provision..." (Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Water Privatization: The World Bank's Latest Market Fantasy, Polaris Institute, Ottawa, 2004))

"The modus operandi [in India] is clear -- neglect development of water resources [under World Bank budget austerity measures], claim a "resource crunch" and allow existing systems to deteriorate." (Ann Ninan, Private Water, Public Misery, India Resource Center April 16, 2003)

Meanwhile, the markets for bottled water have been appropriated by a handful of corporations including Coca-Cola, Danone, Nestlé and PepsiCo. These companies not only work hand in glove with the water utility companies, they are linked up to the agribusiness-biotech companies involved in the food industry. Tap water is purchased by Coca-Cola from a municipal water facility and then resold on a retail basis. It is estimated that in the US, 40 percent of bottled water is tap water. (See, Jared Blumenfeld, Susan Leal The real cost of bottled water, San Francisco Chronicle, February 18, 2007)

In India, Coca-Cola has contributed to the depletion of ground water to the detriment of local communities:

"Communities across India living around Coca-Cola's bottling plants are experiencing severe water shortages, directly as a result of Coca-Cola's massive extraction of water from the common groundwater resource. The wells have run dry and the hand water pumps do not work any more. Studies, including one by the Central Ground Water Board in India, have confirmed the significant depletion of the water table.

When the water is extracted from the common groundwater resource by digging deeper, the water smells and tastes strange. Coca-Cola has been indiscriminately discharging its wastewater into the fields around its plant and sometimes into rivers, including the Ganges, in the area. The result has been that the groundwater has been polluted as well as the soil. Public health authorities have posted signs around wells and hand pumps advising the community that the water is unfit for human consumption....

Tests conducted by a variety of agencies, including the government of India, confirmed that Coca-Cola products contained high levels of pesticides, and as a result, the Parliament of India has banned the sale of Coca-Cola in its cafeteria. However, Coca-Cola not only continues to sell drinks laced with poisons in India (that could never be sold in the US and EU), it is also introducing new products in the Indian market. And as if selling drinks with DDT and other pesticides to Indians was not enough, one of Coca-Cola's latest bottling facilities to open in India, in Ballia, is located in an area with a severe contamination of arsenic in its groundwater.(India Resource Center, Coca-Cola Crisis in India, undated)

In developing countries, the hikes in fuel prices have increased the costs of boiling tap water by households, which in turn favors the privatization of water resources.

In the more advanced phase of water privatization, the actual ownership of lakes and rivers by private corporations is contemplated. Mesopotamia was not only invaded for its extensive oil resources, the Valley of the two rivers (Tigris and Euphrates) has extensive water reserves.

Concluding Remarks

We are dealing with a complex and centralized constellation of economic power in which the instruments of market manipulation have a direct bearing on the lives of millions of people.

The prices of food, water, fuel are determined at the global level, beyond the reach of national government policy. The price hikes of these three essential commodities constitute an instrument of "economic warfare", carried out through the "free market" on the futures and options exchanges.

These hikes in the prices of food, water and fuel are contributing in a very real sense to "eliminating the poor" through "starvation deaths". The sugar-coated bullets of the "free market" kill our children. The act to kill is instrumented in a detached fashion through computer program trading on the commodity exchanges, where the global prices of rice, wheat and corn are decided upon.

END