Who Owns The Water?
It is hard to believe, living as I do in Ireland, but we live in a world fast running short of fresh water, and a debate now rages: should private companies be free to control and exploit “blue gold”?
After all they’re allowed to exploit other available natural resources like black gold, or oil, gas, diamonds, platinum, even fellow human beings.
It raises the simple question: Is water a human right or a commodity?
The water supply to 230 million people around the globe, from U.S. cities like Atlanta to urban centers across the Third World, is controlled by just two French companies. And both Suez and Vivendi expect double-digit annual growth in their water business, and each already has contracts that add up to more than $10 billion a year. Puerto Rico just hired Suez to distribute its water.
RWE, a German energy conglomerate, is buying small water companies to challenge the French companies. Hundreds of other private operators hold concessions to pump, treat, and distribute water.
Although companies are granted rights to market water – not ownership of the water itself – experts worry that an inevitable expansion of the private sector might escape essential public control.
“Privatization has the potential to grow enormously because of the desperate need for water in the developing world, but water is too important to be left in purely private hands,” said Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute in Berkeley, Calif.
A report at the weekend from the Asia-Pacific Water Summit informed us that the planet faced a water crisis that was especially troubling for Asia. Poor management of current water resources was condemned, but the report made a stark warning, stating;
‘Water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict’.
And guess who’s investing billions in water projects? The banks….because that’s where massive future profits lie, even at the cost of misery and disease to fellow human beings.
It is not enough that they have the western world enslaved through our greed for consumer items and endless credit, they have enslaved the rest of the world through the demand for basic human needs such as food, shelter and water.
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