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Much of the world lives without access to clean water. Privatization of water resources, promoted as a means to bring business efficiency into water service management, has instead led to reduced access for the poor around the world as prices for these essential services have risen. This article looks into this issue in further detail below.
Table of contents for this page
This web page has the following sub-sections:
- Introduction—A Water Management Crisis Leading to Lack of Access to Safe Water for Much of the World
- Coca Cola vs. Indian Farmers: Luxury vs. Necessity
- Privatization in both rich and poor countries can mean many cannot access safe water
- Water Access Policy: Following Neoliberal Ideology
- Privatization vs. Democratic Accountability of Management of a Fundamental Resource
- Water: A Human Right or a Commodity?
- Water and Environmental Issues
- International Agreements and Action
- More Information
Introduction—A Water Management Crisis Leading to Lack of Access to Safe Water for Much of the World
Consider the following:
- “Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity.” (James Wolfenson, The Other Crisis, World Bank, October 1998, quoted from The Reality of Aid 2000, (Earthscan Publications, 2000), p.10)
- 400 million children (1 in 5 from the developing world) have no access to safe water. 1.4 million children will die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation (State of the World’s Children, 2005, UNICEF)
- A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World. (Maude Barlow, Water as Commodity—The Wrong Prescription, The Institute for Food and Development Policy, Backgrounder, Summer 2001, Vol. 7, No. 3)
- “Already, corporations own or operate water systems across the globe that bring in about $200 billion a year. Yet they serve only about 7 percent of the world’s population, leaving a potentially vast market untapped.” (John Tagliabue, As Multinationals Run the Taps, Anger Rises Over Water for Profit, New York Times, August 26, 2002)
Already some one third of the world’s population is living in either water-scarce, or water-short areas. It is predicted that climate change and population growth will take this number to one half of humanity. Yet, as Maude Barlow has commented, it is not necessarily over-population causing water shortages: “12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.”
Indian scientist and activist, Vandana Shiva noted in a documentary that the water crisis is a human-created crisis only in the last two or so decades. In other words, it is not so much of a water shortage crisis, but a water management crisis. That documentary was World Without Water, from True Vision Productions broadcast by Britain’s mainstream media channel, Channel 4 on April 29, 2006.
The main reason for the water crisis, the documentary implied, is the commoditization of water. By promoting water as a commodity, this has led to increased control of water by multinational corporations. In turn, there has been increased fear that the poor are shut out, because the MNC’s main responsibility is to shareholders and to increase profit. As a result, though there may be many people in terms of market access, many people are too poor to afford it. The World Bank, IMF and others have encouraged countries around the world to privatize water access in the hope for increased efficiency as well as follow other policies such as removal of subsidies for such provisions. In doing so, the poor have found themselves being shut out as prices have risen beyond affordability.
The documentary traced the struggles of
- A family in Bolivia living just behind a water plant, unable to afford the 9-month salary equivalent connection charge [highlighting the issue of access inequality and water access privatization];
- Poor Indian farmers in Rajasthan facing water shortages and worse because the Coca Cola company had taken so much water from nearby wells and aquifers [highlighting the issue of need versus luxury];
- Tanzanian people’s struggles with water privatization, and even the struggles of the poor in the world’s richest country, the United States [highlighting water resource commoditization and privatization versus water as a human right with universal access].
Around the word, the documentary noted, water access issues are reaching crisis point, similar to the ones they highlighted in detail.
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