Subject:
WB and public/private water. xxxx
Date:
Wed, 17 May 2000 22:47:47 -0400
From:
Nurev Ind Research <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization:
Nurev Independent Research
==========================================================================
MESSAGE # 6 COMMENTS ON THE SPEECH BY THE WORLD BANK'S MANAGING DIRECTOR
(Caio Koch-Weser)
Here is my sixth post of a long series about water management, with a key
question in mind. Until now, I have set the base of the series (message #
1), then proposed a summary of an article received from Rich Winkel in the
USA through Stu (from New Zealand) [Hurray for the transboundary nature of
the conversation...] (paper # 2,), and critiqued the speeches by three
cabinet ministers of Germany, the country hosting a conference on
Transboundary management of water resources in early March 1998. (papers #
3, # 4, # 5).
My main critique of these speeches was that they were reported on at all
while the inputs of the participants in the conference were not mentioned
at all...
. My work at the series of papers has been slowed down by a series of
unexpected difficulties on some of the lists I coordinate, and outside of
the Internet. The task I undertook several years ago proves more and more
difficult to carry out in a world completely disconnected from the very
concept of sustainability, and from the frightening threat inherent to our
growing non-sustainability.....
We are now starting with the real flesh of the issue: The position of the
World Bank. Mr. Koch-Weser, in the name of the Bank, proposes
public-private partnerships in water management within coherent 'government
enforced 'rules of the game'', and defends his point with logical
arguments: (easier access to financial inputs, clarity in rules and
allocation of rights, etc..). He also advocates a resumption of large
hydro-electrical projects, with the provision that decisions on such
projects involve all parties affected and be based on consensus among them.
First, it would be interesting to know how the participants in the
conference reacted to Mr. Koch-Weser's proposals. It is regrettable that
Ramesh Jaura, in his paper dated March 3, 1998 (InterPress Third World
News Agency (IPS) Amsterdam, `The Netherlands) did not address the subject
from that angle.
My personal reactions to the propositions of Mr. Koch Weser are reserved,
based on my long experience of large international projects (mostly dealing
with water resources). The words are apparently reasonable, but there are
worrying undercurrents.
1. Why should the World Bank, a financial institution spell out policies on
the management of water resources, national and transboundary? Would it be
because water, from being a resource, is considered as tradable? This is
probably Mr. Koch-Weser's view, as he advocates public-private ventures in
water management. This means that water is seen quasi exclusively as an
input or a support to profitable human activities. In that case, the supply
of drinking, cooking and other domestic water becomes a trade. Until now,
it was seen as a service, and the provision of a minimum necessary to
secure an adequate life to people was largely considered as a right, not
yet in place in many parts of the world. It was understood( especially
after the first Habitat Conference in Vancouver in 1976 that international
agencies, such as the UNDP, the WHO, FAO etc, and bilateral aid agencies
would intensify their action to put in place water supplies in sufficient
amounts to all people, whether they could pay for the service or not. Of
course, implementation was not true to the spirit of the Habitat
Conference, and it was clear that the provision of water beyond the
necessary would be paid for, as it always had been.
2. Another question arises, in the context of a recommended private
involvement in water management. If water was no more than an input to
human activities (off-stream or in-stream, the maintenance of minimum flows
to maintain aquatic life, of commercial value or not, to secure the
dilution of pollutants, to maintain river aesthetics, or to make navigation
possible would also become part of the trade. In other words, all functions
of water, including the release of adequate flows to the sea in order to
keep its salinity at a level consistent with biological and other
requirements of the ecosphere (especially so when the sea in question is
closed or nearly so like the Caspian sea, the Black Sea, or the
Mediterranean) would become part of the over powerful market.
When I look at the criteria which rule the market, this leave me shivering.
To submit the maintenance of global physical equilibriums, the
continuation of life, etc.. to criteria which can be summed up as the
maximization of immediate monetary profits for the corporations, themselves
tools of personal power (immediate also), for a very limited number of
extremely rich and powerful individual leaves me aghast. Where would there
be any guarantee that life will go on for the species seen as of no
immediate commercial interest to the corporations and their masters? Where
would there be any guarantee that we do not reduce the flows to the see to
what the trading functions of corporations can tolerate, regardless of the
eventual, longer term effects on aquatic life, climate, etc.. Especially
when we consider how little we know about the very complex interactions in
the web of life?
Then, when I consider that the rules of the game, in the market economy are
essentially elements of the superstructure in the system, and that the
infrastructure is essentially founded on cheating with the rules, that the
manner in which profits are maximized for the corporations is by
externalizing all costs (not to mention adjusting selling prices to the
optimum willingness to pay among people manipulated to want the products
put on the market), I am dumbfounded.
Finally, when I see that the majority of the people alive now do not raise
an eyebrow when presented with this type of propositions, I do not know
what to think, how to react, and where to turn in life. Are we so
anaesthetized that we are accepting such a process as proposed by Mr/
Koch-Weser without flinching an eye?
Mr. Koch-Weser's first proposition triggers a nightmarish vision for me
and people who like me see water as much as air and land as the foundation
of life, human and other and therefore, not a "resource" let alone a
"commodity". In other words, I have always thought that there are limits to
what people can be authorized to trade, and that these limits may not
encompass elements of nature that are essential to the continuation of
life. This position may be seen as ideological, and perhaps it is, but it
also corresponds to what I would argue is common sense.
But let us turn to more down to earth considerations: When Mr. Koch-Weser
proposes that a public-private partnership replace government in water
management and development, he implies that management of water must become
a profitable operation.
This would exclude the people who cannot pay from access to the resource or
impose government subsidy to the private sector to take care of the
management and supply of a resource which was until now considered (at
least for the minimum required for decent survival), much more than a free
good, i.e., a basic right of life.
3. Another of the ideas proposed by Mr. Koch Weser is also difficult to
accept. He proposes that this private-public partnership should take place
within a well regulated set of rules, clearly defined and implemented, and
in particular that the decisions to construct, for example, a new
hydro-power project, should be based on a consensus between all parties
involved or affected.
Based on a long experience in the field, which focused precisely on that
domain, I can safely say that:
1. Even in affluent and well administered countries, water management rules
and regulations were neither designed to provide a fair distribution of the
resource to parties according to their needs and merits, not to meet the
requirements of the encompassing ecosystems, nor a fortiori to keep an
adequate reserve for future users. Future generations and the ecosystems
come last in the line. Water and other related rights are generally
granted to the first claimant, or the strongest, or to the most likely to
turn the resource into profits on the market. This image is further
distorted in developing countries, where the rich and foreign interests
control most of the water they need or think they will need one day, while
the poor are left with whatever remains available, in any even still much
less than the 15 litres per day proposed as an interim target in 1976 at
the first Habitat Conference, and adopted by the WHO at the time (it was
later to be augmented to 25 litres (in 1985)... Where are these objectives?
4. Then there is a very big gap between the letter and the implementation
of the law. Historically, government agencies have never had the means
necessary to manage effectively the resource entrusted to them anywhere.
Also, their tasks were split into separate technical fields, among
uncoordinated agencies (or services in the same agency) each one in charge
of a narrow, specific aspect of the inter-relations between water, its
natural context and human interferences with the resource. Also, because of
the general thrusts on trade and commercial action at the expense of care,
monitoring of what is happening anywhere, and in particular in river basins
submitted to heavy stress by human activities is rapidly taking a very
secondary position in public budgets.
The drive to externalization of costs among commercial enterprises places
the monitoring by them of the effects they may have on other activities and
on nature a very secondary issue, UNLESS these effects are detrimental to
their immediate effectiveness in generating profits. In such a case, they
adjust their operation at the minimum acceptable level.
I do not want to expand too much on this subject, but given the above, what
would be the use of a set of clear rules of the game in water resource use
management and what would be the validity on consensus among parties
involved or affected, when it comes to deciding on the construction of a
new project (expectedly to be privately financed, according to Mr.
Koch-Weser)?
With my very best regards
Yves Bajard
end of message # 6
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