Juxtapose the articles below from today's commondreams.org:
Water Scarcity Could Affect Billions: Is This the Biggest Crisis of All?
by Michael McCarthy
Glug-glug: Not normally a sound of foreboding. But mankind's most serious
challenge in the 21st century might not be war or hunger or disease or
even the collapse of civic order, a UN report says; it may be the lack of
fresh water.
Population growth, pollution and climate change, all accelerating, are
likely to combine to produce a drastic decline in water supply in the
coming decades, according to the World Water Development Report,
published today. And of course that supply is already problematic for up
to a third of the world's population.
At present 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water and 2.4 billion
lack access to proper sanitation, nearly all of them in the developing
countries. Yet the fact that these figures are likely to worsen
remorselessly has not been properly grasped by the world community, the
report says. "Despite widely available evidence of the crisis,
political commitment to reverse these trends has been lacking."
Faced with "inertia at the leadership level and a world population
not fully aware of the scale of the problem", the global water
crisis will reach unprecedented heights in the years ahead, the report
says, with growing per capita scarcity in many parts of the developing
world. And that means hunger, disease and death.
The report makes an alarming prediction. By the middle of the century, it
says that, in the worst case, no fewer than seven billion people in 60
countries may be faced with water scarcity, although if the right
policies are followed this may be brought down to two billion people in
48 nations.
The report is intended as an alarm call, launched in advance of the World
Water Forum taking place in Kyoto, Japan this month, when it is hoped
that governments and policy makers will make a new commitment to get to
grips with the water problem internationally. That, sadly, seems
unlikely, especially if the United States and Britain have just invaded
Iraq and the world is convulsed by war.
A big difficulty with water is that, at least in the rich West, it is
largely taken for granted. After all, it is the most widely-occurring
substance, most of the planet being H2O. But the words of Coleridge are
apposite: "Water, water everywhere", as the Ancient Mariner
said, "Nor any drop to drink".
Although water is the commonest stuff on earth, only 2.53 per cent of it
is fresh, while the rest is salt. And of the freshwater, two thirds is
locked up in glaciers and permanent snow cover. What is available, in
lakes, rivers, aquifers (ground water) and rainfall run-off, is now
increasingly coming under pressure from several directions at once.
Population growth is the prime driver. The soaring of human numbers to
more than six billion by the millennium meant that water consumption
almost doubled in half a century. Between 1970 and 1990 available per
capita water supply decreased by one third. Even though birth rates are
now slowing, world population is still likely to increase by half as much
again, to about 9.3 billion by 2050.
Demand, of course, comes not just from the need to drink, the need to
wash and the need to deal with human waste, enormous though these are;
the really great calls on water supply come from industry in the
developed world, and, in the developing world, from agriculture.
Irrigating crops in hot dry countries accounts for 70 per cent of all the
water use in the world.
Pollution, from industry, agriculture and not least, human waste, adds
another fierce pressure. About two million tons of waste are dumped every
day into rivers, lakes and streams, with one liter of waste water
sufficient to pollute about eight liters of fresh water. Today's report
estimates that across the world there are about 12,000 cubic kilometers
of waste water, which is more than the total amount contained in the
world's 10 largest river basins at any given moment. Therefore, it
suggests, if pollution keeps pace with population growth, the world will
in effect lose 18,000 cubic kilometers by 2050 � almost nine times the
amount all countries currently use for irrigation.
All that's bad enough. But increasing the stress on water supply still
further will be climate change, which UN scientists calculate will
probably account for about a fifth of the increase in water scarcity.
While rainfall is predicted to get heavier in winter in high latitudes,
such as Britain and northern Europe, in many drought-prone countries and
even some tropical regions it is predicted to decrease further; and water
quality will worsen with rising pollution levels and water temperatures.
Yet another difficulty will be the growing urbanization of the world: at
present, 48 per cent of the Earth's population lives in towns and cities;
by 2030 this will be 60 per cent. Urban areas often have more readily
available water supplies than rural ones; their problem is that they
concentrate wastes. As the report notes: "Where good waste
management is lacking, urban areas are among the world's most
life-threatening environments."
The direst, direct effects of water scarcity will undoubtedly be on
health. The presence of water can be a bane as well as a benefit:
Water-related diseases are among the commonest causes of illness and
death. Water-borne illnesses, such as gastric infections leading to
diarrhea, are caused by drinking contaminated water; vector-borne
diseases, such as malaria and schistosomiasis, are passed on by the
mosquitoes and small snails that use water to breed. Millions contract
such diseases. In the year 2000, the number of people estimated to have
died from water/sanitation associated diseases was 2.2 million, a million
of them from malaria. The majority of victims were aged under five.
The world's soaring demand for fresh water is also causing increasing
environmental stress; the stream flows of about 60 per cent of the
world's largest rivers have been interrupted by dams and, of the
creatures associated with inland waters, 24 per cent of mammals and 12
per cent of birds are threatened. About 10 per cent of freshwater fish
species have been studied in detail and about a third of these are
thought to be threatened.
But the one hopeful note the report strikes is on the much-discussed
possibility of "water wars". It says: "While water
scarcity will intensify conflicts between states, there is little
evidence to suggest that these situations will explode into fully fledged
water wars." The report quotes a study that looked at every
water-related interaction between two or more countries over the past 50
years.
Of the 1,831 interactions, the great majority, 1,228, were co-operative.
Of the 507 "conflictive" events, only 37 involved violence, of
which 21 consisted of military acts (18 between Israel and its
neighbors).
Yet the main picture is a distinctly gloomy one � of a vital but limited
human resource subject to increasingly unsatisfiable demands. "Of
all the social and natural crises we humans face," said Koichiro
Matsuura, the director general of Unesco, which has produced the report,
"the water crisis is the one that lies at the heart of our survival
and that of our planet Earth."
� 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
###
Why Does the WTO Want My Water? by Lori Wallach
When most people think about trade, they conjure up images of ships laden
with sacks of coffee and steel beams ferrying between nations, and trade
agreements focusing on cutting tariffs and quotas on trade in goods. In
reality however, today's "trade agreements," such as the 1994
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 1995 World Trade
Organization (WTO), have little to do with trade. Instead they focus on
granting foreign companies new rights and privileges within the
boundaries of other countries, on constraining federal, state and local
regulatory policies and on commodifying public services and common
resources, such as water, into new tradable units for profit.
A leak this week of European negotiating demands in WTO service sector
negotiations that have been quietly underway since 2000 in Geneva
provided a harsh wake-up call to the world about what is really at stake
in these global "commercial" negotiations.
Up for grabs at the negotiating table is worldwide privatization and
deregulation of public energy and water utilities, postal services,
higher education and state alcohol distribution controls; a new right for
foreign firms to obtain U.S. Small Business Administration loans;
elimination of a list of specific U.S. state laws about land use,
professional licensing and consumer protections, and extreme deregulation
of private-sector service industries such as insurance, banking, mutual
funds and securities.
The national consumer group Public Citizen joined the Polaris Institute
of Canada and civil society groups around the globe in a coordinated
release of the secret documents. Europe's demands of the United States
and 108 other WTO signatories provide the "smoking gun"
evidence, after months of speculation and concern, about how these
secretive WTO negotiations threaten essential public services upon which
people worldwide rely daily.
The negotiations are to expand the scope of General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS,) one of the 21 pacts enforced by the WTO. The
"GATS-2000" talks are promoted by the United States and
European nations on behalf of multinational service sector conglomerates.
Think of GATS as a Trojan Horse - appealingly dubbed a "trade
agreement" - which in reality contains a massive attack on the most
basic functions of local and state government. You might ask what the
GATS provision creating a new right for corporations to establish a
"commercial presence" within another country has to do with
cross-border trade. The answer: nothing. Actually, the terms create a
right for a foreign firm to set up subsidiaries in other countries or
acquire local companies under terms more favorable than provided domestic
competitors. For instance, once a service sector is covered under GATS,
governments may not limit the number or size of service providers,
meaning that applying zoning rules on beach front development or limits
on concessions in national parks to foreign firms would be forbidden.
This is why many people consider GATS to be a backdoor attempt to revive
the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), a radical investment pact
that was killed by public opposition in 1998.
The GATS not only promotes privatization of public services, but it makes
it extremely difficult for countries, states and local governments to
reverse privatization experiments that fail. Under GATS, if cities seek
to bring a privately operated utility back into the public realm, they
only can do so if the U.S. government agrees to compensate all WTO
countries for lost business opportunities of their companies. Thus, if
the United States agrees to Europe's GATS-2000 demands to subject water
to GATS disciplines, then Atlanta, for instance, which just reversed a
disastrous water privatization involving a French company, could do so
only if compensation was offered not just to that company but to all WTO
signatory countries. Another GATS threat revealed in the secret European
document is a demand to include retail electricity services under GATS,
which would mean that privatization nightmares like California's energy
deregulation would be nearly impossible to fix.
GATS also sets strict constraints on government regulation in the
services sector - even when those policies treat domestic and foreign
services the same. GATS allows federal, state and local regulations to be
challenged as barriers to trade if they are not designed in the least
trade restrictive manner. For instance, Europe has charged that the
rather modest Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accountability legislation
inspired by the recent corporate crime wave violates these GATS limits on
domestic service sector regulations. Also, because GATS is geared toward
market access for foreign competitors, the agreement is hostile to
regulation in general and in particular to the diversity of domestic
regulations in the U.S. that vary from state to state, yet state and
municipal officials are excluded from these closed-door negotiations.
The leaked EU documents have prompted civil society groups worldwide to
call for a moratorium on the "GATS-2000" talks and for a public
process involving state and local officials. The clock is ticking as all
WTO member nations, including the United States, are expected to respond
to the European demands within weeks, starting March 31, 2003. At a
congressional hearing this week, U.S. Trade Representative Robert
Zoellick dodged congressional inquiries about when or if the public and
Congress would have an opportunity to vet the U.S. "GATS-2000"
commitments. Zoellick recently submitted similar service sector
commitments without public consultation in the regional NAFTA-expansion
talks known as the Free Trade Area of the America (FTAA). Only growing
public and congressional pressure is likely to stop the Bush
administration from trading away our basic public services and
governments' basic public interest regulatory powers.
Lori Wallach is the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
###
Wall Street Journal - Feb. 25, 2003
Leading the News: EU Asks U.S. to Revise Rules for Service Sector Host of
Regulations at Issue As Bush Seeks Freer Trade; Alarm Likely at Local
Level By Neil King Jr.
WASHINGTON -- As the Bush administration seeks freer global trade in
services, the European Union is taking aim at the sector and requesting
changes in how U.S. state and federal authorities regulate everything
from liquor sales to accounting.
The EU requests, included in a confidential document put forward as part
of continuing global trade talks, are likely to raise alarm among state
and local authorities, who would be required to alter rules governing
businesses ranging from land ownership to insurance. The 34-page paper
was leaked to Ralph Nader's group Public Citizen.
The Bush administration is set to respond by the end of March with a list
of changes it is willing to make to service-sector regulations.
Some of the EU positions have been known for months, but the final list
includes new language regarding accounting standards, cross-border
insurance and the retail sale of electricity, all highly controversial
topics. Consumer groups, as well as a growing number of state officials,
contend that the secretive talks within the World Trade Organization
could undermine the ability of local authorities to oversee vital
economic services.
"What we hear is going on in these WTO talks will run smack up
against laws in states like mine, but for now it's behind closed
doors," said Mark Pocan, a Democrat in the Wisconsin State Assembly.
The big issues in his state, he said, are privatization of public water
supplies and rules governing electricity distribution.
The EU push coincides with new scrutiny in Washington of the role that
government, and particularly state and local governments, play in
limiting competition. The Federal Trade Commission, under Bush appointee
Timothy Muris, is seeking to open regulated markets across the economy,
from prescription drugs to caskets makers, and has created a task force
to examine anticompetitive restrictions on Internet commerce, such as
state rules limiting auto sales or interstate shipment of wine. The
agency also is preparing to charge that Unocal Corp. used state
regulation and its patents on a clean-fuel formula to lock up a monopoly
in the West Coast gasoline market.
And the wisdom of state regulation in telecommunications was a major
issue last week at the Federal Communications Commission, where Chairman
Michael Powell was outvoted in his effort to largely eliminate the role
states play in overseeing wholesale rates that the four big regional Bell
telephone companies charge competitors for using their lines.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick has made opening up global
trade in services a central plank of his strategy in the Doha round of
WTO trade talks, which are meant to wrap up at the end of next year.
Persuading the rest of the world to accept U.S. banks, insurers and
overnight-delivery companies would be a boon to U.S. business, but
promises to reciprocate in the U.S. are already raising the ire of
environmental and labor groups.
The EU demands mirror those that the U.S. regularly makes on its trading
partners to lift government rules that tend to favor domestic companies
over U.S. competitors.
An area of chief concern to labor is the push by the EU and other
countries to open the U.S. market to contract workers offering services
ranging from computer software to equipment maintenance and landscape
architecture. Environmental groups, meanwhile, oppose efforts to open all
water and sewage services to foreign competition. Such a move, they
contend, would allow other countries to overturn local water regulations
and break up public utilities if they posed a "barrier to
trade" within the world trade system.
"What is startling is how much of the U.S. economy is up for grabs
here and how broad the impact might be," said Lori Wallach, head of
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. Ms. Wallach obtained the EU document
last week. It wasn't clear when it was submitted to U.S. trade
negotiators.
The EU document also indicates that European officials may be ready to
further challenge the requirement that businesses operating in the U.S.
abide by U.S. accounting standards, as opposed to international standards
used in Europe. The Securities and Exchange Commission has rebuffed
several recent requests to allow the domestic use of international
accounting standards, which critics say are overly subjective and lack
clear rules. The EU, in its request to the U.S., calls this practice
"a regulatory trade barrier" that must be resolved.
The EU also is requesting that the U.S. expand the cross-border sale of
"large-risk" insurance services, a proposal that some experts
say could weaken controls over insurers offering services to businesses
or even individuals. The EU's earlier requests sought to open the U.S.
market to foreign sales of mutual funds; the new document seeks to expand
that to the sale of financial derivatives, especially futures.
Some of the previously known EU objectives could have a bigger effect on
individual states. For instance, the EU wants to eliminate rules in 16
states that give state authorities the sole right to sell packaged
liquor. The document also seeks to lift restrictions in nine states on
foreign ownership of land and to remove certain residency and citizenship
requirements for practicing law.
Some of the requests aren't likely to go far. For instance, the EU wants
the U.S. drop its centuries-old prohibition on foreign ships moving cargo
between U.S. ports, an unlikely move in these times of heightened
security. The document also includes a request that the U.S. allow
foreign companies and governments to acquire 100% ownership of U.S. radio
stations. The EU also wants the U.S. Postal Service to cede its monopoly
over bulk, first-class letter delivery.
Both U.S. and EU trade officials declined to comment on the EU requests.
The service negotiations are part of a long effort to deepen provisions
within the General Agreement of Trade in Services, which was part of the
sweeping 1994 Uruguay Round of global trade talks. The U.S. made its
formal request of the EU and other countries last summer in documents
that remain undisclosed.
Copyright 2003 The Wall Street Journal
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