H2O-KAY
Organisers of the World Water Forum in Kyoto, which ended on March 23rd,
were expecting a rubber-stamping session of their plans to put the
planet's most precious resource in the hands of the corporations.
Instead they got no resolution, no agreement and no common ground thanks
to the robust determination of activists who crashed their party from all
over the world.
More than 200 of the regular delegates lost their appetite for workshops
with tasteless titles like "How the Poor will become Customers"
and signed up instead to "Water is Life" - a statement
condemning plans to privatise water supplies in the developing world and
stating that access to clean drinking water is a basic human right.
When World Water Council chair Michael Camdessus, ex Managing Director of
the International Monetary Fund, took to the platform to champion the
Global Water Grab, people jumped up waving home-made lie-detector tests.
When Camdessus advocated that corporations should start their water grab
by seizing control of ground water supplies , activists spoke up from the
floor, telling the forum that in Brazil, where underground water is owned
by private companies, the water often ends up getting bottled for sale as
mineral water while the people have to make do with polluted surface
water.
Activists also brought up the riots in Bolivia in 2000 which left several
dead and over 200 injured when peasant farmers took to the streets to
protest water privatisation. The Bolivian privatisation had resulted in
200% hikes in water costs, with some families paying $20 a month for
water out of an average wage of $100. Shocked delegates also learned that
poor families in South Africa, where water supplies are privatised,
routinely get their water cut off if they can't pay the bills.
Meanwhile, alternative Social Water Forums sprung up in Florence, New
Delhi, New York and Brazil. The latter was the largest, attended by 400
delegates who resolved to take the case against water privatisation to
the International Court of Justice. They also initiated a co-ordinated
defence of water reserves in the Amazonian jungle and river systems
extending into Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uraguay.
As the bloody war in Iraq continues, writer Norman Mailer issued a water
wake-up call, pointing out that control of the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers in a region where water sources are scarce could be very important
for the US's intentions of future domination in the Middle East.
More info:
http://www.blueplanetproject.net
