More than one billion people lack access to fresh drinking water, according to the United Nations — and that number is expected to double in the next 10 years. World water consumption is growing more than twice as fast as the population.
For human beings this is a crisis. For corporations, though, it’s an opportunity. The world’s biggest companies increasingly see water as the world’s largest untapped commodity. They’re moving to take over local water supplies in the name of profit. When municipal water services are privatized, rates double or triple, quality standards drop, and customers who can’t pay are cut off. And governments are lining up to help. Every year public officials from all over the world convene with big-business leaders and World Bank representatives at meetings of the World Water Council, a water think tank dominated by commercial interests.
The corporations involved aren’t shy about their plans. In Vandana Shiva’s story in Canadian Dimension magazine, Monsanto’s Robert Farley described his company’s strategy this way: “Since water is as central to food production as seed is, and without water life is not possible, Monsanto is now trying to establish its control over water.”
But the privatizers don’t always have an easy time of it. In 1999, Bechtel Group took over the public water system in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with the help of the World Bank. The company immediately doubled water rates. Bolivians didn’t take this lying down. Last year, general strikes repeatedly brought the city to a standstill. The government ultimately conceded and nullified Bechtel’s contract.
Cochabamba’s water war was one of the most significant victories yet for the opponents of corporate-driven globalization. Yet most US coverage came from the Associated Press’s Peter McFarren, whose stories uncritically accepted the government’s characterization of the protesters as drug traffickers. McFarren resigned from the wire service when it came out that he was actively lobbying the Bolivian Congress in support of a commercial proposal, from which he stood to benefit financially, to ship Bolivian water to Chile. Although it wasn’t mentioned by Project Censored, the McFarren conflict of interest was first reported by the Narco News Bulletin (www.narconews.com/mcfarrenstory1.html).
The PPJ Gazette 