Growing conflicts over who owns water and how to manage it are emerging
all over the world. Although debates at the UN and among civil society
have moved toward the recognition of water as a basic human right, the
United States still lags behind. Washington has instead largely
supported private-sector approaches that will likely exacerbate
conflicts over water resources. What is perhaps new is that the U.S.
intelligence community is also looking at water as a potential national
security concern.
A report led by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),
Global Water Security attempts to answer the
question,
“How will water problems (shortages, poor water quality, or floods)
impact U.S. national security interests over the next 30 years.” The
report focuses on trans-boundary water issues in seven river basins
associated with countries that are identified as strategically important
for U.S. security: Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Jordan, Mekong, Brahmaputra,
Indus, and Amu Darya. Except for the Nile, these rivers are all in
Asia, and together these basins are home to over 1.5 billion people. The
national intelligence community judged “that these examples are
sufficient to illustrate the intersections between water challenges and
US national security.”
According to the DIA assessment, “water problems—when combined with
poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual
leadership, and weak political institutions—contribute to social
disruptions that can result in state failure.” It predicts that "as
water shortages become more acute … water in shared basins will
increasingly be used as leverage" for political purposes. The assessment
expects that the water shortages and pollution will harm the
performance of important U.S. trading partners and identifies
agriculture and food security as the most important challenges.
The Brahmaputra and Mekong basins account for half of the population
in the assessment. Some of the poorest communities in the world live in
these basins. Countries such as India, China, and Thailand are
considering proposals to divert water from these rivers to meet the
water needs of arid regions that fall outside the basins. Environmental
justice activists contend that these projects would violate the rights
of already vulnerable communities living at the margins. For quite
different reasons, environmental scientists are questioning the
viability of such inter-basin water transfers and the implications for
ecosystem integrity.
U.S. Policy Still Insufficient
Globally, for well over a decade, water issues have been making headlines: The
global assessment
on water and sanitation by WHO, UNICEF and UN Water Supply and
Sanitation Council reported in 2000 that 1.1 billion people did not have
access to drinking water and 2.6 billion did not have access to
sanitation services. The infamous water privatization in Cochabamba,
where massive protests forced out Aguas del Tunari, a consortium led by
the U.S. multinational company Bechtel, in April 2000, became a rallying
point for water justice activists and helped to draw attention to the
ills of water privatization around the world.
Through most of this period, the United States paid scant attention
to the global water crisis or related human rights concerns. But as the
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
noted
in early 2009, change was in the air. The following year, the United
States chose to abstain rather than vote against the landmark UN General
Assembly
resolution
introduced by Bolivia that recognized water as a human right. There
seems to be an increasing recognition that water is a central
developmental issue that affects humanity in myriad ways but
particularly the rural poor by affecting local food availability. This
is evident from the
remarks
by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on World Water Day a year
ago: “The water crisis is a health crisis, it's a farming crisis, it's
an economic crisis, it's a climate crisis, and increasingly, it is a
political crisis. And therefore, we must have an equally comprehensive
response."
Thus by identifying water crisis as a precursor to political crisis,
Clinton set the ball rolling for addressing what in her opinion is one
of the three pillars of foreign policy: development. She acknowledged
that her own ideas around foreign policy’s three Ds – “the need to
elevate
diplomacy and
development alongside
defense
as pillars of our national security” – had been informed by the views
of earlier generations of American leaders such as General George
Marshall. In a recent
speech
Secretary Clinton said: “Some of the greatest threats to our security
come from a lack of opportunity, the denial of human rights, a changing
climate, strains on water, food, and energy.”
Yet, the United States persists to address development issues as if
they were discrete problems rather than closely interconnected. The
government continues to hold up the private sector, especially
investments by multinational corporations, as the solution to more
efficient management of water, food, and energy while neglecting the
rights issues that run through all of them. Therein lies the challenge.
The private sector is mandated to maximize profit, not to meet
development goals. But meeting development goals is in the public
interest and thus also a civic responsibility. The private sector can
play a limited role in meeting development goals, but only if
corporations first ensure that their actions do not violate basic human
rights of people.
Two Different Visions
The two differing visions around meeting development goals were articulated recently in
two distinct water-related events held in Marseilles in March 2012. Organized by the World Water Council, the
6th World Water Forum
was designed as an opportunity for businesses to work with governments
and other stakeholders. Although its earlier boards consisted primarily
of private water business, the Council over the years has expanded to
include carefully selected staff of
international environmental NGOs, representatives of UN organizations, and government officials
who favor the private sector’s role in sustainable water management and
see the water crisis as a profitable opportunity for investors. With a
ministerial that accompanies the meeting, the World Water Forum has
attempted to present itself as a multilateral event rather than the
private water event that it is. Leading up to the event this time
around, the International forum committee adopted several processes
similar to that of the other UN events, such as regional meetings and
major group interaction. But it also
reportedly allowed
businesses increased access to senior officials. Many policies
discussed and advanced in these fora are likely to further unequal
access to resources, including water.
The other event, the
Alternative Water Forum,
opened two days later in a warehouse across town closer to the old
port, at Dock Sud. Here participants from over 90 countries gathered to
share their analysis of the fundamental causes of the multiple crises
they experience. They shared the challenges they face in realizing the
right to water and other related rights such as right to food, right to
health, right to livelihood, rights of women, and rights of indigenous
peoples. They shared the successes they have had leading up to this
event. The Alternative Water Forum sought to highlight low-cost
solutions that were often rooted in communities: Innovations to enhance
productivity and sustainability that were arrived at by selectively and
carefully reintroducing both traditional and modern practices, such as
that being undertaken by
Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective in India. It also discussed ways to move forward such as the
Peoples Guide to Implement Right to Water.
Perhaps because the 6
th World Water Forum turned out to be
even more of a corporate trade show than ever before, many participants
were curious to attend the Alternative Water Forum. In the end, several
civil society participants at the 6
th World Water Forum chose to engage with the alternative water forum as active participants, and many of them joined the protest
march
on March 17, the last day of the Alternate Water Forum. I was delighted
that the head of the U.S. delegation accepted IATP’s invitation to
attend the
CSO-government dialogue organized by some of us in the global water justice movement, on March 11, 2012, a day before the opening of the 6
th World Water Forum. He was accompanied by several State Department staff, as was his counterpart from the German Mission.
This did not of course change the trajectory of the official World
Water Forum. Despite an appeal by over 40 international civil society
organization -- and despite the
warning
by Catarina de Albuquerque, the UN special rapporteur on the right to
water and sanitation, that the “outcome of the World Water Forum may
become ‘solutions’ built on faulty foundations” -- the
ministerial declaration endorsed by 84 government ministers and dozens of other national representatives from the 6
th World Water Forum did not recognize water as a human right.
Once again the United States did not vote in favor of water as a
human right, even though the mission later on agreed that in some
situations an explicit recognition of the right to water is the only
tool that can help ensure access to water to vulnerable communities.
Less than a week later, on World Water Day, Secretary Clinton also
launched the
U.S. Water Partnership, a public-private partnership to help address global water security concerns. This partnership, however, has members such as
Coca Cola,
whose corporate social responsibility initiatives are well publicized
but whose business practices are based on unsustainable levels of water
extraction and pollution. If a company’s practices themselves undermine
people’s access to water, causing them livelihood-disruption, that is a
sure recipe for social disruption, as the
experience in Plachimada shows.
Water and Food
The U.S. intelligence assessment
Global Water Security
has rightly identified some of the most important water-related
concerns of this century. But U.S. policy still lags behind by narrowly
focusing on efficiency and favoring corporate control rather than
actually looking at the causal relationship between human rights
violations and the social disruptions that the intelligence community
warns about.
A case in point is the role that water plays in food security, which
the Defense Intelligence Agency has identified as one of the biggest
challenges. The State Department too has been paying attention to global
food security concerns since the recent food crisis. Its
Feed the Future Initiative already focuses on increasing agricultural productivity through
efficient use of water resources and better market access
for farmers. This productivity improvement is partly to be achieved
through genetic modification of crops to withstand aridity and
salinity.
According to recent water policy documents, it is also to be
achieved by improving water productivity through market mechanisms, such
as pricing of irrigation water. An example is the World Economic
Forums’ Water Initiative, a private sector-led consortium, and its
Charting Our Water Future.
Such approaches will shift water allocation in favor of economically
productive enterprises, and crops desired by the agri-food value chains,
rather than in support of local food sovereignty, further increasing
poverty and related human right violations.
The challenges identified by the DIA may result in the State
Department promoting further corporatization of water management as a
way of addressing the crisis. A human-rights based approach to “water
for food security,” on the other hand, would prioritize water allocation
for basic needs, including water for livelihood security, before
applying market mechanisms for improving economic efficiency of water
use. If the United States shifted its focus away from corporate
partnerships as a means for tackling developmental challenges, and
adopted a rights-based approach to development, the State Department
could simultaneously help address the global water security concerns and
the global food crisis.
