Achieving water democracy is surely a terrific opportunity to fix
governance problems from the local to the global, but it's one enormous
task.
The World Water Council,
the convener of the World Water Forum, sure knows its market. At their
recent global gathering held in Marseille, France, they tapped into the
thirst of governments, development agencies, banks, NGOs and private
water operators for a conversation about water services and managing the
growing water crisis — as well as a shot at lucrative contracts.
Exhibition booths included desalinization companies and private firms
like Suez and Veolia, the biggest in the industry. The event had the
feel of a trade show and the price tag of the Superbowl, dissuasive to
thousands of water justice activists who set up a parallel, alternative peoples’ water forum in a dock-side warehou
Where is UN leadership on water? A Crisis of Water Governance
The
first World Water Forum was held in 1997; the Sixth concluded last
month. The World Water Council is a private, not-for-profit body with a
board weighted towards private water industry representatives and
government officials friendly to private water management. The United
Nations might appear a more sensible host for a global conversation
about world water policy—water troubles are felt locally but the
hydrological cycle is turned topsy-turvy globally. Human rights and
environmental activists who steered clear of the Forum advocate moving
it to the UN. The same opinion was whispered to me by a Forum session
facilitator, “but if we say it out loud, this party is over.”
One obstacle to this shift is the
approximately 27 UN agencies that deal with water. This bureaucratic
dispersion mirrors the way most national governments split
administration of water matters. There tends to be one agency
administering potable water, another issuing water permits to mine
operators, a third overseeing sanitation and no one watching out for
watershed protection. Unlike, say, the World Health Organization (WHO),
there is no central UN agency for global water. No one leads; into the
vacuum steps the World Water Council.
“Would
you have a pharmaceutical business federation run the world conference
on health?” Pedro Arrojo, 2003 Goldman Environmental Prize winner asked
at a non-Forum meeting of civil society organizations and governments.
“It would be unthinkable.”
Which
is not to say that there wasn’t concern about the UN. Its track record
on water is far from stellar. It’s true that the General Assembly did
approve the human right to water and sanitation in 2010, but that right
is already being eroded in draft documents for Rio Plus 20 world
environmental conference. In 1997, the UN approved the Convention on
Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, but 15 years later
it is still stalled, awaiting implementation. Were the UN to convene the
global water gathering, civil society participation might be buried in
observer or consultative status. Communities affected by say, a large
dam, might have trouble making their voices heard. This is at least
partially due to disproportionate influence of the private sector as
documented in the Blue Planet Project study, A Review of Private Sector Influence on Water Policies And Programs at the United Nations
So much public water, so little discussion of public management
A
barker handed me a flyer that caught my eye, “Improving Governance and
Performance of Public Water and Sanitation Services.” Finally, I
thought, a conversation about how public utilities can provide a better
service. Halfway to the workshop, I read the finer print: the session
would discuss how Algiers public authorities contracted with Suez
Environment – improving public water by going private!
How
do you explain this disproportionate focus on private water services
if, as Gerard Payen, president of the private water operator’s
federation Aquafed states, only 10% of water systems are privately run?
The answer, it seems, is equal measures private entrepreneurism and
public cowardice. Put yourself in the shoes of a public official
surrounded by propaganda alleging public sector inefficiency. Is
providing water to your constituents giving you a headache? Is the water
workers union making your life miserable?
We are here to help. Friends
at development banks can train you to set contract benchmarks—as they
condition loans to require privatization. Public authorities squeezed by
fiscal crises may be happy to get water operations off their books.
Heck, if transparency is opaque, they might even reap some
personal gain.
There was grumbling at the Forum
that the public-private debate distracts from ensuring clean water to
the billion plus people without any. Isn’t there a role for private
enterprise in this urgent and giant undertaking? On that, there’s
agreement; what’s in question is the private sector’s best role.
Advocates for managing water as a shared public commons express concern
that private providers and markets may not serve the best interests of
the next seven generations—their measure of forward-thinking
water management.
Bizarrely,
water utility workers were marginalized at the Forum. Public Services
International, a federation of public sector trade unions with
affiliates in over 140 countries knows a lot about water delivery. They
make sure it arrives in millions of homes and would seem a good
constituency to involve in discussions about how to better manage water.
Yet they were relegated to “side event” status, paying 598 euros to
host a non-official session for one hour.
New currents in water management and water governance
Whereas
the World Water Forum had a corporate vibe, the alternative forum,
called FAME, felt like an Occupy event. For instance Alex Kastrinakis,
paced the stage agitatedly, describing a fast-moving Greek tragedy. The
Greek government is holding a fire-sale, auctioning off Thessaloniki’s
water system for a paltry 74 million euros. In 2011 it made over 20
million euros. The activist group Movement 136 aims to involve citizens
in water governance by buying the utility as a consumer cooperative at
136 euros per household before it is sold to a private bidder.
Without
question, the drum-beat at FAME was beating back privatization and
shaping the right to water into something tangible for thirsty families.
At the same time, an Andean farmer described community water management
and stewardship: how farmers manage a centuries-old irrigation system. Our Water Commons presented
the case of the NYC Water Authority as a far-sighted example of city
officials and upstream farmers co-designing a watershed-friendly
agricultural program and financing it through consumer charges.
Spokespeople
for communities affected by mining—including in environmental champion
Bolivia—painted a frightening picture of water abuse by extractive
industries and described a crisis between economic growth and
environmental protection/justice. UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to
Water and Sanitation, Caterina de Albuquerque alerted advocates that the
UN right to water was being diluted in the World Water Forum’s
Marseille declaration.
Pricing
was a theme notably thin at FAME; water and money still seem to remain
something of a no-go zone among many human rights advocates which opened
them up to criticism that they don’t have workable proposals for
financial sustainability of water systems.
To
be fair, even if tainted by water privateers, the World Water Forum was
more than a trade show; there were important debates. Dr. Rafiq
Al-Husseini, from the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean
rejected full cost recovery from households and insisted that larger
users (agriculture and industry) pay their full share. Other speakers
suggested that free basic water ought to be as normal as free basic
education, financed through cross-subsidies. The elephant in the room
was that recovering higher tariffs from agribusiness and industry likely
means higher prices on a range of products—but at least poor households
won’t be unfairly picked on.
Anne Le Strat, Paris’ deputy mayor, shared lessons about Paris’ experience in re-municipalizing their water services.
At a high level panel on water and food security co-organized by the UN
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), panelists proposed supporting
small-scale agriculture through recognizing their resource rights,
offering public credit, devolving governance of irrigation water
regionally and funding small farmers for their watershed stewardship
work. Although these conversations were few relative to the number of
pro-privatization sessions, there are clearly bridges to be built
between FAME and World Water Forum participants.
Giving water democracy meaning
At
both forums, public participation was a kind of water management
mantra. There wasn’t disagreement as to whether participation was
valuable, just skepticism that it’s often just window dressing.
So-called multi-stakeholder dialogues can be staged diaologues between
political unequals that don’t crack open decision-making.
The
alternative to pro-forma consultation is something more dynamic—getting
community hands wet in monitoring water quality, debating pricing at
public hearings and mapping water sources with utility workers. This
engagement is sometimes described as exercising water democracy and
water citizenship. But here’s the rub. Water is embedded in everything.
It’s essential to public health, a key input for manufacturing and food
can’t be grown without it. Water democracy means democracy. Period. The
sorry state of our water underscores fundamental weaknesses in national
democracies and the UN system.
Achieving water democracy is surely a
terrific opportunity to fix governance problems from the local to the
global, but it’s one enormous task. The drift towards elite private
global governance doesn’t help—the World Economic Forum in Davos is a
case in point. With water so central to the economy, it’s not surprise
that self-interested parties seek governance of water for private gain.
The Rio plus 20 conference in
June is the next big global water debate and test of water democracy.
As a binding UN conference, it is much more significant than the World
Water Forum. Will Rio be a step forward or backward for the kind of
water governance and management consistent with future generations’—of
both people and nature—needs? Climate change has policy makers
frightened and ecologically-based planning gets an occasional nod. But
early indications are that the draft Rio declaration backs away from the
human right to water and looks to markets to resolve the water crisis.
The
water commons is rising— but so is a view of water as a green commodity
to be bundled like mortgages and traded on financial markets. The much
desired win-win is hard to find between these divergent views. Chances
are that some water practices, fracking for instance, can’t be
reconciled with a safe water future. Some energy companies and
politicians will surely be unhappy when a world wide ban on fracking is
won or when the Keystone pipeline is finally killed. The good news is
that good water management is not rocket science—former New York City
Director of Water and Sewer, Albert Appleton, said it simply, “a good
environment makes good water.”
There
are a lot of smart and unrecognized water commons champions out
there—from local mayors to utility workers to public agency bureaucrats
to small farmer organizations. Adhering to basic human rights and
ecological principles—and water commons activists shouting until we’re
hoarse at Rio and beyond—we might just weather the storm.
By Daniel Moss is co-coordinator of Our Water Commons@AlterNet.org
No comments:
Post a Comment