Fixing Our Water Crisis Can't Be Done by the Corporations that Are Exacerbating It

By Jeff Conant, AlterNet. Posted April 2, 2009.

I will not pretend, in the instance of this article, to be an unbiased or objective journalist. I attended the World Water Forum as an advocate for human rights and as a member of a broad coalition whose principle goal was to challenge the forum's legitimacy. Why? Because the same private corporations and international financial institutions that caused the world's water crisis should not pretend to take responsibility for solving it.

In over ten years involved with water issues, I've dug trenches for pipe alongside villagers for whom potable water is equated both with self-sufficiency and with life; I've visited deeply impoverished people in many nations -- people often living with an absolute lack of decent sanitation, often confronting toxic dumping, often suffering displacement as refugees of environmental devastation, and often witnessing the wholesale removal of the natural resources beneath their families and their homes. I've seen that, surprising as it may at first appear, the poor pay more for water and are, of course, the first to suffer from its lack. And in all of these places I've seen that, at the root of sustainable community development, whether in Akron, Accra, or Argentina, is self-reliance. And at the root of self-reliance is human dignity. Dignity, which doesn't necessarily wear a business suit or polished shoes. Or any shoes at all, for that matter.

Of course, as the boosters of private sector investment remind us, there are certain facts we must confront. One of these facts, as fundamental as the air we breathe, is that water, like it or not, can be bought and sold. But dignity, it has been said, cannot. And dignity and water are closely related.

For those of us dedicated to promoting access to sustainable, safe water and sanitation to the world's people, the World Water Forum is not the main story -- it is merely a distraction. But it is a dangerous distraction. And at this late date, with upwards of a billion people lacking access to safe water, with the climate crisis revealing new horrors on a daily basis, with the collapse of financial markets replacing terrorism as the greatest threat to global security, and with the same institutions that have been in charge of our money taking continued control of our water, we cannot afford such distractions.

With the convergence in Istanbul of numerous NGO's and social movements from North America and Europe, the African Water Network, the InterAmerican Network for the Defense and the Protection of Water Rights, the broad and diverse water movements of Asia and the Middle East; with the intervention of Father Miguel D'escoto, a Nicaraguan Jesuit briefly at the helm of the UN General Assembly; with the bold words of Maude Barlow who said "today we are witnessing the transfer of power from the World Water Forum to the People's Water Forum;" and of Wenonah Hauter who points out repeatedly that public investment in water is the very basis of public health in the northern nations and should be in the southern nations as well; with the environment Ministers of embattled southern governments like Bolivia and Venezuela present with the social movements in defending the human right to water, the main story of the week is that the time has arrived for people-centered, earth centered practices to be given their rightful place as the focal point of water policy, both globally and locally, north, south, and everywhere.

But let's hope this is not just the water story of the week. Let's hope it is the water story of the century.

See more stories tagged with: water, water privatization, water crisis, water shortage, maude barlow, world water forum

Jeff Conant is the International Research and Communications Coordinator for Food and Water Watch.

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