The Corporate Threat to Water and the Water Justice Movement's Fight to Protect it

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted March 2, 2008.

AMY GOODMAN: Eight of the nation's largest water providers from California to New York have announced the formation of a coalition to develop strategies on dealing with climate change. The members of the newly formed Water Utility Climate Alliance together provide water to more than 36 million people in the United States. The group has developed a list of goals that include expanding climate change research, developing strategies for adapting to climate change and identifying greenhouse gas emissions from individual operations.

Today we're going to spend the rest of the hour looking at the global water crisis. Flow: For Love of Water is a new documentary screened here in New York. The film examines how the world's water supplies are diminishing and how the privatization of water is worsening the crisis.

PETER H. GLEICK: For the longest time, people have taken water for granted. Most people don't think about where their water comes from. They just turn on the tap, and they expect it to be there. Those days are ending.

MAUDE BARLOW: This notion that we'll have water forever is wrong. California is running out. It's got 20-some years of water. New Mexico has got 10, although they're building golf courses as fast as they can, so maybe they can whittle that down to five. Arizona, Florida, even the Great Lakes now, there's huge new demand.

PETER H. GLEICK: The Nile River doesn't reach its end. The Colorado River, the Yellow River in China, they, for the most part, don't flow anymore to the sea.

MAUDE BARLOW: So this notion that somehow these problems are far away, get rid of that. You know, take it out of your head. You know, delete that.

PATRICK McCULLY: We're treating the water resources of the planet with contempt, which is just so stupid, because we depend on them. We need water to live. We will only survive for a day or two if we don't have water.

WILLIAM E. MARKS: Scientists, through decades of study and millions and millions of pieces of data, now recognize the fact that we're on the brink of the sixth great mass extinction ever to be experienced on the face of the earth. The fifth mass extinction was the dinosaur age.

MAUDE BARLOW: You know those movies where there's the comet coming at the earth, and all of a sudden the governments of the world say, "Gee, we're not -- our differences aren't so big anymore, because we're about to all die"? That's really where we are. There is a comet coming at us. It's called water shortage.

PETER H. GLEICK: Climate change is a real problem. Humans are changing the climate. We already see evidence about it. One of the most significant impacts of climate change will be on our water resources.

PATRICK McCULLY: We're going to see [that] a lot of people are going die because of the floods and droughts and various social upheavals that are caused by global warming. What's also tragic is that there's a lot of awareness of that now, but so much of that awareness is then being used by corporate interests. Oh, we're running out of water, and we need to invest so much money in water, and it's so terrible how water is managed. And then, somehow they make the flip to: Oh, we must privatize it, so then we'll use it more efficiently and everybody will be better off -- which is total nonsense, total amount of nonsense. It means merely that these people have an interest clearly in making money or to selling water to people.

MAUDE BARLOW: There are private corporate interests that have decided that water is going to be put on the open market for sale. It's going to be commodified and treated as any other saleable good.

REPORTER: Water is now a $400 billion global industry, the third-largest behind electricity and oil.

WATER EXECUTIVE: I bought the green. I had the blue. And I have about half of the yellow.

MAUDE BARLOW: The market is amoral, and it's going to lead you to taking advantage of pollution and scarcity, frankly. It's going to lead you to selling it to those who can buy it but not to those who need it.

ROD PARSLEY: The water sector is going to grow two to three times the global economy over the next 20 years. By buying the companies that source, treat, distribute and monitor our water supply, you're likely to have a pretty strong investment over the next decade or so.

b> People say that, well, water is a lot like air. Do you charge for air? Of course not. You shouldn't charge for water. Well, OK, watch what happens.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from the documentary Flow -- that's F-L-O-W -- For Love of Water by filmmaker Irena Salina. The documentary features one of the leading figures in the global water justice movement, Maude Barlow. She is the head of the Council of Canadians, Canada's largest public advocacy group, founder of the Blue Planet Project. Maude Barlow is the author of 16 books -- her latest just came out; it's called Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water -- joining us now in our firehouse studio.

See more stories tagged with: water, water justice, water privatization, flow, maude barlow

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

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