|
By Bobby Ramakant
People in Philippines and around
the world are drawing attention to the global water crisis—and
promoting solutions that ensure water is a public good, not a
commodity to be bought and sold. Corporate accountability and public
health advocates are raising awareness and concern about the
increasing corporate control of water.
March 22, 2007, marks the United
Nations’ World Water Day. This year the theme of World Water Day
is “Coping with Water Scarcity.” By 2025 the United Nations
anticipates two-thirds of the world’s people will struggle to find
water. Water access is projected to be one of the dominant factors
in global conflicts during this century.
“Corporations are contributing
to, and then profiting from, the global water crisis,” said
Kathryn Mulvey, Executive Director of Corporate Accountability
International (www.stopcorporateabuse.org). She stressed
further that “One of the greatest threats to people’s access to
water today is that corporate use of water is often prioritized over
people’s daily use.”
As water becomes more precious,
corporations like Coke, Pepsi, Nestlé, Suez and Veolia are
increasingly trying to control and profit from it. Ironically
enough, at the same time, these corporations are trying to position
themselves as “improving” people’s access to water.
Ramon Magsaysay Awardee (2002)
and noted human-rights’ activist Dr. Sandeep Pandey says that,
“Equity and rights, cultural and ethical issues are essential to
be addressed when dealing with limited water resources. Imbalances
between availability and demand, the degradation of groundwater and
surface water quality, intersectoral competition, interregional
and international disputes, all center around the question of how to
cope with scarce water resources.”
Each year more than 1 billion of
our fellow human beings have little choice but to resort to using
potentially harmful sources of water. This perpetuates a silent
humanitarian crisis that kills some 3,900 children every day and
thwarts progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs). The consequences of our collective failure to tackle this
problem are the dimmed prospects for the billions of people locked
in a cycle of poverty and disease.
When people don’t have access
to safe water, the health impact is devastating. According to the
World Health Organization, every year more than 3.4 million people
die as a result of water related diseases, making it one of the
leading causes of disease and death around the world.
The root of this underlying
catastrophe lies in these plain, grim facts: four of every 10 people
in the world do not have access to even a simple pit latrine and
nearly two in 10 have no source of safe drinking water. To help end
this appalling state of affairs, the MDGs include a specific target
(number 10) to cut in half, by 2015 the proportion of people without
sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
In addition, the UN Millennium
Project Task Force on Water and Sanitation recently recognized that
integrated development and management of water resources are crucial
to the success or failure of all the MDGs, as water is central to
the livelihood systems of the poor.
Kofi Annan, former UN
Secretary-General, also stressed on integrated approaches to
sustainable development. Kofi Annan said that, “We shall not
finally defeat AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, or any of the other
infectious diseases that plague the developing world until we have
also won the battle for safe drinking water, sanitation and basic
health care.”
As natural rights, water rights
are usufructuary rights (water can be used but not owned). People
have a right to life and the resources that sustain it, such as
water. The necessity of water to life is why, under customary laws,
the right to water has been accepted as a natural, social fact.
That is why governments and
corporations cannot alienate people of their water rights. Water
rights come from nature and creation. They flow from the laws of
nature, not from the rules of the market.
[Bobby Ramakant is a senior
health and development journalist, writing for newspapers in 11
countries in Asia and Africa, and a member of NATT (Network for
Accountability of Tobacco Transnationals). bobbyramakant@yahoo.com]
|
