No Human Right to Water

By Werner Rene Schwab

[This article originally published in: Ossietzky, December 9, 2003 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.linksnet.de/artikel.php.]

In a resolution at the 2002 Peace congress in Hanover, unionists, civil rights advocates, Third World groups and the citizens’ initiative for socialism grieved that more than four billion people have no access or poor access to clean drinking water. The statement from the UN environmental agency was quoted: $40 billion annually would be enough to guarantee clean water, adequate food and health protection to all people and a basic education to all children. The “Year of Fresh Water” proclaimed by the UN is now running down. What has changed? In 2003, 200 million people fell ill from contaminated water and at least 2 million died directly from a water shortage.

In March 2003, the UN convened a Water conference hardly noticed on account of the Iraq war that is still without concrete results. The only thing that the UN and the World Bank accomplished was the declaration that access to water is a human need. Note well, access to water is a need, not a human right. Therefore access may be subordinated to profit-mongering according to the ideas of the neoliberals and globalizers in industrial states who control clean water.

“The key to water is called the market economy”, says Maurice Strong, head of the world water commission founded a few years. The World Trade Organization (WTO) urges a “worldwide market opening” for water and education that are both mainly state affairs. At the WTO conference in Cancun in the summer of 2003 that happily collapsed, the European Union commission demanded free access to the drinking water business in 72 states including Bangladesh, Brazil and Colombia. Our economic minister Wolfgang Clement (SPD) stood up for business access. Development minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (SPD) coined the saying: “Liberalization must help reduce poverty.” What does it matter when experts from non-governmental organizations like Attac point to the danger that private suppliers limit themselves to the law of profit, supplying areas where it is rewarding while water becomes more scarce and more filthy in the poor districts of developing countries.

The French conglomerates Vivendi and Suez already control water businesses in over 130 countries on all five continents. The British firm Thames Water is also active worldwide. German companies like RWE and Gelsenwasser hope for lucrative businesses. The Brits have given them an example. After the 1989 privatization of the water economy, the prices for private consumers climbed 44 percent within only ten years.

Compare these facts: $40 billion a year would be enough for water and other basic needs. The money is at hand. On the eve of its Iraqi aggression, the US alone earmarked $40 billion for armaments. Recently the House of Representatives approved $87.9 billion for the continuance of the Iraq adventure with $65 billion for the occupation costs. But what is involved here is oil, not drinking water. Not long ago water was a commodity that belonged to human society, not to corporations – like the air. When was it privatized?