Water Meets Money - Part One

Global Water Summit May 16 – 18 Madrid Spain.

Water is life.

The following is an excerpt from the UN Fact Sheet 35 UN Rights to Water which can be read in its entirety here.

“Water is the essence of life. Safe drinking water and sanitation are indispensable to sustain life and health, and fundamental to the dignity of all. Yet, 884 million people do not have access to improved sources of drinking water, while 2.5 billion lack access to improved sanitation facilities. While these numbers shed light on a worrying situation, the reality is much worse, as millions of poor people living in informal settlements are simply missing from national statistics. The roots of the current water and sanitation crisis can be traced to poverty, inequality and unequal power relationships, and it is exacerbated by social and environmental challenges: accelerating urbanization, climate change, and increasing pollution and depletion of water resources.”

Fresh water availability and oceanic use under capitalism inevitably leads away from the UN Declaration of Water as a Human Right to a media led discussion of its market value as a commodity.

That will be the theme of an international conference in Madrid Spain in May entitled; “Water Meets Money”. The meeting brings together the major water for profit providers in the world.

All of the constitutional guarantees, laws, protocols and international agreements governing water use confront ongoing efforts of domestic and foreign finance capital to subvert people’s sovereignty over water resources with the aim of privately appropriating this priceless resource and exploiting it for profit. Futures trading in water is now underway.

Water use owned and controlled by private investors as a source of profit is the major contributing cause of its unavailability to humanity as a life giving common good and as a restorative imperative for nature. Water for profit has expanded to crisis proportions in the era of state monopoly capitalism, imperialism. The degradation of all water is the result.

Here is a partial list of the legacy of water use in the capitalist era.  

·        War and Conflict: Oceans, inland seas, major rivers, tributaries, gulfs, basins and canals have become sites for military bases and theatres of modern warfare, communications and freedom of the sea conflicts, off-shore sovereign development and global trade routes disputes among rival imperialist powers.

·        Natural Moisture Cycles: Industrial and agricultural use of oceanic and fresh water is distorting the natural surface and subsurface and atmospheric interaction of moisture affecting global warming, aridity and flood and fire events, species and habitat loss and soil fertility.

·        Pollution and Waste: Oceans, inland seas, fresh water lakes and basins and major rivers systems are stressed and degraded due to the discharging of industrial, agricultural, human, animal, military and commercial air and sea transportation waste. The result is massive waste disposal disasters, ocean acidification, oil spills and radioactive contamination problems for the people living in the midst of such calamities.  The effect of plastic particles on marine life and fish stocks is rising beyond the natural ability of ocean systems and currents to absorb it. 

·        Private Industrial Abuse: The percentage of water used by industry and subsequently restored to its natural state and returned to its original source of extraction is largely uncontrolled. The Canadian Water Agency Discussion paper estimates that industrial recycled water is less than 40%. Such recycling is undertaken by industry as it is profitable to reducing the costs of production and resisted or simply ignored when it is vital to communities or beneficial to the restoration of nature. Restrictions on the industrial and military uses of water is considered by investors as a hindrance to profiteering. 

Science, in What Interest?

Science and water specialists can prove the socially beneficial uses of water and devise elegant plans, including proposed legislation for its rational uses but fail to study in depth the economic and political root causes of the persistent and expanding global oceanic and fresh water crisis.

The Water Meets Money conferences May 16 -18 2021 in Madrid Spain is forthright in its invitation and agenda that it is primarily about opportunities for corporations to profiteer from a global water crisis.

Such conferences must be high on the awareness list of working-class Canadians and their organizations.  Governments are adept at adopting corporate think tank solutions to sugar coat legislation that opens the way to P3 water utility development that accords low rates to industry and imposes escalating hydro electrical and water utility rate increases on working class families. Accompanying every utility bill is a pious plea to wage earning families to conserve, in effect to pay more and use less.

Water utility costs to households in all major cities in Canada are rising with no end in sight.

Stats Canada is the starting point of credible research that leads directly to the truth that in spite of an abundance of oceanic and fresh water Canada is afflicted with the same serious problems as nations who lack it. 

Financing Water Use In the System of Capitalism

It is startling fact that much of the water infrastructure in Canada was built at the end of WW2 and has lagged the necessary expansion, improvements and maintenance to keep it ahead of population growth and satisfy urban and rural demands.

Visit the website of any major Canadian city, municipality, Indigenous community urban, rural or reserve, and there one will find a conflict over water use, its affordability, availability and purity. The costs of upgrading and modernizing all water delivery and water purification systems as well as flood control infrastructure is a critical issue. 

One of the most enthusiastically promoted solutions to funding new water systems is the P3 model. The other is the habit of senior levels of government to download costs related to new infrastructure, upgrades and flood control on the ledgers and tax base of cash strapped cities and municipalities, ensuring that problems remain chronic and unsolved. Most of the revenue to operate water treatment, delivery and sewage systems is provided by home owner and apartment dweller utility rates. The opposition to rising utility rates is answered by authorities with schemes to measure use without addressing the urgent need to lower utility rates to wage dependent families. 

On the other side of the ledger is a long history of high volume cheap and wasteful use of water by big industry and big ag.

Next: Water and Politics