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Does Privatising Water Make Us Sick?
Jessica Whelan
Associate Lecturer, School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS
Rob White
School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Abstract
Water is vital for life and development. It is one of the world's greatest renewable resources and is a natural monopoly essential to health and wellbeing.
This paper examines three broad issues pertaining to the ownership and control of drinking water: (1) the transnational privatisation of water; (2) the 'profitable' use and management of water; and (3) toxic delivery systems and the threat to health. The paper concludes with reflections on the need for transparency, public accountability and democratic control over drinking water.
Keywords
sociology, water, privatisation, global corporations, commodification, health risks
Article Text
We can and we must improve the quality of the water we drink. Clean safe water is a biological, social, economic, and spiritual necessity. Clean water is an inheritance we can pass on to our children if we recognise that its quality, its purity and vitality are our collective responsibility. Water is life - our life, our future (Archer 1998: 30).
Water is vital to human life. Yet, thousands of human lives are lost each day, each week, and each month, due to inadequate supply and the poor quality of drinking water in many parts of the world today. Importantly, this phenomenon is not specific to the South or to the 'less developed' countries. Across many different national contexts, there are a range of emergent social and environmental harms associated with the production, consumption and management of fresh water reserves. As such, what we drink, and the conditions under which we drink, deserves the close attention of sociologists, as well as members of the general public.
The aim of this paper is to discuss three important developments in relation to drinking water. The first part of the paper describes the transnational privatisation of water and the concentration of control over water resources into private hands. The next section considers the implications of such developments in terms of the 'profitable' use and management of water. The third part raises questions regarding whether or not there is a link between privatisation processes, and the emergence or perpetuation of toxic delivery systems that ultimately pose major threats to the health of water users in a variety of different ways.
The transnational privatisation of water
Control of our water is quietly passing from those experienced in water provision into the hands of global businesses and professional chief executive officers who preside over the new corporate environment of water management (Archer 2001: 26).
There are now privatised water concessions in cities on every continent (see Hall 1999). In every region of the world, the great majority of these concessions are run by only three giant global corporations, namely Vivendi Universal (previously known as Vivendi and Generales des Eaux), Suez (also known as Ondeo) and RWE (which recently purchased Thames Water). In the past ten years these corporations have quietly assumed control of the water supplied to almost 300 million people, in every continent of the world (CBC News 2003: 1). As the Centre for Public Integrity in the United States (2003: 1) states: 'The explosive growth of three water utility companies in the last ten years raises concerns that mankind may be losing control of its most vital resource to a handful of monopolistic corporations'. Further privatisation of the world's fresh water resources seems inevitable. It is estimated that within the next 15 years the above companies will control over 75% of what are now public waterworks (Centre for Public Integrity 2002: 1).
The enormous expansion of these companies could not have been possible without the World Bank and other international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, The World Trade Organisation, the Inter-American Development Fund, the Asian Development Fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction (Marsden 2003: 2), which have become principal vectors of neo-liberal water policy (Boykoff and Sand 2003: 149). The conceptualisation and management of drinking water as an economic resource has thus been fostered by these key international organisations. Such thinking has also been actively promoted by organisations such as the World Water Council (a platform for major water firms), the Global Water Partnership (initiated by senior World Bank staff), and Business Partners for Development (an industry/World Bank promoter of privatisation). Governments of cash strapped countries, which are highly dependent upon international lending agencies, are especially vulnerable to outside pressures to privatise water supplies (Gleick et al 2002).
Private ownership and control of this natural resource is also presently being sought through the extension of corporate bill-of-rights protection to water (as well as education, health services, utilities, etc), via the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and currently being negotiated through the World Trading Organisation. Neo-liberal 'free trade' provisions of this kind are precisely intended to allow the commodification of an ever-growing range of goods and services (many of which are essential to human wellbeing). As part of this agenda, new agreements are being drafted that are meant to facilitate the entry of private sector interests into previously state-owned and state-regulated spheres.
...continues...
Democracy is ideally about knowledge, public accountability, participation and the power to intervene. The trend worldwide that we have described in this paper suggests that the opposite occurs in practice. In practice, privatisation has reflected diminished levels of public control, skewed and frequently inaccurate knowledge, private profit taking precedence over the public good, and deception rather than transparency. As Archer so concisely and tellingly puts it:
When you are constantly reassured by water providers that the water which causes $80 million worth of illnesses annually is the 'safest in the world', you may begin to question their definition of safety - and their integrity (1996: 12).
Safe drinking water is an essential requirement of a healthy population. The evidence suggests that the worldwide trend toward the privatisation of the water supply has not contributed to an improvement. The provision of a safe water supply requires a transparent and accountable, public process: regardless of whether it is provided by a private company or a public agency.
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