Blog 8 Capitalizing on the Global Water Crisis

Alex Clute
March 19, 2011
1230 EST

In a news release on the MMD Newswire the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, concerning the state of global water supplies in anticipation of World Water Day, which will be observed on March 22. Pointing that over half the world's population now resides in urbanized regions composed of sprawling slums with little to no access to potable water, the Secretary-General called for future efforts to make freshwater accessible to all. He goes on to say that this lack of access to clean water and basic sanitation facilities has resulted in a dramatic decline in people's health globally and has impacted women to a greater extent, since in many parts of the world it is women who must walk long distances in order to obtain water, which forces girls to drop out of school and exposing them to harassment and rape. In other places the poor are required to pay exorbitant prices to water merchants. The Secretary-General located the source of these problems not in scarcity, but in a failure to govern effectively and stated that water issues will be a large part of the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development.

While it is true that in a number of places in the world we are facing shortages of water, what concerns me is that this latest "crisis" will be used as a means to advance the interests of the global plutocracy. As has been seen in recent years transnational corporations have been eager to gain control of water sources, as in Bolivia way Bechtel attempted to privatize the city of Cochabamba's water utilities and gouge people, and even attempted to make it illegal for people to collect rainwater. What must be remembered is that this discourse of crisis has been, and still is, used to instill fear in populations in order to make them more pliant to a specific brand of economic thinking. In addition, one should not be fooled about talk to the contrary, as in Secretary Moon's condemnation of water merchants, because the supporters of privatization are more than happy to tell people what they what to hear while carrying on the process of privatization. It must always be remember that talk is cheap, and that it is what one does that counts.