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Is Water a Commodity or a Right?
Global experiments in saving and selling the resource.
[Editor's note: Of 800 international journalists covering the Fourth World Water Forum underway in Mexico City, Chris Wood is the only Canadian. This is the second of several dispatches he is filing for The Tyee. Read the first one here.]
At one of the displays in the trade expo accompanying the Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City this week, visitors take turns climbing aboard a primitive looking, but cheap and functional, treadle water pump. At another, a Scandinavian firm is showing off sleek water-saving and soil-composting toilets. At a third, American Cast Iron Pipe has samples of its namesake product available for examination. In still another part of the Centro Banamex in the west of the city, scale models visualize the aspirations of several Mexican states to build new dams to store water during rainy months against seasons of drought.
The emphasis on 'tubes and taps' is not entirely misplaced. Much of the world still lacks the basic infrastructure to deliver available water to the one-sixth of humanity that lacks secure access to it. Even rich Canada has shortcomings in that regard. By one estimate, as much as 45 percent of Montreal's water seeps through cracks in its antiquated mains before reaching consumers. But a striking feature of this summit, where 11,000 delegates from 123 countries have gathered to tackle the problems of a thirsty world, is the focus on what might be called software, rather than hardware; questions not of engineering, but of management, governance and choices.
Consensus is often elusive, as might be expected when rich and poor, providers and consumers, are wrestling with a topic as central to life, let alone prosperity, as water. In one press conference, pinstriped spokesmen for the World Bank spoke with the dry dispassion of technocrats of the need to tap "new sources of investment"-code for private funds-to expand water services in developing nations. A few steps away, half a dozen young people formed a line for photographers, each one holding up a sign in a different language bearing the same blunt message: "No Privatization of Water".
Water's true cost?
The same philosophical opposition was evident between those asserting that water must be viewed, first and foremost, as a "human right," and those who argue that much water presently wasted might be saved if people had to pay what it costs.
This particular debate is one Canadians have stuck their toe into-only to recoil. The city of Hamilton, Ont. experimented in 1995 with turning its water supply and sanitation services over to private operators. Instead of the savings and improved services it expected, Hamilton got scores of basements flooded with sewage, raw feces in the city's harbour and steep rate increases. The pungent debacle gave weight to-but obscured the self-interest of-Canadian Union of Public Employees President Judy Darcy's assertion that "Privatizing our water is absolutely the wrong choice."
Another issue getting attention in Mexico City that Canadians have stepped up to, only to step back again as fast as possible, is the place of water in international trade agreements. In the footsteps of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement and its subsequent extension to Mexico under NAFTA, numerous Latin American countries have signed similar deals, some including the U.S., some not. What, exactly, they mean for water and for countries' ability to protect their citizen's access to it, has been much debated here.
The original FTA was silent on the subject of water. Not by accident, according to former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed, who was present when the negotiations turned to the subject. "We [Canadians] all kind of tied our shoelaces, dropped our pencils, looked out the window and the moment passed," he told me in an interview last year. That hasn't stopped knee-jerk aquanationalists from reading into the agreement a sort of silent 'call' option that could be triggered if Canada ever permits commerce in bulk water, even among its own corporate citizens. "Floodgates will be opened," the Council of Canadians' Sara Ehrhardt has warned "and neither the provinces nor Ottawa can stop US diversions."
I don't know if she has met Juan Carlos Alurralde. A man of charismatic presence with an engaging smile, dark curls pulled back into a pony tail and trim beard lightly frosted with grey, 'Oso' (the bear), as his friends call him, is a hydraulic engineer in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, South America's poorest nation, and an advisor to that country's new president, Evo Morales. Bolivia is party to several trade agreements with its neighbours. The United States has sought to include it in a broader regional trade deal. An activist on behalf of the water rights of Bolivia's poor, Alurralde is not opposed to trade agreements per se. Instead, he's working with other South Americans to equip his country with the legal expertise to hold its own in any negotiations to come (a project funded, in part, by Canada).
The Bechtel revolt
Oso might surprise Judy Darcy, too. Bolivia's third-largest city, Cochabamba, was the scene of another disastrous attempt to turn water services over to a private company-US giant Bechtel Corp. Bechtel, promising better services to come, promptly raised water rates charged to Cochabamba's citizens by 300 percent, provoking an armed uprising. Bechtel broke the contract and demanded $45 million in compensation, a claim it has since been dropped to two Bolivianos-about twenty-five cents.
Strikingly, however, Alurralde doesn't blame Bechtel for the fiasco. He blames his own country's corrupt and incompetent officials who signed a deal giving the American corporation such sweeping entitlement that it could, in theory, have claimed the right even to rainfall being collected by peasants.
'The Bear' believes his country is taking steps to even the balance-without rejecting either trade deals or private investment in water services outright. A new law enshrines indigenous citizens' water rights. Bolivia has its first water ministry (something Canada does not). And President Morelos has written the World Trade Organization that Bolivia is withdrawing water from its commitments under that organization. Trade and commerce aren't the only areas where pragmatic thinking is likely to prove more valuable than new pipes or reservoirs-or head-in-the-sand denial. Some of the other 'software' needs being identified in the Mexico summit's multi-faceted discussions include:
* The need for a better understanding of the value of natural wetlands and water resources to the economy. Riverside marshes not only house ducks and herons, they cleanse impurities from water and limit the impact of floods. These and other environmental 'services' of natural watercourses need to be taken into account in weighing the costs and benefits of any proposed development. (Memo to the Fraser Institute: guys, why not apply your unofficial motto of 'If it matters, measure it' to this pressing question.)
* The need to develop institutions capable of managing river basins in their entirety, taking into account all of the competing influences and needs at play, including ecosystems and the recharge of groundwater as well human populations, and empowered to transcend the arbitrary political frontiers that mean nothing to nature. (Such holistic agencies exist for the Indus and the Mekong but not for the Columbia or the St. Lawrence.)
* Ways to put a price on water for agriculture, industry and domestic use that better reflects the cost to provide it and discourages waste, as well as market mechanisms that encourage scarce water to 'find' its most valuable use, while, in both cases, protecting nature and ensuring that no one is left without. (In Canada, only Alberta has pioneered the second; no province has properly grappled with the first.)
Casey Brown, an American water resource engineer with the air of an accountant more than a hardhat, sat with me for a moment to discuss his research as a member of Columbia University's Earth Institute. He illustrated the importance of these kinds of 'soft' questions with a story about his hometown of Boston.
A few years ago, Boston faced the need for a new water source to supply its 600,000 people. But objections were raised to diverting a portion of the Connecticut River for this purpose (remarkably, a small salmon population still calls the river home). Instead Boston raised water rates. The need for the diversion vanished as people began turning off the tap rather than let it run.
"Without doing anything, we doubled or tripled the 'capacity' of Boston Reservoir," Brown told me.
As with so much to do with water, we Canadians may be deluding ourselves that these are questions we do not face. As I reported in my first dispatch from the World Water Forum, the country with more fresh water than any other is conspicuous by its absence in Mexico.
But I repeat: our complacency is unjustified.
Stopping the squandering
Vancouver may be the city of umbrellas in January; it is often the city of water restrictions by August. On Vancouver Island, where I live, several communities are straining the limits of existing water supplies and unsure where to look for more. In British Columbia as a whole, despite the country's highest precipitation, we continue to permit unlimited pumping from aquifers which, scientists admit, we have barely begun to map, let alone understand well enough to know their limits.
By refusing to contemplate a role of any kind for commerce in water services, cowed by an alarmist and highly debatable reading of trade agreements, we deprive ourselves of ways to make the best use of water we do have. We may also deprive our cities-which face an estimated $90 billion bill for renewing aging infrastructure-of useful investment.
Every choice incurs a tradeoff. Even good ideas may be badly executed, while arbitrary rejection in advance of consideration is a sure recipe for impoverished options. The evidence here in Mexico City is that many of the world's other nations, including the poorest and driest, understand this. They also understand that the 'software' of water use-practices, policies and institutions-are easier to change than pipes and concrete. Like Bolivia's charismatic 'Oso', they are trying to equip themselves with the knowledge to make the best choices. The developing nations represented here look with as much envy on Canada's infrastructure of reservoirs and water mains as on our rainfall. It will be ironic in the extreme if we find ourselves looking with envy on their advances in managing the resource we so complacently squander.
Read Chris Wood's previous dispatch here.
Wood is a former national editor of Maclean's and an award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction. His latest book, on climate change and water, will appear next year from Raincoast Books. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Who Mowed Down the Premier?
- Canada's Economy, Deconstructed (by a 12 year-old)
- Death in Remand: a Tyee Inquiry
- Now Is the Time to Talk up Big Ideas
- Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act
- 'A Gut Feeling'
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- Bias in BC's Pesticide Decision? Follow the Bouncing Verbs
- Why Blackberry's Embrace of HTML5 Is Good Karma
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- Now Is the Time to Talk up Big Ideas
- The Ethics of Addiction Studies
- Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act
- Alberta Fills Pipes with Corrosive Denial
- Does BC Stand for Ban Clotheslines?
- BC biotech company seeks approval for GM apple
- Bias in BC's Pesticide Decision? Follow the Bouncing Verbs
- What's Behind BC's Doors?
- Now Is the Time to Talk up Big Ideas
- Why Blackberry's Embrace of HTML5 Is Good Karma
- Bias in BC's Pesticide Decision? Follow the Bouncing Verbs
- Death in Remand: A Jail Crammed with Risk
- The Ethics of Addiction Studies
- What's Behind BC's Doors?
- The Gem of Canadian Science that Harper Killed
- Sexism Tinges Criticism of Teachers' Job Action
- Should You Run from that Medical Test?
- 'The Dictator'
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Fiat lux
6 years ago
Comments on "Is Water a Commodity or a Right?"
Water is neither a commodity, or a right. It is an important, working part of self balancing, overlapping ecological systems, from micro to macro and global.
The evolutionary purpose of ecological systems, which includes all forms of life within the systems, is the slowing down of resource conversion and the elimination of waste, for the long term survival of the system.
There are no "fittest" within ecological systems, because it is the self balancing mechanisms of the systems that decide which life forms will survive, or die.
All forms of life on Earth are programmed for specific purposes for the balancing and survival of secological stems and the elimination of waste.
The only life form that has no ecological purpose is the human race, which it tries to cover up with religions, ideologies and screwball economic theories to try to justify its existence and fails at every step.
The misuse of water is a very good example of human stupidity disguised under self destructive pseudo religious economic theories.
In any case, the sale of resoruces is not an income, but the sale of capital that always leads to bankruptcy.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
haraldkann
6 years ago
water is a natural resource that some are lucky to have in quanity and some have none at all.
the romans had what they beleived to be a good water system and for their time it was ingenious.unfortunately their pipes were made of an easily malleable metal,lead.
the reason i point out the romans is that they were an advanced society for their time.the romans used the water for baths,irrigation and drink,so it is no small wonder their civilized society crumbled under the unknown effects of lead poisoning.
we on the other hand have learned from the mistakes of our forefathers and our systems are faultless in the minds of many,or so we are led to beleive.
one need only to look at the catastrophe of katrina and the views of new orleans sinking in the depths as the tragically hip sing that song.
water,next to air ,is the most important element to us on this planet.
that we use a gallon to flush a couple ounces of urine,wash 4by4s every second day,water manicured lawns to look good for the jones',wash driveways and parking lots instead of sweeping with a broom,etcetra,shows our disregard for how important a resource water is and we take for granted our luck while others look on with envy.
our usage really shows we are no smarter than the romans.
our infrastucture needs constant care and upgrading to preserve loss of water and we need constant education and supervision in society so we don't waste that valuable resource.
with changing weather patterns and global warming who knows how long it will take our clear cuts to turn into desert,something we were taught in school that happened in africa.i still wonder if the nuns were really pulling our legs about trees once occuping the deserts of africa.of course we won't notice will we,that takes a little more time than we have ,but our future generations will sure wonder about our frame of mind and lack of knowledge,like we wonder about the romans.
catfish
6 years ago
Happy International Water Day. As a former national editor of MacLean's, does Chris Woods have any suggestions on how to "take back the media"? or at least infiltrate it significantly? We can't be all talk.
catfish
6 years ago
oops, sorry Chris, Chris Wood.
G West
6 years ago
Chris Wood is, in the nicest and most careful way, proposing the commoditization of water. He fools no one who actually takes the trouble to read the whole article with a little care, as Ed Deak quickly and succinctly points out in his initial response.
After his original sly, almost parenthetical and certainly, under the circumstances highly problematic, dig at CUPE's Judy Darcy:
Wood then motors on in a nominally inoffensive way until almost the end of his piece, where we find the following and understand that he has arrived at the destination he set out to reach with his comment about Darcy when he writes:
I have no particular problem with folks who constantly suggest that 'market' solutions are the only ones that ever 'solve' humanity's problems. I think, as Ed Deak does, that such ideas are frequently wrong and often shortsighted and wrongheaded. However, the people who propose them would do well to declare their bias in advance.
On the basis of Wood’s conversation with Casey Brown and some anecdotal evidence from Boston, the writer suggests that turning water into a commodity is both good economics and good public policy.
In the end, I wonder - and I suspect that most Canadians do too - if that's the right course of action. Certainly, it's not the only one.
A 'clever' piece nonetheless.
Colin
6 years ago
Water has always been a mix of a necessity, resources, commodity, cultural/religious icon and sometimes a curse. But it has never been a right, how can you make it a right?
You can make it a priority of the government to provide clean water, I am not sure if the “Ministry of Water†will be of any help in Bolivia, I certainly hope so, but they also live in some very dry parts of the world. Canada was working on a project down there setting up large “nets†to collect moisture from clouds and piping it to a village, don’t know if the project turned to be a success or not.
grub
6 years ago
I don't know whether this is OT or not; but what about metering water and paying the regional government for any water used beyond some reasonable amount (a generous amount, in coastal BC, I'd suggest). I resent my neighbors who feel they're entitled to fill their swimming pools with cheap/free water while I do what I can to conserve (the fact that I'm lazy and I conserve water because browned grass doesn't need mowing is another matter altogether 8-) ).
I'm not saying "user pay", I'm suggesting excessive user pay.
Coyote
6 years ago
I think that saying water is a "right" is a little nebulous, in one of my periodic agreements or "partial" agreements with Colin. I think it is more accurate certainly, to say that it is a necessity and a pre-condition for life.
And as such such, it is sure as Hell too goddamned important a "natural resource" to leave in the hands of, or otherwise in anywise in the control of private, private corporate water interests.
And indeed, though it be not perfect either, insofar as perfection does not exist, its care and responsibility for it is better left in "public interest" hands-, and even there, preferebly where there are more "democratized" systems of truly "public" participation and control in place over it as well. (The science and other workers involved in it's direction and management, along with, in a co-management arrangement with environmental and other community and consumer advocacy groups etc.)
Along with water, the best guarantee of the best husbanding pracitice of all the nations natural resources will be better served by "public control primacy" over "private interest" ones, and enhanced democracy at all levels of society, especially "public resource management institutional mechanisms".
Private enterprise no doubt has some, what should be "always circumscribed" place in the scheme of things no doubt, for the immediately forseeable future and not speaking for future generations, but in my view, NOT in the ownership, direction and management of "the people's and the nation's" natural resource base.
Water may not be an unqualified "right" for us common herd folks, but neither is it for such "private interests" as may survive the current Neocon/Corporatist/Capitalist period.
G West
6 years ago
Coyote
Thoughtful words and generally hard to disagree with. Clearly the idea of treating water as a pure economic good is fraught with danger. Not to give too much credit to the folks responsible for the decidedly mixed blessings of NAFTA, I suspect some of that ambiguity was behind their reluctance - (and the general public's concern about the issue) - to commodify water under the pact at the time Mulroney's deal got inked. Somehow, I think that battle may not yet be over.
Today, either as a way to encourage conservation, discourage waste or generate the funds to finance new infrastructure, we seem to be moving toward a different approach. There will be plenty of investors stepping up to find ways to turn these efforts into profits and it's going to be important to keep our collective 'liquid' assets from being the currency of those efforts. I don't find it difficult to imagine how certain individuals in Victoria could use people's mounting concerns about shortages to finesse the situation to their advantage and create P3 style ventures that take their future profits out of a 'resource' that all of us 'own' collectively [quotes in deference to language I'm sure Ed would disagree with]. I just don’t want water to become another example of market forces being used as a goad to transfer more public property into the arms of corporations and shareholders than is already the case.
Eventually we may have a government in this province and this country that doesn’t see such objectives and principles as a Bolshevik plot.
oilbertan
6 years ago
A couple of thoughts. Firstly, I think a big part of the problem in this country is that we do not charge enough for water consumption and as such people waste it daily. I live in an apartment and pay no water bill. I recognize that my landlord does however similar to health costs, most people never actually know the real cost of the commodity and like health care think it is basically free. Secondly, I don't see how more government control of water resources is going to be the answer. Government does such a wonderful job of the responsibilities it already has such as the fisheries, health etc. I used to think that the one thing the Federal Government was good at was tax collection until I read an article recently indicating there was $16B in uncollected taxes out there! As to NAFTA and the ongoing debate as to whether or not we will have to sell our water to the US, bottom line is that we can always abrogate the treaty which would make Maude Barlow happy.
Fiat lux
6 years ago
The beneficial results from abrogating the NAFTA would ultimately make the vast majority happy. Even oilbertans, who'd do just as well, or even better.
There are no benefits in NAFTA and never have been. Benefits for the public have never been the plan, it is a scam and con game that only brainwashed ideologues fall for. .
Ed Deak.
haraldkann
6 years ago
water is part of the basic infrastructure we pay for in taxes.when a community/society does not have water,it has nothing ,anyone wants to verify that last statement ,go a week without using more than a glass a day.that's why goverments and the military in some countries,control water.that's why people splurge with it's usage here in canada.
and because we are so resource rich,we are the envy of the world.small wonder the backroom machinations south of the border and around the world are non stop.
like oilbertan says,we can always ABROGATE any treaty,but the litigation will kill us,just look at the softwood lumber dispute.
we need to educate canadians more,not tax the water out of the reach of the poor.
Fiat lux
6 years ago
The cost of the litigation for the abrogation of NAFTA would be chickenfeed in comparison to the daily damage it causes in all 3 countries. Canada has suffered very badly, but nothing like Mexico and even in the USA.
Ed Deak,
haraldkann
6 years ago
litigation costs chickenfeed,yes,i totally agree in the position you posted.
my position is that of the HYPERBOLE that will be used by the SCAREMONGERS and we know how prevalent they are in our everyday lives.
i wish there was some kind of print that denoted SARCASM,that statement would then have made immediate sense.
jwstewart
6 years ago
Doesn't the vast majority of water evaporate and condense continuously over the eons ?
If I collect the water that falls from the sky, does someone get to send me a bill ?
If I scoop a cup of water out of the stream while paddling my canoe, do I need a drink ticket ?
The answer is yes. In fact, if water is to be treated as a commercial commodity, we first have to decide who owns it.
The owners picture is on those coins in your pocket. Therefore, we will always have have to surrender some of the monetary artwork for water, to the owner or whomever she sells it to.
Just like the Romans.
(I wish I could claim ownership of that which falls from the sky like that old geezer does, how do I get that job?)
Fiat lux
6 years ago
In some privatized areas of the world the corporations that own the water rights are indeed charging people for their own wells on their own properties and also for rainwater collected from roofs, because privatization gives them the legal right for every drop under their jurisdiction.
This is what we call "wealth creating market economy".
Ed Deak.
haraldkann
6 years ago
the water that we are graced with in our country belongs to all of us,the citizens.
it is the governments,that we vote in,that must protect and dispense the water for all,other wise civilization collapses,water is a country's lifeblood.
making a market out of what belongs to all is self interest in the groups that would rape the world.
only the citizen can decide whether he/she wants to live under oppression and looking around at those who wear those yokes proves we are not as smart as we think we are
NoLeftNutter
6 years ago
Where and who?
Bailey
6 years ago
That one may have now ended.
An American corporation out of San Fransisco bought all water rights in a small South American country, then started prosecuting peasants for collecting rainwater off their roofs, and taxing private wells.
There was a political change, the deal was rescinded and the Americans sued under the free trade agreement for all possible lost profits, and won some tens of millions of dollars.
I believe the story was included in the documentary "The Corporation".
Peter Dimitrov
6 years ago
..except for the claims of First Nations - the Provincial Crown - -- has the right to allocate the water as she sees fit in this province. The proxies for the Crown in our 'representative system' of Government are the lawfully elected Ministers of the Crown, that compose the Cabinet, and from that Cabinet, there is one Minister - who has the final say respecting the allocation of rights to water within the province's constitutional jurisdiction. Looking at the Water Act, one sees that the allocation of rights to water indeed favors various corporate sectors (mining, hydro, pulp& paper, forestry) , over the rights of fish, parks, recreation, and people's need for excellent quality water from their community water -sheds.
This 'priority of allocation' of rights over 'water as a commodity' from which the CRown derives low-"resource-rents" - will not change - whether it be a Liberal or a NDP government -as both Capital and Labor, each with their respective parties, both favor neo-liberal capitalistic development of the province with subsidies & privileges to Corporate Capital. The possible difference however is, that the Liberal favoring collecting low rents from water - that is giving a subsidy to the corporations by not collecting full-value rent or not insisting of strict adherence to contracts (remember Alcan), while the NDP, seem "muddled in the middle"on the issue -they had opportunity to relegislate another Water Act when they were in government but failed to do so - why I am not sure? Not since the days of Dave Barrett's government has the NDP ever charged or collected anywhere near full-value resource rents from forestry, water, natural gas, oil, and I just don't think they will..as it would piss Capital off royally - to be deprived their subsidy & privilege.
On the other hand, let us not be so naieve to think, that in the historical period before 'European settlement', that there were no property laws/codes amongst First Nations. There certainly were, and you can bet that neither water, fishing or hunting territories were 'common property' open for all, not so, they were the 'property' of various tribes and clans which had oral 'laws/codes' specifying rules of access and allocation. Since there was not a 'capitalistic market' ..they were not 'commodities' as we know them today -but there sure was an allocation of rights over water - and everyone knew exactly where they stood in relation to others, and there were penalties for transgression of those rules/laws.
Finally, I must remark, the question posed in the title "Is Water a Right or a Commodity" -is idiotic. Water is an element of nature - pure and simple - H2O - with a particular electrical charge & chemical/atomic properties. As I see it, rights to water are allocated by custom/codes/laws of human society, different societies having differences in the priority of those allocations. In a capitalistic society, laws have been legislated that makes 'rights to water', and 'the water itself' a commodity. Whatever, in the coming age of clean drinking water scarcity I am willing to bet the big Capital embolded and authorized by laws passed by States - captured by Capital, will allocate most of that water to Capital - unless the people organize to prevent this and to pass laws requiring priority of allocation to other needs, such as community needs, fish, wilderness habitat, etc.
haraldkann
6 years ago
excellent post peter,the NDP are the biggest morons around and your info on their not going after proper assessments in the various industries to get them to pay their fair share is indicative of politics at it worse.
it really shows the sychophantic NDP cosying up with whoever they had to ,to stay in power.ineffective governance is the NDP legacy shared with the unions that screwed this province out of a decent future for all.
there are water wars happening right under our noses and you certainly are right,water wars have always been around.
G West
6 years ago
Citizens, individually and collectively, have to start accepting the responsibility for 'taking back', from whatever political and commercial interests have captured things like the 'right' to allocate and use water for the overall public interest. Capital has no place in this process; as Mr Dimitrov writes above:
lynn
6 years ago
Excellent piece, Peter. This privileged access for the few has really made our vote almost worthless...different players election after election... but all allowing the same old insidious subjugation of what is really at core our human rights.
The brain
6 years ago
Excellent points, Peter, but you didn't need me to tell you that. Lynn, your views throughout this site continue to be spot on as well. I look for your posts these days.
RickW
6 years ago
What is air? What is soil? Are they commodities...? Same answer here applies to water.
peefer
6 years ago
What do you expect. The belief that everything is now a commodity and that you have to pay to have access is growing by leaps and bounds.
And the Canadian citizen-sheep bleat a little, but still obligingly go along.
Major public infrastructure like railways, roadways, bridges have been sold (more like given away), hospital P3s, soon water and soon after that air.
Baaaaaaaa