[A-List] Hydrodollars?

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

Who Owns Water?
by Maude Barlow & Tony Clarke


"Water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century:
the precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations."    --Fortune

As the World Summit on Sustainable Development draws closer, clear lines of
contention are forming, particularly around the future of the world's
freshwater resources. The setting of the summit paints the picture.
Government and corporate delegates to the September meeting will gather in
the lavish hotels and convention facilities of Sandton, the fabulously
wealthy Johannesburg suburb that houses huge estates, English gardens and
swimming pools, and has become South Africa's new financial epicenter.
There, they will meet with World Bank and World Trade Organization
officials to set the stage for the privatization of water.

At the same time, activists from South Africa and around the world with a
very different vision will gather in very different settings to fight for a
water-secure future. One such venue will be Alexandra Township, a
poverty-stricken community where sanitation, electricity and water services
have been privatized and cut off to those who cannot afford them. Alexandra
is situated right next door to Sandton and divided only by a river so
polluted that it has cholera warning signs on its banks. There could not be
a more fitting setting for Rio+10 than South Africa, because neighboring
Sandton and Alexandra represent the great divide that characterizes the
current debate over water. Moreover, South Africa is the birthplace of one
of the nucleus groups that form the heart of a new global civil society
movement dedicated to saving the world's water as part of the global
commons.

This movement originates in a fight for survival. The world is running out
of fresh water. Humanity is polluting, diverting and depleting the
wellspring of life at a startling rate. With every passing day, our demand
for fresh water outpaces its availability, and thousands more people are
put at risk. Already, the social, political and economic impacts of water
scarcity are rapidly becoming a destabilizing force, with water-related
conflicts springing up around the globe. Quite simply, unless we
dramatically change our ways, between one-half and two-thirds of humanity
will be living with severe freshwater shortages within the next
quarter-century.

It seemed to sneak up on us, or at least those of us living in the North.
Until the past decade, the study of fresh water was left to highly
specialized groups of experts--hydrologists, engineers, scientists, city
planners, weather forecasters and others with a niche interest in what so
many of us took for granted. Many knew about the condition of water in the
Third World, including the millions who die of waterborne diseases every
year. But this was seen as an issue of poverty, poor sanitation and
injustice--all areas that could be addressed in the just world for which we
were fighting.

Now, however, an increasing number of voices--including human rights and
environmental groups, think tanks and research organizations, official
international agencies and thousands of community groups around the
world--are sounding the alarm. The earth's fresh water is finite and small,
representing less than one half of 1 percent of the world's total water
stock. Not only are we adding 85 million new people to the planet every
year, but our per capita use of water is doubling every twenty years, at
more than twice the rate of human population growth. A legacy of factory
farming, flood irrigation, the construction of massive dams, toxic dumping,
wetlands and forest destruction, and urban and industrial pollution has
damaged the Earth's surface water so badly that we are now mining the
underground water reserves far faster than nature can replenish them.

The earth's "hot stains"--areas where water reserves are
disappearing--include the Middle East, Northern China, Mexico, California
and almost two dozen countries in Africa. Today thirty-one countries and
over 1 billion people completely lack access to clean water. Every eight
seconds a child dies from drinking contaminated water. The global
freshwater crisis looms as one of the greatest threats ever to the survival
of our planet.

Complete at: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=barlow