World
Water Day:
Unequal Water
Distribution Behind ‘Water Crisis’
The water crisis,
whether in the Philippines or globally, is a crisis underlined by the fact
that majority of the poor people have no access to water while most of the
water goes to the rich.
BY ARNOLD PADILLA
IBON Foundation
Posted by
Bulatlat
Environment secretary Angelo Reyes
recently raised the alarm over an impending water crisis in the country,
warning that by 2010, only 1,907 cubic meters of freshwater would be
available to each Filipino. This would make the Philippines the second
lowest among Southeast Asian countries in terms of freshwater
availability.
As a solution, the Arroyo government is
offering the integrated water resource management (IWRM) approach. But
finding a genuine long-term solution to the so-called water crisis
requires policy makers to put it in the proper perspective. The Ramos
administration has already used the threat of a water crisis to justify
privatization. The Ramos government passed the National Water Crisis Act
of 1995 (RA 8041), which paved the way for the privatization of the
Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS, which handles water
supply in the National Capital Region and outlying provinces) in 1997 and
other water supply systems around the country.
Similarly, the IWRM, once fully
implemented would open the door for the wholesale (foreign and local)
corporate takeover of water resources in the country.
Glaring disparity
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
said that the global water shortage represents a full-scale emergency
where the world water cycle seems unlikely to adapt to the demands that
will be made of it in the coming decades. While water is renewable and
covers most of the earth, freshwater (or water that people use) is said to
be inherently scarce. Of every 10 liters of water on earth, less than 1
liter is available for human, animal, and plant consumption.
Available freshwater is also not evenly
distributed due to wide variations in seasonal and annual precipitation.
Asia, for instance, accounts for 60 percent of global population but
comprises only 36 percent of global freshwater resources in contrast to
Latin America’s 6 percent (population) and 26 percent (freshwater
resources).
The scarcity of freshwater is compounded
by the growing pressure that human activities exert on available
resources. The looming global water crisis, experts agree, is the result
of the combination of rapid population growth especially in poor
countries, the pollution and destruction of freshwater resources, and
climate change that affects the hydrological cycle and consequently water
availability.
However, while population, pollution, and
climate change indeed contribute to the worsening shortage of water, what
is seldom highlighted in discussions about the water crisis is the reality
that the scarcity is felt mainly by the poor and not by the rich.
Inequity in access to water between and
within societies, for instance, could not be fully explained by claiming
there are too many people competing for an increasingly limited resource.
To illustrate, in Southeast Asia, Cambodia has highest available
freshwater per capita of 32,880 cu. m per year but only 58 percent of its
urban population and 29 percent of its rural population have access to
improved drinking water coverage. Myanmar, on the other hand, is next only
to Indonesia in terms of volume of available freshwater with 1,046 square
kilometers (sq. km) per year but like Cambodia, only a small portion of
its population have access to drinking water (73 percent for urban and 40
percent for rural).
In contrast, Singapore which has only 0.6
sq. km of freshwater volume per year and 139 cu. m of freshwater per
capita per year– both the lowest in the region– managed to provide 100
percent coverage of safe drinking water to its people. Note as well that
there is a glaring disparity between urban and rural areas in terms of
access to safe drinking water among all Southeast Asian countries.
National situation
Inequity in access to water is the direct
result of widening disparity in income between the impoverished majority
and affluent minority among and within countries. In the Philippines, the
2002 Annual Poverty Indicator Survey reveals that 20 percent of all
families do not have access to safe drinking water. The lack of access is
more pronounced among families in the lowest 40 percent income strata
where 29.8 percent do not have access compared with 13.4 percent of
families in the highest 60 percent.
The same picture is true with regard to
access to sanitation where 26.9 percent of families in the lowest 40
percent income strata do not have a sanitary toilet compared with only 5.2
percent in the highest 60 percent. Overall, 13.9 percent of all families
do not have a sanitary toilet. An identical trend is observable on a
regional basis as the country’s poorest region– the Autonomous Region for
Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)– has the highest percentage of families without
access to safe water supply (66.7 percent) and sanitation (55.3 percent).
But the issue of corporate control over
water resources is the more pressing question. In Metro Manila, for
example, the private companies that took over the MWSS have hiked water
rates by 357.6 percent (Maynilad) and 414.4 percent (Manila Water) between
August 1997 and January 2007. With such a huge hike in water rates
combined with increases in the price of other goods and services, many
poor families could hardly afford water services.
In addition, corporations also directly
compete with the people for the control and use of available freshwater
resources. For instance, Benguet Corporation, a U.S. mining firm which is
now venturing into the water business, holds 65 water appropriation
permits issued by the NWRB. The permits cover major creeks, springs, and
rivers in the municipality of Itogon in Benguet province that communities
use for their domestic and agricultural needs. In San Pablo City, Laguna,
farmers and residents complain of declining water availability and blame
the operation of a mineral water plant by Nestle Philippines, Inc.
IWRM: Furthering Inequity
The marginalization of the people,
particularly the poor, from water resources is bound to worsen if the
Arroyo government would implement the IWRM approach.
Proponents of the IWRM argue that people
tend to use water wastefully because it is abundant and readily
accessible. But because of the water crisis, the need to treat water like
oil or gold arose to encourage conservation and maximize its use.
According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB),
treating water as a tradable commodity would help ensure greater
efficiency and productivity in its use. The World Bank, on the other hand,
claims that efficiency in water management may be realized through the
greater use of pricing and through increased reliance on decentralization,
user participation, privatization, and financial autonomy. Thus instead of
looking at it as a common good, water is treated like any other commodity
attached with a price tag, which becomes the mechanism “that sends
appropriate signals on allocation, distribution, and consumption.”
Water crisis or capitalist crisis?
According to Fortune magazine, water is
the best investment sector for the century with various estimates placing
the value of the global “water industry” between $1-3 trillion. Thus,
First World-based TNCs, in dire need to create conditions more favorable
to capital and new areas of investment, are in a rush to put their money
in the water business. TNCs now directly operate water supply and
sanitation systems and some of them have already penetrated the local
water sector.
The world’s second largest water TNC Suez
of France, for instance, is the foreign operator of Maynilad. Manila
Water, on the other hand, has the United Kingdom’s (UK) United Utilities
and Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation as foreign operators. CGE of France is
involved in the privatized water supply and sanitation system in Clark,
Pampanga while BiWater of the UK is one of the operators of the privatized
water system in Subic.
TNCs already established in other business
activities are also starting to invest in the water sector. Global giants
General Electric, Siemens, and Dow Chemical, to name a few, have been in a
buying frenzy of smaller water companies and developing water-related
technologies in recent years. TNCs in the food and beverage industry like
Nestle, Coca-cola, and Pepsi have established themselves in the bottled
water market and are notorious worldwide for their conflict with local
communities over the use of freshwater resources.
Raw water pricing and tradable water
rights
Consistent with the IWRM framework, the
NWRB has been lobbying for the implementation of a raw water-pricing
scheme and a system of tradable water rights. Raw water pricing involves
the charging of fees for the use of water from the ground, rivers, lakes,
and other resources to fund the operation and maintenance of water
facilities, recover investment costs, and encourage productive and
conservative use of water. The raw water pricing distorts the fundamental
and inherent nature of water as a common resource-- for a fee, it also
allows TNCs to further monopolize access and control over water resources
and further disempower local communities. Raw water pricing will aggravate
the water crisis as it justifies the wanton corporate exploitation and
plunder of water resources as long as companies can afford to pay for the
raw water fee.
The system of tradable rights, on the
other hand, is potent tool that corporations can use to monopolize access
and control over water resources in the country. Water rights pertain to
the privilege given by government to government bodies, private
corporations (at least 60 percent Filipino-owned), and Filipino citizens
to appropriate and use water. Under a system of tradable water rights,
corporations can buy up water rights, including those held by poor farmers
and households, for instance, to expand its privilege to exploit water
resources (i.e. increase the volume it can extract).
An alternative framework
The water crisis, whether in the
Philippines or globally, is a crisis underlined by the fact that majority
of the poor people have no access to water while most of the water goes to
the rich. The IWRM would not correct this gross inequity but would even
heighten it as export processing zones; tourism areas like hotels, beach
resorts, and golf courses; urban commercial centers; high-end residential
areas and subdivisions; hydroelectric power plants; agro-industrial
plantations, etc. are assured of a steady supply of water while poor
communities, subsistence farmers and fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, etc.
are deprived of access and or even displaced from land and water
resources.
More than the issue of overpopulation,
over-extraction, pollution, and climate change the looming global water
shortage is a structural issue. Globalization and its emphasis on market
forces defining how societies should manage and use their water resources
through the IWRM is the biggest and most urgent threat to the world’s
water supply security although overpopulation, etc. would surely
exacerbate the situation. Thus instead of using the water crisis as
justification for more privatization and the implementation of the IWRM,
the water crisis should be used to promote approaches outside the
framework of privatization and corporate control. Market forces, with its
preoccupation to profit, cannot be expected to be responsive to public
good and general welfare.
The only viable and long-term solution to
the water crisis is the people’s effective control over water systems and
resources. People’s control ensures the equitable, sustainable, and
rational use of water for the general social good. Towards this end, the
Water for the People Network, in its first national convention in 2004
produced the Filipino People’s Water Code which enumerates guiding
principles for implementing pro-people policies and programs on water
services, water supply infrastructure management, and water resource
utilization.
In the short-term, the people must
campaign to reverse the privatization of water utilities including the
privatization of the MWSS while demanding for efficient services and
questioning water rates hikes; oppose the construction of mega-dams;
oppose the commercialization of irrigation services; expose and oppose
water policy reforms such as raw water pricing and tradable water rights.
IBON Foundation/posted by Bulatlat
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