This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. VII, No. 8, March 25-31, 2007
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 © 2007 Bulatlat
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