India’s government orients towards privatizing water

Under the guise of providing a solution to the acute water crisis facing the country, India’s Cong

Water watch increasingly urgent

South Africa is one of the few countries in the world that has made access to water a constitutional

Water wars: Shortages may destroy entire nations

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) recently released a report entitled Globa

 

India’s government orients towards privatizing water

April 12, 2012 in Water Shortage

Under the guise of providing a solution to the acute water crisis facing the country, India’s Congress Party-led UPA government has prepared a document entitled “Draft National Water Policy (2012)” that is orientated towards promoting the wholesale privatization of water delivery and sanitation. This policy is being advanced even after numerous IMF-and World Bank-imposed water privatization schemes around the world have turned out to be a social disaster, with transnational and other giant firms extracting massive profits even while bringing water and sewage systems to the point of collapse.

Far from calling for a comprehensive nationwide crash program to supply the populace with a free and reliable round-the-clock water supply and sewage system, the draft policy paper says its chief objective is “to take cognizance of the existing situation and to propose a framework for creation of an overarching system of laws and institutions…” [emphasis added].

The proposal to create an “overarching system of laws and institutions” is an expression of the Indian government’s intent to centralize decision-making authority on water policy, which is currently largely under state and municipal jurisdiction, within its own hands, so it can push for “free market” solutions—tariff-ication and privatization – as the cure for a dilapidated and grossly deficient water and sewer system.

Published by the Indian Ministry of Water Resources, the draft paper argues that water “needs to be treated as an economic good…priced to promote efficient use and maximising value.” It also seeks to impose the “full recovery of the cost of administration, operation and maintenance of water resources projects.”

In other words, the ministry wants to make this essential resource of humanity into a commodity available in plenty to those who can pay for it and denied to those who can’t. The policy advocates a sledgehammer approach to cut down what it terms “wasteful” usage by rationing water through market pricing.

The paper calls for state institutions to shift from providing water and sanitation to acting as a tariff regulator. It calls for water infrastructure be built using public funds, then handed over to “appropriate ‘public-private partnerships’ on a long-term lease-operate-maintain contract” as is advocated under the World Bank-IMF water privatization “framework”.
The thrust of the draft paper—a final version is to be unveiled after consultation with “water experts” and other “stakeholders”— is of a piece with the overall outlook of the UPA, which advocates privatization and marketization as a cure for every problem facing the country. Over the past 18 months, the government has been rocked by numerous scandals that have exposed how state property has been handed over to big business at fire sale prices.

If adopted, the proposals will undoubtedly place additional burdens on India’s hundreds of millions of poor people, many of them peasant farmers dependent on irrigation to grow their crops.

At present, the vast majority of Indians do not have ready access to safe drinking water and hygienic toilet facilities. Only 29 percent of Indian households have access to tap water, and even then in the majority of cases only for several hours a day. The other 71 percent of households obtain their daily water supply by making long and exhausting treks to wells, streams and rivers, while in urban areas they must wait for a water truck to arrive.

Across India just 10 percent have access to toilet facilities with flush drains and in rural areas flush-toilets are virtually non-existent. Some 640 million people, according to UNICEF, are forced to defecate in the open. Access to safe drinking water in the country is so grossly inadequate that the World Bank estimates 21 percent of communicable diseases can be traced to people drinking unsafe water. Water-borne diseases kill 700,000 children in India annually.

The shift in orientation proposed in the draft paper neatly dovetails with the “water policy” peddled by the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), both of which routinely impose water privatization as a condition for granting loans to countries that come into their clutches in Africa, Asia and South America. Since water privatization invariably results in the granting of a quasi-monopoly to private corporations, it has frequently been a license for outright plunder, with corporations performing either minimal or no infrastructure maintenance.

Bolivia is a case in point. In 1998, the IMF imposed “structural reforms” as a condition for granting a loan to Bolivia. It compelled the government to sell off national oil refineries and Cochabamba’s local water agency, SEMAPA, with the latter taken over by a consortium of private investors that included the notorious and well-connected US-based Bechtel Corporation. The World Bank, then headed by James Wolfensohn, a former Wall Street speculator, also demanded that “no subsidies should be given to ameliorate the increase in water tariffs in Cochabamba.”

The result was a social catastrophe, with water rates doubling and even tripling within months. Unable to bear this plunder, the people of the region rose up in unison, shutting down the city for 4 days in January 2000 and forcing the private profiteers to flee.

Behind the scenes, the US government is pressing India to move forward with water privatization. In February, the Obama administration led a US Water Technology Trade Mission, with representatives of 16 US corporations, to Bangalore, the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. It was India’s previous coalition government, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance regime, that took the first tentative steps towards water privatization. In 2002, it declared, “Private sector participation should be encouraged in planning, development and management of water resources projects for diverse uses, wherever feasible.”

There have already been several disastrous experiments with water privatization at the state and local level. In 1998, the Congress Party government of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh granted a contract to Radius Water Ltd. (RWL) to build a dam and reservoir on the Sheonath River for supplying water to the Borai industrial estate. The company, which under the contract had been given ownership rights to a 23-kilometre stretch of the river, restricted local villagers’ access to river waters that for centuries had provided them and their ancestors with drinking water, irrigation for their crops, and fish to eat. The villagers fought back and in 2003 the government of Chhattisgarh, a state carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000, promised to abrogate the contract with RWL. But the promise was not kept and even today the RWL retains its rights over the river.

In 2005, the Tamil Nadu government launched one of India’s largest PPP (public-private partnership) water supply and sewerage projects. A 30-year contract was awarded to the New Tiruppur Area Development Corporation Ltd (NTADCL) on a 30-year Build-Own-Operate-and-Transfer (BOOT) basis to supply 185 million litres per day of raw water for industrial and domestic use in Tiruppur, a fast-growing industrial city. Numerous textile factories and 700 dyeing units discharge about 87 million litres of toxic wastewater brimming with chemical dyes into local rivers every day. This has not only made the groundwater undrinkable and severely polluted the Noyyal, Nallar and Jamunai rivers. It has also made a great deal of agricultural land unfit for use. According to the Madhya Pradesh-based NGO Manthan Adhyayan Kendra (MAK), which tracks privatization of water projects, “Water sources, both surface and ground, have been contaminated, and drinking water has to be often brought from long distances.”

In the six-and-a-half decades since India’s political independence from British rule, the Indian bourgeoisie has established an unblemished record of incompetence, corruption and downright criminality. The privatization of such a basic necessity of life as water will result in a social disaster and provoke explosive protests.

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Water watch increasingly urgent

April 11, 2012 in Water Shortage

South Africa is one of the few countries in the world that has made access to water a constitutional right. But although enormous progress has been made to bring water to previously unconnected people since 1994 – in the region of 15-million — many still do not have water on tap. And those who do have access are using a supply that is precarious at best.

Although water was largely ignored as a strategic resource in the past two decades, much like electricity, money is now being pumped into infrastructure. Even so, the supply will remain marginal as the demands of a growing population are compounded by climate change and ageing infrastructure.

Threats to water

Acid mine drainage
Acid mine drainage contaminates water and is the most immediate threat to water security. It occurs in areas where gold and coal mines have been left unrehabilitated after closure, mainly in Gauteng and Mpumalanga. It is a hugely expensive problem. The Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority, which has been tasked with cleaning Gauteng’s water, is asking for R900-million just for short-term measures. It has received half of that, although the department of water affairs is working on a long-term solution and is confident that the treasury will give it the funding required.

Infrastructure
Some municipalities are operating water systems that are more than a century old. As a result, about a third of the water leaks from broken pipes. This is one of the department’s main targets for saving water. Municipalities do not have the budgets to upgrade or even fix most of the problem. Forty-five percent of them have failed to get blue-drop status (a measure of water quality), mainly because of crumbling infrastructure and a lack of skills. Sewage works are also in dire straits. Only 45% of municipalities got a rating of more than 50% in the most recent “Green Drop” report, which assesses municipal waste-water works, which meansthey are not cleaning the water in towns properly. Instead, large amounts of E coli are being released into rivers and the water table.

Rivers
Small local rivers, for example, have always been a barrier to large-scale development. Their combined flow is only equal to half of the Zambezi’s, for example. They also tend to be shallow, which leads to high rates of evaporation. On the eastern seaboard, most flow only short distances before pouring into the ocean. All this means sites for dams are at a premium, which is especially problematic because 80% of rainfall nationally occurs in just five months. All the water for the remainder of the year and for droughts needs to be captured and stored rapidly during the
rainy season.

Population growth
In 1900, the population was four ­million; it is now 50-million. New water infrastructure is rapidly outstripped by population growth. In rural areas, a new water system can lead to people moving to that area and overwhelming it. In informal settlements near big cities, the lack of clean water and sewerage systems leads to further pollution of water resources and waterborne diseases. Industrial growth also leads to mining and farming in marginal areas, which pollutes the sources of rivers.

Climate change
This is the wild card. Statistics are limited, but it is predicted that the western part of the country will get drier and the eastern wetter. Seasons will be more extreme, resulting in more flooding in shorter and heavier rainy seasons and longer droughts. This will put huge pressure on dams, one of the reasons behind their proliferation.

With more extremes will come a greater demand for energy and energy production is a huge consumer of water. There will also be longer periods when water dries up. Hotter temperatures will also drive up the need for irrigation, which already consumes about half of all water. Just 3% less rainfall will drive irrigation needs up by 10%.

Solutions

Dams
With billions allocated to raising dam walls and building new ones, this is the big solution for the department. Dams in more remote areas mean water would serve those communities as well as providing reservoirs that can pipe water to centres of industry. They also mean water for development nodes, such as the Waterberg, could be transferred to local dams. But dams come with their own problems, such as displacing communities and ecosystems, affecting users downstream, who get less water, and reducing water supply to neighbouring countries.

Desalination
Given the vast quantity of water in the ocean, it is a potential long-term solution. The largest desalination plant in South Africa is at Kenton-on-Sea. Desalination has been a huge success in the Middle East, primarily because of the amount of money that is available there. Locally, it is still prohibitively expensive, but as water prices increase it will become a solution for many coastal cities.

Transfers
South Africa leads the world in water transfers. Practically all the water in Gauteng comes from somewhere else through water transferred along pipes and rivers. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project is the largest and provides the biggest single source of water for Gauteng and surrounding provinces. These schemes allow water-scarce regions like the Waterberg to get water to lubricate industrial development. With even these schemes reaching maximum supply, plans to create a transfer to the Zambezi are mooted.

Rehabilitated acid mine drainage
Although acid mine drainage water is unsafe, it provides a huge source of water when cleaned. Hundreds of millions of litres of water lie in basins and abandoned mines around the country. But it is still so expensive that water prices need to increase before it becomes sustainable.

The eMalahleni Water Reclamation Plant in Mpumalanga works at a loss now, but it can be cloned when the price reaches about R9 a kilolitre.

Changing habits
Every year during Water Month the department bemoans the fact that South Africans do not realise the scarcity of water. With water being so cheap, people do not think about wasting it. A leaking tap will be left to drip because it is too much effort or expensive to fix. A change in consumer habits can have a huge impact on reducing consumption.

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Water wars: Shortages may destroy entire nations

March 26, 2012 in Water Shortage

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) recently released a report entitled Global Water Security that claims water supply issues around the globe will lead to economic instability, civil and international wars, and even the use of water as a weapon in the next several decades. In typical shock-and-awe fashion, the U.S. government paints a grim picture of so-called global warming, water shortages, and other water problems as the causes of major global destabilization, which it also says may be mitigated if certain steps are taken to offset them.

What are these steps, you may ask? As expected, getting the U.S. government involved in water supply issues around the globe is presented as a primary solution. This measure implies, of course, that U.S. models of water management, which include price-gouging the public in the name of water conservation, will also be implemented across the globe as those that run the U.S. government increasingly meddle in international affairs to serve their own interests.

“During the next ten years, many countries important to the United States will experience water problems — shortages, poor water quality, or floods — that will risk instability and state failure, increase regional tensions, and distract them from working with the United States on important U.S. policy objectives,” says the report. It goes on to explain that such problems will affect the global economy, and thus cannot be allowed to prevail.

Water as leverage, water as a weapon, and ‘water terrorism’

The report specifically warns that water will be used as leverage by some countries to influence their neighbors, and even as a potential weapon. It also warns of “water terrorism,” a situation where “extremists, terrorists, and rogue states threatening substantial harm” are a significant threat to water infrastructure, particularly in the years that follow the next ten years.

No government report would be complete without making reference to terrorism, after all. And in this case, the ambiguous term “extremists” is thrown in as well, which is concerning when considering the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) recent warning fliers that dub people who pay for their coffee with cash, for instance, as potential “terrorists”

 

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