Blue Gold of the 21st Century
Riccardo Petrella

Between 17 and 22 March the second World Water Forum will be meeting in the Hague, organised by the Dutch government on the basis of an initiative by the World Water Council (WWC), and including an international ministerial conference. Several thousand people are expected to attend.

The WWC was set up in 1994, with the assistance of the World Bank, the governments of a number of countries (including France, the Netherlands and Canada), and the private sector (for instance the Suez-Lyonnaise des eaux group). In 1996 it gave itself the task of drawing up a long-term "global vision for water" which might then serve as a basis for analysis and for drafting a "global water policy". The World Bank has been pushing such a policy in recent years (1), and has had the agreement and collaboration of all the relevant organisations within the United Nations. In order to achieve its objective, the World Bank has over more or less the same period overseen the creation of a Global Water Partnership (GWP), with the aim of encouraging closer relations between public authorities and private investors.

Since the work of the WWC and the GWP has not been entirely satisfactory (not least because of their lack of coordination), the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century was set up in August 1998 to generate some urgency in arriving at that much-debated "global vision". To this end the commission embarked on a massive international consultation exercise towards a new version of "2020 Vision" (2), and instructed the GWP to accompany this "vision" with an operational schema entitled "A Framework for Action". The "vision" and the "framework" in question are to be presented at the Hague. The ministers participating in the ministerial conference (at which more than 100 countries will be represented) are expected to approve a declaration which should provide legitimacy for a "global water policy" for the coming 15-20 years.

What we have seen during the 1990s has been the setting-up of a kind of global high command for water. In formal terms the private sector is only represented in these various structures by the president of Suez-Lyonnaise des eaux (as a member of the commission) and by senior personnel from Vivendi-Générale des eaux. However the presence of business and high finance interests is all-pervasive in the shape of "experts" who in most cases have links with those companies. Private capital is thus solidly entrenched at the heart of the decision-making process.

What are the arguments and proposals that will be presented (and if possible imposed) at the Hague? Judging by the provisional documents that have been made available prior to the opening of discussions (3), they are of a piece with the framework of global water policy that has been pursued since the early 1970s. Three main principles provide the driving force: commodification, privatisation and oligopolistic integration between the various sectors worldwide: drinking water, bottled water, water treatment and purification, and soft drinks. And this all takes place in a context of struggles for market hegemony and power struggles between national governments.

For those in charge of the world's water, water has to be treated as an economic commodity. They argue that this is the only effective way to combat shortages and rapidly rising prices. Water has become expensive, and it will be even more expensive in the future, which will make it the "blue gold" of the 21st century. According to the draft ministerial statement, only the fixing of a market price in line with total supply costs (the so-called "fair price") will guarantee a balance between supply and the rapid growth in demand, and thus limit the conflicts between peasants and town-dwellers; between farmers/ industrialists and ecologists and responsible consumers; between "rich" and "poor" regions, and between countries located in the same hydrographic basins. At that point the export and marketing of water within the rules of free trade and open competition would, or so we are told, make it possible not only to generate large profits, but also to eliminate conflicts (4).

These are the main ingredients of the "integrated water resources management" (IWRM) which the GWP is advancing as the key to policy development at the various different territorial levels of interest and competence. The privatisation of all services (water sourcing, purification, distribution, conservation and treatment) fits perfectly with the direction being taken by the IWRM, which is to effect a rational management of a scarce resource by a "fair" return on investment, which would then make possible, so we are told, a reduction of waste and measures to fight pollution and contamination. Within this perspective, direct public management is increasingly seen as being inadequate and ineffective. Thus management should be transferred to private companies, preferably following the French model of delegated management. This policy fits perfectly with the rapid worldwide spread of deregulation and privatisation of basic public services: gas, electricity, urban transport, telecommunications and post.

Of course, we are assured, policy also has to take into account social, cultural and ethical considerations. Particularly the latter. That accounts for the amount of space accorded to ethics in the preparatory documents and in the programme of events for the World Forum (5). But when it came to choosing between a definition of access to water as a basic human and societal right, and its definition merely as a basic human need, the officials drafting the ministerial statement came down on the side of need. They obviously thought that to speak of water access as a right would impose obligations and restrictions of a kind liable to curb the freedom of movement of the key players, and most particularly the private sector.

The commodification of water leads on to the third dynamic of global water policy, which is less advanced than the other two: the integration of all water-related sectors, in a context of a battle for survival and hegemony within the world water oligopoly. Each of the sectors - drinking water, bottled water, carbonated water and the processing of used water - currently has its own leading companies, and its own skills, markets and conflicts. Drinking water ("the tap suppliers"), for instance, has Vivendi, Suez-Lyonnaise des eaux, Thames Water, Biwater and Saur-Bouygues (and their respective subsidiaries). Bottled water (mineral water) features mainly Nestlé and Danone, the world's leading bottlers. These latter, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, are entering into competition with the "tap" suppliers via the development and marketing -- even via fire hydrants - of what they are calling synthetic, purified water, which claims to be healthier than tap water.

For their part, the companies operating in the public provision of drinking water are increasingly active in the processing of used water, and this brings them into the field of synthetic water and purified water. In the future they may decide to seek market openings in the soft drink sector, where Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola are the dominant presence. The emergence of "multi-utility" conglomerates at the global level is bound to intensify both integration and competition, if the major national and international public bodies decide to abandon water to the "laws" of competition and the market economy.

In such a situation, what will happen to the right to life, as represented by access to water for all persons and every human community? Also what will be left of the general interests of society and of social and territorial cohesion? Needless to say, the state control of water by governments that are dictatorial, expansionist, militarist and corrupt is to be opposed as much as commodification, privatisation and the global creation of oligopolies. That is why it is so urgent to draw up a world contract (6) to define a new concept of public service, at the various territorial levels, for this resource which is so fundamentally part of humanity's shared heritage.

This process should begin in Europe, where countries should exert themselves not only at the level of policy direction, control of ownership and control of water services (within a perspective of sustainable development of society, as well as the environment), but also direct management in the water industry. It is crucial that we begin to reappropriate knowledge, expertise, skills, technologies and the ability to evaluate choices - something that will require mobilisation within society as a whole. The fact that Attac (7) is beginning to include water resources on its agenda is a promising sign.

* Founder and secretary of the Comité pour le Contrat mondial de l'eau (Committee for a World Contract on Water), president Mario Soares. Author of Le Manifeste de l'eau, Editions Labor, Brussels, 1998.

(1) See its 1993 "founding document": World Bank, Water Resources Management, Washington, 1993.

(2) See Messages to Initiate Consultations for the World Water Vision, World Water Council, c/o Unesco, Paris, March 1999.

(3) See the website at: www.worldwaterforum.org

(4) For a critique of the export of water see Maude Barlow, Blue Gold. The Global Water Crisis and the Commodification of the World's Water Supply, International Forum on Globalisation, San Francisco, June 1999.

(5) See La Charte sociale de l'eau, published in France by the Académie de l'eau, and the work of Unesco's Water and Ethics Commission.

(6) See Riccardo Petrella, "Pour un contrat mondial de l'eau", Le Monde diplomatique, November 1997.

(7) Attac (L'Association pour le taxation des transactions financières pour l'aide aux citoyens) is intending to use its 150 local committees in France to launch an action-inquiry into the operations and financial, social and environmental practices of four major multinationals, one of which is Vivendi. Attac can be contacted at 9 bis rue de Valence, 75005 Paris. Tel: + 331-43-36-30-54. E-mail: attac@attac.org. Website: www.attac.org