SECTIONS

The Global Movement to Reclaim the Freshwater Commons and Distribute it More Fairly

A highly organized and mature global water justice movement has been forged and is shaping the future of the world’s water Commons.

A fierce resistance to the destruction of water and watersheds and the inequitable distribution of water has grown in every corner of the globe, giving rise to a coordinated and, given the powers it is up against, surprisingly successful global water justice movement. “Water for all” is the rallying cry of local groups fighting for access to clean water and the life, health and dignity that it brings. Many of these groups have lived under years of abuse, poverty and hunger. Many have already been left without public education and health programs. But somehow, the assault on the water Commons has been the great standpoint for millions and has been a catalyst for forging new alliances between groups in the global South and those in the wealthier countries who have not had to face these issues before. Without water there is no life and for many communities around the world, North and South, the struggle over the right to their own local water Commons has become a politically galvanizing milestone.

The origins of this movement, generally referred to as the global water justice movement, lie in the hundreds of communities around the world where local groups and communities are fighting to protect their local water Commons from pollution, destruction by dams, and theft, be it from other countries, their own governments, or private corporations such as bottled water companies and private transnational utilities providing water on a for-profit basis. From thousands of local struggles for the basic right to water, galvanized through international resistance to the denial of these rights, a highly organized and mature global water justice movement has been forged and is shaping the future of the world’s water Commons. To the question, “who owns water?” they say, “no one – it belongs to the earth, all species and future generations.” The demands of the movement are simple but powerful: keep water public; keep it clean; keep it accessible to all. In other words, keep it in the Commons.

This movement has already had a profound effect on global water politics, forcing global institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations to address the inadequacies of their policies, and has helped formulate water policy inside dozens of countries. The movement has forced open a debate over the control of water and challenged the “Lords of Water” at the World Water Council who have set themselves up as the arbiters of this dwindling resource. The growth of a democratic water justice movement is a critical and positive development that will bring needed accountability, transparency and public oversight to the water crisis as conflicts over the water Commons loom on the horizon. The reclamation of the water Commons converges around three struggles.

Reclaiming and conserving water

The Current Crisis

This unparalleled environmental crisis can only be met and reversed through the lived affirmation that water is a Commons that belongs to everyone and therefore, any harm to water is a harm to the whole – earth and humans alike.

All over the world, our water Commons is used as a dumpsite for our wastes. Ninety percent of the wastewater produced in the global South is discharged, untreated, into local rivers, streams, and coastal waters. In China, close to 80 percent of the major rivers are so degraded, they no longer support aquatic life. Less than 25 percent of the population of Pakistan has access to clean drinking water, so polluted has that country’s surface water become. Fewer than three percent of Indonesia’s residents are connected to a sewer, leading to severe pollution of nearby lakes and rivers. Seventy-five percent of India’s and Russia’s surface waters are so polluted they should not be used for drinking or bathing. The UN has revealed the unprecedented deterioration of all of Africa’s 677 major lakes and every one of its major rivers. Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile, is being used as an open sewer. In Latin America, more than 130 million people do not have access to clean drinking water because of the pollution of lakes and rivers. Major cities such as Sao Paulo and Mexico City are facing the twin crises of over-consumption of water and mass pollution. Only about two percent of Latin America’s wastewater receives any treatment at all. The situation in the global North is better, but not good. Twenty percent of all surface water in Europe is “seriously threatened” and 40 percent of U.S. rivers and streams are too dangerous for swimming, fishing or drinking, as are 46 percent of lakes due to massive toxic run-off from industrial farms.

The Commons Solution

This unparalleled environmental crisis can only be met and reversed through the lived affirmation that water is a Commons that belongs to everyone and therefore, any harm to water is a harm to the whole – earth and humans alike. All over the world, groups and communities are confronting the twin engines of water pollution: industrial agriculture and industrial production for a global economy. The move to local, sustainable agriculture is growing everywhere as people question the wisdom of using fossil fuels to move food grown with chemicals and irradiated to prevent decay, over long distances to their dinner tables. The sales of organic food are soaring at about 20 percent a year, well ahead of the regular food industry, and the Slow Food Movement now claims 100,000 members in more than 100 countries. A survey done for the University of Surrey in Great Britain found that organic food consumers share the common (Commons) values of protection of their own health and the health of others, as well as of the environment at large. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where local families and communities support local farms, are growing daily. (One of the key goals of the network Our World is Not For Sale in fighting the power of the World Trade Organization is to prevent the ability of transnational corporations to use trade rules to challenge local regulations and practices that favour the local, sustainable production of food, and therefore the protection of the local water Commons.)

In countries around the world, groups have come together to fight theNovember 6, 2008the Green Revolution and water-destroying factory farms. Beyond Factory Farming, a Canadian network of groups devoted to sustainable and humane farming, is working with local municipalities to establish regulations that would limit the amount of water available to intensive livestock operations. Similarly, groups everywhere are challenging the abuse to the water Commons by foreign corporations and the rights of these corporations to override local environmental rules in their operations. Mining companies are major culprits in the contamination of groundwater in the global South; but an emerging North-South network is challenging these companies and their water-destroying practices. Activists in Canada and Chile teamed up to force Canadian mining company Barrick Gold to abandon a plan to remove the top of three glaciers on the Chile-Argentine border in order to get at the gold deposits underneath them. Massive amounts of glacier water that serve as the only source for 70,000 farmers would have been destroyed. Meanwhile, the network in Canada is promoting a law that would hold mining companies incorporated in Canada accountable overseas to the same standards they would have to obey at home, a way to protect the global Commons from theft or destruction.

Groups everywhere are challenging the abuse to the water Commons by foreign corporations and the rights of these corporations to override local environmental rules in their operations.

As well, from all over the world, come stories of reclamation of polluted water sources, some thought dead. In 2000, the European Commission launched the Water Framework Initiative, a European-wide plan for water conservation, clean-up and administration based on the joint management of river basins and the Commons values of cross-border cooperation of watersheds and the right of all citizens to clean drinking water. Europe is also looking to adopt “best practice” examples, such as the requirement in Northern Germany that water coming out of the tap must be clean enough to give to a baby and therefore, all who live, farm or do business along the water source flowing from the Alps must conduct their lives in a way that does not harm this water. Europe is also home to the miraculous recovery of Lake Constance, once almost lost to phosphorus and other pollution, now recovered so much that it provides drinking water to the 320 cities and four million people who live on it. The recovery of Lake Constance was undertaken in 1954 by Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the three countries that surround the lake, in a joint effort to save this great water Commons, which is the third largest lake in Europe. Only by seeing the lake as common property, belonging to all, were the countries, municipalities, and residents able to bring it back from near extinction.

Waterkeepers is an alliance of 177 affiliate programs started in North America and is becoming an international phenomenon. The goals of Waterkeeper Alliance International, which embraces Riverkeepers, Baykeepers, Coastkeepers and Lakekeepers, are fully rooted in the history and culture of the Commons. Waterkeepers empowers local communities to protect their shared water Commons and ecosystems and to work on other joint projects together. In the last year alone, Waterkeepers has had several major victories. The Hudson Riverkeepers went to court to get power plants and industrial facilities to use closed-cycle cooling systems, saving vast amounts of water and aquatic species. The Delaware Riverkeepers stopped army plans to dump byproducts of a deadly chemical weapon in the Delaware River. And the San Francisco Baykeepers forced the state of California to adopt a tough plan to slash mercury pollution to the San Francisco Bay.

Examples are harder to find in the global South where there is less money available for pollution clean up. Nevertheless, there are powerful examples. Ecofundo, a Colombian environmental and human rights network of 110 NGOs and 15 government organizations, funds “debt for nature” swaps where Canada, the U.S. and the Netherlands exchange debt owed to them by Colombia for conservation restoration. Perhaps the most exciting project is the restoration of 16 large wetland areas of the Bogotá River to pristine condition. The river supplies the water for the eight million people of Bogotá and is badly contaminated. Eventually the plan is to clean up the entire river. True to principles of the Commons, the indigenous peoples living on the sites were not removed, but rather, have become caretakers of these protected and sacred places. In another example, the citizens (especially students) of many countries of the global South have become involved in the annual Clean Up the World Campaign. Held on the third weekend of September, it was started in 1993 by an Australian sailor upset at water pollution, and now involves more than 35 million people in 120 countries in an annual ritual of Commons protection. The United Nations Environment Program has adopted Clean Up the World and now funds the secretariat and promotes the day around the world. The water Commons in many participating countries is the key target for restoration.

Protecting watersheds, groundwater and ecosystems

The Current Crisis

Fresh water is not an infinite resource. Less than one half of one percent of the world’s water stock is available for our use without drawing down the water stock needed to replenish this cycle.

We are, as a human species, destroying our water Commons to the extent that we are now losing water from the hydrologic cycle itself, destroying watersheds necessary for our survival and the survival of the planet. We are, quite literally, running out of water. Right now, humans use more than half of the earth’s accessible run-off water, leaving little for nature and other species. In the United States, industrial agriculture withdraws as much water as nuclear power plants, guzzles four-fifths of the nation’s total water use, and is the leading source of impairment for the country’s rivers and lakes. In the global South, irrigation consumes more than 85 percent of the total water use and is draining the world’s rivers. As our demand grows, the strain on the earth and other living creatures accelerates. We humans have assumed that we could never “run out” of water and have used it as if it were an infinite resource. Fresh water is not an infinite resource. Less than one half of one percent of the world’s water stock is available for our use without drawing down the water stock needed to replenish this cycle. We are depleting our water Commons in six crucial ways: aquifer mining, where we use sophisticated technology to pump groundwater far faster than it can be replenished by nature; virtual water trade, where we trade massive amounts of water from watersheds “embedded” in exported food products; pipeline diversions, where we move water from where nature put it and where it is needed for ecosystem health to where we want it to grow food in deserts, or provide water for massive urban areas; deforestation, where degraded forests cause a reduction in the amount of rain falling in an ecosystem; urban heat islands, which destroy water retentive landscapes, creating massive deserts; and climate change, which is causing greater evaporation of surface waters and is melting the glaciers.

The Commons Solution

Restoring ecosystems and watersheds by rainwater harvesting is key to the restoration of the hydrologic cycle upon which we all depend for life.

This unparalleled threat to the earth can only be met if we humans understand that we depend on ecosystem health for our own lives and work together to restore the water Commons in nature. Slovakian scientist and Goldman Prize winner Michal Kravcik is leading a global crusade to save the earth’s hydrologic cycle. His groundbreaking research in his own country showed that when water cannot return to fields, meadows, wetlands and streams because of urban sprawl and the removal of water-retentive landscapes, the actual amount of water in the hydrologic cycle decreases, leading to desertification of once green land. Kravcik is spearheading a movement to view water in the hydrologic cycle as a Commons before it has even fallen from the clouds and asserts the right of a drop of water to “domicile.” Restoring ecosystems and watersheds by rainwater harvesting is key to the restoration of the hydrologic cycle upon which we all depend for life, he explains, and adds that the beauty of this project is that it is a natural, as opposed to a high-tech solution to the water crisis that could employ millions in what he calls “community sustainable development programs.”

Rainwater harvesting is the collection and storage of rainwater and has been used traditionally in arid and semi-arid areas for millennia. But increasingly, rainwater harvesting is being used in urban areas and areas that are not arid, but running out of clean water. China and Brazil have extensive rooftop rainwater harvesting programs. Bermuda has a law that requires all new construction to include rainwater-harvesting facilities. The Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, India, runs dozens of rainwater harvesting programs around the city and has trained thousands of practitioners from all over India to renew this ancient technique for water retention. In Rajasthan, Rajendra Singh’s Tarun Bharath Sangh movement has brought life and livelihoods back to the region through a system of rainwater harvesting that has made deserts bloom and rivers run again through the collective action of entire villages. People come from all over the world to learn from Singh (known in India as the “rain man”) whose work and vision have brought health and harmony to hundreds of once rain-impoverished communities. Recently, a new international coalition has been formed to promote water harvesting. The International Rainwater Harvesting Alliance, with members from dozens of countries, is targeting rooftop harvesting using community buildings and surface rainwater harvesting for groundwater recharge. Its mandate reflects the Commons values of inclusion in serving women and the poor first, and asserting the right to water for all.

The water Commons is also being fiercely protected from bottled water hunters in communities around the world. Brazil’s Citizens for Water Movement travelled all the way to Nestlé’s headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland two years ago to protest the damage the company is causing to the ancient mineral springs of Sao Lourenco. Five hundred families in the Philippine port city of Bacolad have charged Coca-Cola with dumping harmful contaminants into their water supply. Friends of the Earth Indonesia is fighting government concessions to several bottled water companies in central Java. Opposition is growing in Chiapas Mexico against groundwater concessions granted to Coca-Cola, some as long as 40 years. The “Quit India Coca-Cola” campaign is gaining steam in that country as dozens of communities are reclaiming their water Commons. The fight in Plachimada, Kerela, went all the way to the Indian Supreme Court, which forced the company to close its operations in 2006, returning the local water supplies to the people. In Michigan, Sweetwater Alliance and others have taken Nestlé to court for destroying their local water supplies. They won an important court victory, but the company is fighting back. Residents of Fryeburg, Maine are fighting to save their aquifer from Nestlé subsidiary Poland Springs and local communities are adopting “ordinances” to assert their control over local water sources. A citizen’s group in McLeod, California successfully stopped Nestlé from a major water taking from Mount Shasta.

Groups are also turning to their state legislatures for aid in protecting their water Commons. In New Hampshire, the group Save Our Groundwater (SOG) is working with a state committee to draft a law that would allow the residents of any municipality to turn down a request for a commercial water-taking with a two-thirds majority vote. In next-door Vermont, a bi-partisan committee co-sponsored legalisation to protect that state’s groundwater Commons by creating a new permitting program for large-scale withdrawals and declaring the resource a public trust.

International Rivers is a powerful network on five continents working to protect rivers from the destruction of big dams. They believe that the interruption caused by big dams to the natural flow of rivers destroys a vital element of the water Commons. Today, everywhere a big dam is being planned or built, there is organized local opposition. International Rivers is there to offer legal advice, training and technical assistance, and advocacy with governments. One sure sign of success is that the numbers of big dams being built around the world has steadily declined since International Rivers was set up two decades ago. The newest fight is to block the damming of the two largest rivers in Patagonia, the Baker and the Pascua Rivers, to supply Chile’s copper industry with hydro-electricity. The transmission line to carry this electricity would require the world’s largest clear-cut through an untouched temperate rainforest. Groups from around the world are joining this campaign to save the water and forest Commons of Patagonia. Activists in British Columbia, Canada recently celebrated a victory when a project to build private hydro-electric facilities through a provincial park was put on hold. They are continuing to fight similar projects around the province arguing that private hydro companies would be able to use and control for profit the water Commons that belong to all residents of B.C.

Fighting For Water Justice

The Current Crisis

The greatest indictment of our collective abandonment of the notion that water is a Commons is the water apartheid now suffered by the poor and disenfranchised of the global South.

One of the definitions of a Commons is that it is accessible to all without discrimination. The greatest indictment of our collective abandonment of the notion that water is a Commons is the water apartheid now suffered by the poor and disenfranchised of the global South. Almost two billion people live in water-stressed regions of the planet; of those, 1.4 billion have little or no access to clean drinking water every day. Not surprisingly, most of these 1.4 billion live in poor countries in the global South and suffer unbearable hardships at the loss of their water Commons. Two-fifths of the world’s people lack access to basic sanitation, leading to a return of communicable diseases like cholera and the plague, once thought extinct. Half the world’s hospital beds are occupied by people with an easily preventable water-borne disease and the World Health Organization reports that contaminated water is implicated in 80 percent of all sickness and disease worldwide. More children die every year from dirty water than war, malaria, HIV/AIDS and traffic accidents together. In the last decade, the number of children killed by diarrhea exceeded the number of people killed in all armed conflicts since the Second World War. Every eight seconds, a child dies from water-borne disease. The average North American uses almost six hundred liters (150 gallons) of water a day. The average African uses just six. A newborn baby in the global North consumes between forty and seventy times more water than a baby in the global South.

(However, poverty and water apartheid are not relegated to the South. When former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher privatized and deregulated Britain’s water services in the late 1980s, millions were unable to pay and thousands had their water cut off completely. Water cut-offs have spread to the United States where, in 2001, the Detroit Sewage and Water Department cut off water to almost 42,000 residences unable to pay their (rising) water bills. Those most hurt with the denial of their right to water were seniors, people with disabilities, single mothers with children and African Americans. To add insult to injury, the city’s Social Services Department removed many children from homes because they now had no access to fresh water.)

The Commons Solution

The global water justice movement is of one voice that water must be seen as a basic human right and must not be denied to anyone because of the inability to pay.

Water apartheid will not end until we declare water to be a public Commons accessible to all. The global water justice movement is of one voice that water must be seen as a basic human right and must not be denied to anyone because of the inability to pay. In communities all around the world, local groups have resisted the privatization of their water services and won. For these tireless campaigners, the right to water and the concept of water as a Commons are one and the same. In response to intense public pressure under the leadership of a grassroots group called FEJUVE, the Bolivian government of Evo Morales recently ousted the private water company Suez from the capital, La Paz, after a disastrous 10-year contract to manage the city’s water. In a ceremony marking the return of Bolivia’s water to public ownership, President Morales said that water must remain a basic service so that everyone can have the water they need for life. Suez was also forced out of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, Argentina, the latter after more than one quarter of the population signed a plebiscite to rescind Suez’s contract. Local groups celebrated when the municipality of Adelaide, Australia took back its water from a private consortium after years of being engulfed in a “big pong” (stench) caused by leaking sewers. Recently, a powerful movement in the United States led by Food and Water Watch has successfully fought water privatizations in New Orleans, Louisiana; Laredo, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia and Stockton, California. Food and Water Watch is spearheading a campaign for a Clean Water Trust Fund that would finance badly needed municipal infrastructure repairs, allowing municipalities to keep their water services public. In Canada, the vast majority of water is delivered on an equitable basis to all citizens regardless of ability to pay. These water services are paid for out of an income tax regime supported by a majority of the population.

As well, citizens are not waiting for their governments in taking the lead on asserting the human right to water. On October 31, 2004, the citizens of Uruguay became the first in the world to vote for the right to water. Led by Friends of the Earth Uruguay and the National Commission in Defense of Water and Life, the groups first had to obtain almost 300,000 signatures on a plebiscite (which they delivered to Parliament as a “human river”) in order to get a referendum placed on the ballot of the national election calling for a constitutional amendment on the right to water.

Several other countries have also passed right to water legislation. South Africa, Ecuador, Ethiopia and Kenya also have references in their constitutions that describe water as a human right (but do not specify the need for public delivery). The Belgian Parliament passed a resolution in April 2005 seeking a constitutional amendment to recognize water as a human right and in September 2006, the French Senate adopted an amendment to its water bill that says each person has the right to access to clean water, but neither country makes reference to delivery. The only other country besides Uruguay to specify in its constitution that water must be publicly delivered is the Netherlands, which passed a law in 2003 restricting the delivery of drinking water to utilities that are entirely public and, in March 2008, announced its full support for a right to water constitutional amendment.

The only other country besides Uruguay to specify in its constitution that water must be publicly delivered is the
Netherlands.

Other exciting initiatives are underway. In August 2006, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that protection of natural lakes and ponds is akin to honoring the right to life – the most fundamental right of all according to the Court. Activists in Nepal are going before their Supreme Court arguing that hiring a private firm to manage the drinking water system in Kathmandu violates the right to health guaranteed in the country’s constitution. The Coalition Against Water Privatization in South Africa is challenging the practice of water metering before the Johannesburg High Court on the basis that it violates the human rights of Soweto’s poor. Bolivian President Evo Morales has called for a “South American convention for human rights and access for all living beings to water” that would reject the market model imposed in trade agreements. At least a dozen countries have reacted positively to this call. Civil society groups are hard at work in many other countries to introduce constitutional amendments similar to that of Uruguay. Colombia’s Ecofondo has launched a plebiscite toward a constitutional amendment similar to the Uruguayan amendment. They need at least one and a half million signatures and face several court cases and a dangerous and hostile opposition. Dozens of groups in Mexico have joined COMDA, the Mexican Coalition for the Right to Water, in a national campaign for a Uruguayan-type constitutional guarantee to the right to water.

 

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updated November 6, 2008