Ruth Pérez Lázaro
Translation by Internationalist 360°
Water, a magical resource, source of life, has been loyally guarded by our ancestors. Its importance for the peoples of the world has elevated it to the status of Goddess, such as Chalchiuhticue, in the Tlaxcalteca culture (Mexico), Ganga, in India, or Njord, in Norse mythology. History reveals the strong link between water and the identity of a people, their beliefs, their emotional bonds and their vision of beauty.
In a globalized world that plays with the limits of the planet’s biodiversity, this water culture has been reduced to its economic value. The capitalist and heteropatriarchal system in which we find ourselves immersed, has tried to simplify its focus on a single resource, blue gold . As a result, nearly 700 million people lack access to drinking water and 2,600 million lack adequate sanitation, a particularly alarming situation, with the United Nations having declared these a human right in 2010 [1]. This seemingly empty data translates into suffering for millions of people who live with a lack of opportunities, poverty, lack of livelihood or forced displacement, increasing gender inequities and the gap between the global north and the south.
The global water crisis is part of a much wider systemic crisis. Its causes are multiple and interrelated, its critical analysis a complex task. Climate change, privatization processes, the construction of large hydraulic works, intensive agriculture, the production and energy model based on fossil fuels, are some of the most important factors in this causal scenario. These causes respond to the prevailing neoliberal capitalist model, in which the sustainability of life itself is threatened.
The process of appropriation
Under the logic of the free market and with transnational corporations as a central agent, corporate power is appropriating common goods such as water, forests, land, or more intangible goods such as knowledge, based on a legal architecture of impunity. The multilateral organizations, the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), together with many States, support this modus operandi . The new wave of trade and investment treaties (TCI) is the perfect instrument for this agenda.
To understand the potential impacts that the ICT (TCI) can generate on common goods and specifically on water, it is important to review what the privatization processes have involved. The paradigm of “water wars”, as defined by Vandana Shiva, has gained strength by maintaining, on the one hand, a holistic view of the resource (which understands water as an ecosocial asset, emphasizing its value in biodiversity) and a reductionist vision in which it is presented as an economic asset . This draws a battle line between public management, ecofeminist and participatory, linked to territory, which maintains water as a common good, and privatization processes who are allies of transnationals seeking profit. As an example, Veolia and Suez companies control access to water for more than 100 million people, ranking 97 and 153 respectively on the Fortune list [2].
Privatization processes worldwide have been established through the French model, the public-private partnership (PPP). It can be defined as the contract between a government and a private company that finances, constructs and operates some element of service that was former;y under public domain. They are often implemented by local governments with the hope of reducing public debt, increasing service efficiency and introducing new technologies and investments in infrastructure.
Monopolies and inefficiency
The advantages of PPPs are questionable, especially when we talk about water management. It is considered that the supply services constitute a natural monopoly, an extremely dangerous state of privatization. PPPs can promote competition options for the market , but not competition in the market . That is, there is an ephemeral competition to get the concession in public tender, when there is no direct award. Once the concession is awarded, the service will be managed under a private monopoly for decades, in conditions that are difficult to revise and with harsh reversal clauses.
What usually happens in practice is that the real level of competition in the markets is reduced. When the management is municipal, the acquisition of new technologies, maintenance and modernization, require a multitude of highly specialized small and medium-sized companies to compete in public tender. This is what is known as the secondary input market, which usually produces a greater volume of business than in the management of the service itself.
However, when the service is concessioned to one of the large transnational operators, the secondary input market is usually shielded from competition, as these companies have their own resources to cover such needs. The end result is that market competition is reduced. In this way, the situation of natural monopoly is evident. The argument of the control of citizens over the operation through their rights as clients, does not apply either, since such rights are usually exercised to the extent that they can change providers, an option that in this case is not possible.
In this scaffolding, PPPs, usually made up of subsidiaries of large water transnationals, obtain their benefits in a safe manner in order to be able to speculate in other sectors. The Portuguese court of auditors revealed the lack of transparency in contracts between municipalities and private companies, which makes it difficult to assess the quality of investments and the financial implications. Empirical research based on the experience of communities around the world shows that they are a failure in terms of the efficiency of services offered, and in increasing tariffs [3].
Remunicipalisation and democratic control
The collective response to privatization processes championed by PPPs has been the remunicipalization of services – the return of the management of the integral cycle of water, supply and sanitation, to public and full democratic control. In the last fifteen years there have been 235 cases of water remunicipalisation, which involve more than 100 million people [4], including emblematic cities such as Berlin, Paris or Buenos Aires. There is strong evidence that remunicipalisation provides immediate cost savings. For example, Paris saved 35 million euros [5] in the first year. In addition, it increases efficiency and levels of transparency, making it possible to build sustainable management models for nature and people.
This hopeful strength has been encouraged by citizens’ wishes for climate justice, organized in initiatives at European level such as Right2water, or at the state level through the Public Water Network (RAP), with the Social Pact Water. These movements underline the importance of defining a specific public management, a democratic and ecofeminist model.
The TCI in front of the remunicipalizations
But this is strongly threatened by different trade and investment treaties, which are either on the table of opaque negotiations, such as Mercosur, or have recently been ratified, such as the CETA. These do not directly negotiate the way in which public administration is organized, but, transversally, the rules for international trade in services has a great impact on the autonomy of each municipality.
If we focus on the CETA, approved by the Senate at the end of October, ambiguity and confusing legal terms are hallmarks of the text. Water is not considered a commodity or product in its natural state, but it could be considered a commodity in practically all its uses: human consumption, sanitation, productive uses or irrigation.
The CETA is the first TCI negotiated by the European Union under the negative list approach, that is, everything that is not included in that list is affected by the treaty. Thus, neither in supply nor in sanitation (with the exception of Germany) can a law be applied that protects the services of its privatization.
Along with this ambiguity, another of the most worrisome issues is the insurmountable wall that this and other treaties impose on remunicipalisation, through the mechanisms of regulatory cooperation, ratchet effect and private investor-State arbitration.
With regulatory cooperation, transnational corporations can block the approval of legislation on public services. With the application of the ratchet effect, once a sector is liberalized there is no turning back. The current tendency to remunicipalization is blocked. PPPs then granted a natural monopoly, shielding secondary markets and raising tariffs for people to obtain safe benefits with which to speculate in other sectors. As if this were not enough, under investor-state arbitration, transnational corporations can go to a private court to sue governments, if they consider that their benefits are affected by a change in legislation.
TCIs are a tremendous instrument of corporate power with which transnational corporations operate in their comfort zone, prioritizing their benefits in the capitalism vs life conflict. It is an urgent challenge to protect common goods with the energy and intelligence that social movements have manifested in the construction of counterhegemonic alternatives. Water, an extraordinary resource, needs to be recognized in a New Culture of Water, like the Goddess Chalchiuhticue, placed in the center of the life of people and the planet.
Ruth Pérez Lázaro, researcher in integrated water management, is part of the New Culture of Water Foundation (FNCA.
Article published in the nº76 of Peoples – Magazine of Information and Debate, first cuatrimestre of 2018, monographic “Commercial treaties, offensive against our lives”. (nº76 de Pueblos – Revista de Información y Debate, primer cuatrimestre de 2018, monográfico “Tratados comerciales, ofensiva contra nuestras vidas”.)
NOTES:
WHO (2016): ” Progress on sanition and drinking-water “.
Fortune Magazine (2015).
EPSU (2014): Public and Private Sector Efficiency: a briefing for the EPSU congress by PSIRU . Report available at http://www.psiru.org .
Kishimoto S., Lobina E. & Petitjean O. (2015): Our Public Water Future. The global experience with remunicipalisation . See at: http://www.tni.org .
EPSU (2016): Water Remunicipalisation Tracker , Paris.
Pérez Orozco, A. (2017): Lessons learned from Latin American feminist resistance to trade and investment treaties . From ‘No to the FTAA’ to the questioning of patriarchal capitalism . Observatory of Multinationals in Latin America (OMAL) – Peace with Dignity. Available at http://www.omal.info .
