Water Wars - Joseph Robertson

One of the most dire struggles in the new millennium is the use, distribution, cost and funding of clean, drinkable water. Wars are being fought, weapons are being developed, for the sole purpose of controlling the essential resource of life-sustaining water. The world's most majestic rivers are being brought under governmental and industrial control through massive development projects and construction of big dams and mega dams.

The Narmada river valley in India is slated for development including the construction of over three thousand dams, said to be the largest such hydro-development project in human history. Yet even as many developing countries commit themselves to massive, and hugely expensive dam-building projects, the benefits of such dams are beginning to be seriously questioned by science. In developed countries, some dams have been decomissioned and demolished, as costs were never met and were growing over the life of the dam.

In the war-ravaged Republic of the Congo, as many as 94% of people may be without consistent access to safe drinking water, a figure high enough to pose a serious threat to any sort of political regime, or perhaps an opportunity for further brutality and oppression. In many places, neighboring countries must compete for a limited supply of fresh water. The US and Mexico are still working to settle disputes about water from the Rio Grande. India and Bangladesh have signed water-sharing treaties to help ensure that conflict does not arise during the dry season, and to protect the Bangladeshi lowlands from excessive runoff in the monsoon.

Political approaches to solving economic infirmity must consider issues as fundamental as the availability of water for all segments of any population. Privatization, a solution imposed by major international financial bodies, is leading to new complications. Normally, privatization leads directly to an escalation in prices.

Several South American countries have already dealt with such crises, when private foreign corporations refused to distribute drinking water at less than their preferred price. In these cases, there was no creation of a free market or of market forces which would drive prices down, but rather governmental control of state monopolies became foreign control of private monopolies, beyond the reach of governmental regulation.

In the case of Bolivia, privatization led to riots, martial law, killings, and ultimately to the cancellation of the project. The nature of these crises is unique to situations in which anti-market forces, in the total absence of responsible civil administration or democratic redress, tamper with the availability of basic necessities, such as food and water. The inevitable result is violence, stemming from the total desperation of people with no other means of obtaining life-sustaining biological staples.

While the developed world is accustomed to struggles over pricing, regulation and market dynamics, the application of privatization schemes in the developing world has not coincided with an acculturation to such basic instruments of the democratic process as would be necessary to govern privatization. Quite the contrary, it is usually the case that such plans are implemented in the face of overwhelming, if not almost universal opposition.

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