In memory of Alvaro Arzivu, environmentalist
and water defender, assassinated
on 13 June 2023 in Tlamanalco, Mexico.
No surprises
On 28 July 2023, there will be no surprises. No representative, no institution from the dominant Western world will refer to the 28th of July as the day of the UN General Assembly resolution that proclaims the universal right to drinking water and sanitation. Instead, since 1993, 22 March has been celebrated with pomp and circumstance as the “World Water Day” proposed in 1992 by the World Bank to promote and spread commercial, financial and technocratic methods of managing water resources in the context of the globalisation of the capitalist economy(1).
Most of the 41 countries that opposed the resolution were Western and Westernised countries (led by the United States and the United Kingdom and their allies), among the richest and most powerful in the world, while almost all of the countries voted in favour (122) came from Africa, Central and South America and South America and Asia. (2) The opponents rejected the very idea of a universal right to water because, according to them, the UN resolution imposed unlimited and unspecified obligations on states that, moreover, went beyond safeguarding national sovereignty over “their” water, their natural resource.(3)
Since 1992, the dominants have imposed water as an economic good. The predominance of the realm of needs
In fact, in 1992 the dominant social groups in westernised countries had managed to get the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to approve the principle that water should be considered essentially as an economic good, a commodity, to be managed according to the rules of the capitalist market economy and therefore, subject to the mechanisms of private appropriation, to the setting of a market price and to rivalry (competitive markets) in access to it and its uses. (4)
According to the concept of water as an economic good, access to water is first and foremost a vital need individual and individualizable. Individual needs vary enormously in time and space. There are no universal needs. There are collective needs belonging to particular subjects such as a rural or mountain community, lowland farmers, a village, a region, a residential area of wealthy families, a holiday resort, a monastic community dedicated to brewing, or a branch of the textile industry….
In the context of the needs-based approach, the key issue is the “local” ability/power to access water in the quantity and quality required and desired, according to needs and income. In the world of needs, there are no universal, individual or collective rights. Hence the principle applied to all economic goods: “water finances water” similarly to “oil finances oil” or “cars finance cars”. The financing of the infrastructures and activities needed to provide access to water must be covered by consumers paying a price that allows the producers and service providers to obtain the highest possible financial return on their investment.
It was therefore not possible for the dominant parties to accept the recognition of the universal right to water approved by the most important international authority in charge of regulating global issues. This recognition sounded to their ears like heresy and, above all, as a challenge to the principles and rules that, in the twenty years since 1992 have become the four main pillars of global water policy at the sauce of the dominant capitalist economy.
The four pillars of global water policy in the dominant economy
First, the preference given to the management of water resources and “public” water services, by private companies with private capital, even quoted on the stock exchange. Just for information, here are the main global water companies listed on the stock exchange: Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Danone, BASF, Dow, Veolia Environnement, Suez Environnement, Kurita Water Industries, DuPont de Nemours, Xylem, 3M, United Utilities Group, Unilever, …. Quickly, management by private companies became, in various forms, the preferred method of public authorities, while public management has become a minority or even an exception. (5)
Secondly, the internationalisation of water management based on the price of water set according to the principle of “full cost recovery” (including the return on invested capital, the profit). This principle was formalised and applied by the British Water Office when water and water services were privatised by the Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1989. Since then it has been accepted without reservation by the other member countries of the OECD (6) and in particular the EU. It remains the fundamental pillar of EU water policy under the Water Framework Directive of 2000,art.9. (7)
Third. The subjection of water management and water services to the rules of international trade established by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) created in 1994. WTO has de facto conferred the international regulatory power in the water sector, as well as in the health and food, to the economic, financial and technological dominant groups in westernised countries (8).
Finally, the fourth point. The principle of public-private partnership (PPP), promoted by the World Bank in the 1980s. The PPP is one of the main objectives of the World Water Council, established in 1995-6 by a group of multinational water companies, in particular French (9), with the political and operational support from the World Bank and UNESCO. The PPP has become one of the preferred instruments for the “soft” privatisation of water and water services, as well as of all common public goods and services essential for life (health, public transport, education, housing, knowledge….). Within the World Water Council, the body responsible for the PPP has been and remains the Global Water Partnership (GWP), whose work has been facilitated by the second body of the World Water Council, i.e. the World Water Forum (WWF), which came into operation in 1997 with its first meeting in Marrakech.
Hegemony and ideological and political ‘normalisation’
Over the years, the World Water Forum has turned out to be exactly what for which it had been created: the instrument through which the dominant groups were to impose the privatisation of public powers in the water sector. The Forum quickly became the most important world assembly, even compared to the United Nations (10), for meetings, exchanges, debates and influence on decision-making on water policy in the world. It has promoted the ideological and political normalisation of water policy at all levels in conformity th the fundamental orientations and interests of the business world and finance. A world that has taken over (through the patents) and has also taken control (through financial markets) of the powerful world of technoscience.
The growing ideological hegemony of capitalist culture within the United Nations was confirmed by the signing in 2000 of the Global Compact between the UN and the world’s leading private companies(11). The Compact formalises the participation and association of the private business sector in the activities and programmes of the UN, without voting rights. This belongs exclusively to states. In fact, however, through the Covenant, the private sector is ”at home” in the UN system, and can live there with all its powers of influence, pressure and control of the world economy.
An example. In line with the objectives of the Global Compact, in 2007 the United Nations approved the CEO Water Mandate initiative (12), entrusting a group of CEOs from the major multinationals in the water sector to reflect and propose their visions on global water policy. This initiative was integrated to the activities and projects underway as part of the Second International Decade for Water 2005-2015 of the United Nations and the UN Agenda 2015,” The Millennium Development Goals 2000-2015”. Needless to say, this initiative had great political and symbolic value. Fortunately, in my opinion, the companies were unable to come to an agreement and the matter ended there. No great damage for the multinationals.(13) Since earlier 2003, at the UN International Conference on “Financing water for all” in Monterrey (Mexico), the business community had already obtained approval from the international community that he principles and key mechanisms of the existing financial system, including public finance, should guide the objectives and methods of water financing at a global level(14), in line with the objectives of ” global economic governance”.(15)
A thunderbolt
It was in this context that an unexpected UN resolution was passed. the United Nations resolution of 28 July. A real thunderbolt. The political initiative of the resolution was taken by the progressive government of Bolivia, led by President Evo Morales. Despite strong opposition, the dominant powers were unable to block support for the resolution from 122 countries of the Global South, support that had been prepared with intelligence and prepared intelligently and competently by Bolivia’s permanent ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solon. A committed and well-known activist with in-depth knowledge of the issue, Solon managed to gain the support of the social movements and governments of many southern countries. These were aware of the importance and urgency of winning a symbolic battle against the devastation caused by the North in the field of universal human rights, both individual and collective, particularly of peoples, and, by rebound, in the field of common public goods.
Restoring the “order of things”. Strategies of oblivion and abandonment/replacement.
Of course, winning this battle could not by itself change the power relations between the South and the North. The Westernised countries, therefore, adopted two strategies. The strategy of oblivion and the strategy of abandoning the concept of a universal right to water and replacing it with the mercantile capitalist concept of access to water at an affordable cost/price.
In pursuit of the first strategy, they have imposed a boycott of any UN decision or document that refers to the resolution, except in the case of a correct or falsified reference. Example. A document issued by the UN General Secretariat stated that:
” The Assembly recognised the right of every human being to have access to a quantity of water sufficient for personal and domestic use, i.e. between 50 and 100 litres of water per person per day. The right to water consists of a sufficient and physically accessible supply at an affordable cost, i.e. less than 3% of household income. In addition, the water source must be within 1,000 metres from the house and the collection time must not exceed 30 minutes”. (16)
I have reread the official text of the Resolution from a to z. There is no trace of the details mentioned in the document. (17) That they became, even before the Resolution, fundamental elements of the conception of the right to water by the specialised agencies of the UN and its secretariat, it is certain. The drafters of the document, however, could not pretend that they were formal elements contained in the 2010 Resolution. It was a deliberate misrepresentation. The concept of access to drinking water and sanitation on an equitable (equity is not the same as justice) and affordable price is the denial of the universal right to water. Imposed, as we have seen, in1992-1993 has rapidly spread throughout the world, driven by a trend seemingly irreversible trend.
The ‘surprising’ UN resolution led the dominant powers to intensify and accelerate the replacement of what remained of the concept of a universal right to water with that of access at an affordable price. Their steamroller has not stopped. They have acted mainly at the European level, for the simple reason that the large European multinationals occupy a predominant position in the global water sector. Just think of the superpower French group Veolia-Suez, well established throughout the world. According to the French business newspaper La Tribune of 7 September 2020, it alone exceeds the turnover of the other 14 major water companies. (18) And then there are Nestlé and Danone…., which are no match for Coca-Cola….
In 2012, through the European Commission’s Water Blueprint, they left no door open to a different vision. On the contrary, they reiterated the concept by clarifying once and for all that the stakeholders are at the centre of power in the “global water governance”. People’s sovereignty in this field no longer belongs to the citizens and is no longer exercised by them through their elected representatives, but by the stakeholders, a very nebulous and ambiguous category of political subjects. (19) Management by local authorities, particularly at the municipal level, has been reduced to the function of peripheral terminals of large global networks, thus erasing all forms of what was once the pride of municipal autonomy. Also in 2012, at the Third Earth Summit, they pushed through the principle of monetisation of nature, attributing an economic value to all elements of the natural world, first and foremost water. (20)
The culmination of the abandonment/replacement strategy came in 2015 just five years after the resolution, when the United Nations approved the 2030 Agenda ”Sustainable Development Goals” (SDG). The Agenda 2030 document no longer mentions the right to water. SDG 6, of the seventeen SDG, which concerns water, states in paragraph 61 “ By 2030, ensure universal and equitable access to safe drinking water at an affordable cost ”.(21) The same applies to other common goods essential for life (health, food, education, housing, public transport, knowledge….). One wonders what kind of Sustainable Development the ruling powers are talking about if the right to life is abandoned and transformed into ”access to goods and services at an affordable price”?
Of course, the ideological and political normalisation has not been confined to the field of principles but it has been extended to all areas of political, economic and legal regulation. These areas are, unfortunately, not the intended subject of this article, but we cannot ignore the effects of normalisation on social behaviour in terms of the growth of violence and the denial of citizenship to those who are fighting for the universal right to water and defend water as a common public good against its commodification, privatisation and financialisation.
In westernised countries, violence takes the form of discrediting, ostracization and, above all, of criminalisation of citizens’ struggles. The latest case, which has caused an international sensation, is the police and judicial repression in France of demonstrations against the construction of mega water reservoirs: Several thousand citizens from all over France took part.The construction of the kind pf mega reservoirs in question rests on no reasonable basis other than to defend the interests of a powerful group of private farms engaged in intensive industrial agriculture for products for export. (22)
On other continents, particularly in Latin America and Africa, the situation is worse: peasants, workers, activists and indigenous peoples who dare to fight for their rights and their land are subjected to brutal violence, including murder. Among the hundreds of cases over the past three years, the most recent was on 13 June. A well-known international environmental activist and water defender, Alvaro Arvizu was murdered in Tlamanalco. (23).
What can be done? Resistance, opposition and reversal of the present
The awareness of the enormous difficulties we face must not prevail over the knowledge that humanity has made remarkable progress in all fields, especially because it has struggled against what seemed impossible: changing existing systems, establishing peace, fighting and reducing intolerable inequalities, and promoting the general interest. The welfare state succeeded to some extent, especially in the Scandinavian countries until twenty years ago.
Resistance. Claiming the autonomy of memory
The return in force throughout the world of extreme right-wing ideas (white supremacy, racism, Nazism, xenophobia, meritocracy, contempt for the impoverished, oligarchic authoritarianism, Trumpism, etc.), especially in westernised countries, is a clear sign of the structural weakness of the dominant system, incapable of solving the problems it has created. The ruling classes only know how to aggravate them, because they do not aim to change the system.
Today global tragedy is that the dominants believe they can survive the devastating crises of present and future life, thanks to their power and new technologies, even if nuclear weapons were to be used! The fact that they now talk of the use of atomic weapons as a real possibility in the war in Ukraine
between Russia and the US/NATO shows that the nuclear option belongs for them to the realm of possible, if not necessary. In defiance not only of the UN treaty banning nuclear weapons, legally in force because it has been ratified by more than 50 states, but also to the universal right to life of the other billions of human beings.
What indecency. Let me say that I am deeply shocked to see the weakness of popular mobilisation against such a situation in westernised countries that, to top it all, claim to be Christian, Catholic, secular and humanist…
So far, in this article, I have focused on resistance by promoting the memory of what has led the power groups in western countries to forget the universal right to water and thus justify its abandonment. Memory is of utmost importance. Without memory we are blind, we are no longer able to see and therefore understand our history. This means that we are unable to identify existing options and make choices. Without memory (or dependent on a memory constructed by others) we lose our compass. For this reason, as the Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth, we have found it necessary to propose that 28 July be declared the Day of the Universal Right to Water. To counteract forgetfulness, to keep the spotlight on the principle of the right to water, to enshrine the collective responsibility of all towards the protection and promotion of the right to life for all.
The opposition. The governance of water, of life, belongs to the citizens, to the peoples.
If citizens and peoples keep control of their memory, they can succeed in conducting important actions of opposition to the dominant water policies on two main fronts.
On the one hand, on the front of global finance . This is undergoing a profound technological transformation that challenges the limits of time and space. The goal is to liberate water, the life of the Earth, from the work of predation systemic predation, even more destructive than in the past, pursued by the
capitalist financial system increasingly dissociated from the real economy. The listing of water in the stock exchange (by the Chicago Stock Exchange in December 2020) and the subsequent transformation in 2021 by the New York Stock Exchange (“Wall Street”) of all elements of the natural world into “natural capital”; and, thus, into financial assets, (24) have created a particularly harsh situation of denial of the universal right to water. It’s also due to the fact that the public authorities are themselves in favour of the financialisation of water and nature. Furthermore, in the current context of the total technologisation of financial activities, the idea of democratic management of financial policy isn inevitably eliminated. The same applies in terms of the increasingly reduced financial autonomy of municipalities throughout the world.
Secondly, on the front of individual and collective violence, often institutionalised. Violence has become the rule in all areas of social relations. Rivalry and war dominate over friendship and peace. Contrary to what was proposed in our Memorandum to the Citizens The Other Agenda, 2021, the culture of “me” continues to increasingly prevail over the culture of “us”. The world has become a global mega-stadium of violence. The wars are a daily spectacle. Few political, economic or techno-scientific leaders denounce them or use their power to stop them. Violence is the denial of rights. The ”State of rights” cannot accept as “justified’ the ongoing fratricidal wars, as Russia and NATO countries are doing with regard to the war in Ukraine (but also the wars in the Middle East, Africa….)
The fight for common public goods, essential for the lives of all the earth’s inhabitants highlights the fact that there can be no future of justice and peace without decision-making systems based on true democracy (today practically non-existent). This is also the sense of our proposal. It is certainly not guaranteed, but the municipalities remain potential spaces for the regeneration of of friendship, of shared identities and co-responsibility in the management of the res publica. And, consequently, the right to life. Also because of the ongoing destruction of life, the peoples of the world are mobilising around the public commons, whose existence is the first victim of predation. Just think of the growing scarcity of water, particularly of water good for life, for which local communities have primary responsibility.
Regeneration. Reinventing society, the associative pact, based on the inseparable combination of universal rights and common public goods. Rethinking everyday life in a global perspective, starting from significant areas of proximity and interdependence, is a great collective task, indispensable to achieve the goals of rights regeneration. Hence the fundamental role that must be played by common public goods (and services) essential to life, first and foremost water. The return of the universal right to water in the unfolding history of our societies through the agendas communal agendas would set in motion new local-global imaginaries of life capable generate new “political” global pluralist principles, unsuspected today. The celebration of 28 July – Day of the Universal Right to Water, freely chosen by the citizens locally, is an act of trust and hope in life, justice and peace. It is up to each local authority to identify the concrete actions that considers important to undertake.
The movement is well underway in Argentina, thanks to the national president of the Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth, Anibal Faccendini. The city councils of four major cities in the country have approved the proclamation of 28 July as ‘World Day for the Universal Right to Water “: Rosario (2 million inhabitants, second city in the country after Buenos Aires), Bariloche (110,000 inhabitants, in Patagonia), Gualeguayachu (77,000 inhabitants, in the province of Entre Rios) and San Lorenzo (47,000 inhabitants in the province of Santa Fé).
Who says history is already written?
Notes
(1) https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/940261468325788815/pdf/multi-page.pdf The French version of 1993 is no longer available.
(2) United Nations, The Assembly recognises the right to drinking water. https://press.un.org/fr/2010/ag10967.doc.htm
(3) Ibidem
(4) See the so-called “Fourth Dublin Principle”; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Statement.
(5) This does not mean that the struggles against the commodification of water, the privatisation of water services and, in recent years, the financialisation of all water-related activities have lost momentum or have been abandoned. To date, the dominants have managed to impose their rules through their power and predation.
(6) The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) – which is based in Paris and brings together all the countries of the western world – is less well-known to the general public than other organisationssuch as the World Bank or the World Economic Forum. However, it has played an important ideological and political-institutional role in shaping the dominant vision of water, particularly with regard to financial aspects and management methods: cf. https://www.oecd.org/fr/gouvernance/principes-de-locde-sur-la-gouvernance-de-leau.htm and https://www.oecd.org/fr/environnement/ressources/financer-la-securite-hydrique-de-demain.pdf.
(8) It is significant that the WTO felt the need to publish a note in which it sought, without succeeded, to remove the “misunderstandings” it said, about its role in the field of water. https://www.wto.org/french/tratop_f/serv_f/gats_factfiction8_f.htm.
(9) https://www.worldwatercouncil.org/fr.
(10) On this subject, https://www.sosfaim.be/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/riccardo_petrella_eau_defis_sud.pdf
(11) https://unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/mission/principle.s The distance between the proclamation of the 12 principles and their observance remains considerable.
(12) Mandate for Water, https://ceowatermandate.org
(13) Corporate environmental and social responsibility, particularly with regard to water, remains at the stage of mystification.
(14) Cf. https://www.uclg.org/sites/default/files/financer_leau_pour_tous._camdessus_report.pdf
(15) The concept of “(global economic governance” by the stakeholders instead of the government (by democratic states representing the people) is part of the ideological and political baggage accepted by the vast majority of leaders. This is one of the main political and cultural regressions of Western societies.
(16) https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/water. The document is not dated, but since the text quotes UN documents published in 2020, we can assume it dates from 2021/2022).
(17) The Assembly recognises; the right to drinking water as …, op.cit.
(18) https://www.latribune.fr/economie/international/qui-sont-les-geants-de-l-eau-dans-le-monde- 856085.html#:~:text=Yes%20the%20fusion%20d 7 September 2020
(19) Critical role attributed by the EU to stakeholders in http://www.eauxglacees.com/IMG/pdf/22Memorandumsurlapolitiqueleaueuropeennedeleau22-Sommaire.pdf. This approximately 100-page memorandum also contains the outlines of an alternative European water policy.
(20) Jean-Philippe Carisé, « De la valeur à la monétarisation de la nature. Outils, mesures, méthodes »;, https://www.cairn.info/revue-vraiment-durable-2013-2-page-55.htm,=
(21) https://www.agenda-2030.fr/17-objectifs-de-developpement-durable/article/odd6- .
(22) On this dossier, see the series of articles published in 2023 by the news site Mediapart, https://www.mediapart.fr/.
(23) https://www.osservatoriodiritti.it/2023/07/17/difensori-dellacqua-alvaro-arvizu-ucciso-in-mexico/
(24) On the fight for water regeneration see https://www.lalibre.be/debats/opinions/2022/12/07/le-droit-universel-a-leau-nest-pas-en-danger-il-est-deja-en-perdition-EWJP2I5ORVFVN, 2022 Regarding the whole of nature see https://agora-humanite.org/it/cop15-biodiversite-et-financiarisation-de-la-nature, 2023
The latter article was also published by OtherNews in EN and IT and by Pressenza in EN; EN and ES.
