Water

Global financial collapse highlights need for public water solutions

As the global economic and financial crisis deepens, workers attending the fifth World Water Forum are promoting proven public solutions that will meet the world's water and sanitation needs.

Privatization has failed to deliver water and sanitation services. Now, the private sector can't even raise the capital needed. Two key sessions on the role of the private and public sectors have been hastily rearranged at the Forum, a sign the privateers aren't prepared to meet their critics, including the 55 members of the Public Services International's delegation.

Zimbabwean trade union leader Moses Mahlangu has seen firsthand the results of bad governance and lack of financing. "Four thousand people have died preventable deaths, as broken pipes and poor management helped cholera spread like wildfire. Now, water and sanitation services are back in public hands at the local level. But financing repairs that will stop future cholera outbreaks is a major problem, and we need the international community's support to make funding flow," says Mahlangu, General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Urban Councils Workers Union

  In neighboring Malawi, Olivia Kunje is on the frontlines of the fight to keep water public. "Water workers are struggling to deliver the public services our citizens need in the face of pressure from the World Bank. We pushed back the World Bank's privatization agenda once, and will continue to resist Public Private 'Partnerships' by promoting positive public sector alternatives like Public Public Partnerships with neighboring countries, like South Africa and Zimbabwe," says Kunje, the general secretary of the water employees trade union of Malawi.

PSI condemns the violence and repression aimed at silencing workers and civil society raising their voices against the Forum's corporate agenda. The tightly-controlled discussions inside the Forum exclude the voices of the people who have lived the consequences of privatization - and who have proven public solutions.

"We defeated privatization in Uruguay and are now building a new model of public services. Workers are at the heart of this, working hand in hand with the movements to recognize the right to water. This new model is based on hiring new workers so the population is guaranteed water and passing on expertise and capacity to defend public services from one generation to another. We are also working closely with the citizens who count on us for water and sanitation services," says Adriana Marquisio, president of Uruguay's water and sanitation workers' federation. Public sector workers are playing a central role rebuilding water systems shattered by privatization in Argentina.

"We went through Enron's worst privatization, they didn't deliver, and the government asked us to step in and help them operate. Through innovative and progressive leadership, together with government and citizens we manage to deliver the highest level of quality to all citizens in our region," says Jorge Javier Gonzalez Fazio, technical professional director in the province of Buenos Aires.

The market model is fundamentally mismatched with the priorities that must guide water and wastewater services. Treating water as a commodity to be bought and sold to exposes these vital services to the same forces that brought about the economic and financial collapse. Ending the global water crisis begins with strong public services - not privatization. Public sector workers have a central role to play in building a future where everyone on the planet has access to water and sanitation services, and where the global water commons is secured for future generations.

WWF5: Trying to influence public opinion is a crime

Two activists from the NGO International Rivers were arrested after showing a banner during the opening cermony at WWF5. Their Turkish lawyers informed the activists that they had to leave the country within a couple of hours if they did not want to be put in prison for more than one year. The lawyers explained that the crime was that the two activists "tried to influence public opinion with the unfolding of the banner".

PSI affiliate UNISON condemns excessive force used by Turkish police at World Water Forum

UNISON, the UK's largest public sector trade union, today (17 March) condemned the excessive use of force by the Turkish Authorities at peaceful protests ahead of the World Water Forum (WWF) in Istanbul. The union is calling for freedom of speech to be allowed and for the meeting to be made more inclusive, after developing world delegates were priced out of the talks.

UNISON National officer, Steve Bloomfield, was present at the peaceful protest in Istanbul when riot police opened fire with rubber bullets and charged the crowd with batons. The attack led to 28 people being arrested, with some being deported. Some protesters needed hospital treatment. He said: "Turkey is a candidate country for the EU. This kind of heavy-handed suppression of a peaceful protest is totally unacceptable. People should have a right to protest peacefully and to make their voices heard. "

The WWF is being run by senior executives from the corporate sector. The daily charge of EUR100 euro is pricing many Turkish and international activists out of the conference. Their voices need to be heard in the debate about the future for water and sanitation."

PSI-press Conference - Invitation

MEDIA ADVISORY

Global financial collapse highlights need for public water solutions

As the global economic and financial crisis deepens, workers attending the fifth World Water Forum are promoting proven public solutions that will meet the world's water and sanitation needs. Privatization has failed to deliver water and sanitation services.

Now, the private sector can't even raise the capital needed. It is further evidence that the market model is fundamentally mismatched with the priorities that must guide water and wastewater services. Treating water as a market commodity that is bought and sold to generate huge profits for a very few, exposes these vital services to the same forces that brought about the economic and financial collapse. Ending the global water crisis begins with strong public services.

Public sector workers have a central role to play in building a future where everyone on the planet has access to water and sanitation services. Members of the Public Services International delegation attending the World Water Forum will describe their experiences with privatization and quality public alternatives, including Public Public Partnerships, at a news conference tomorrow.

WHAT: Public sector water workers outline proven alternatives to privatization

WHEN: Wednesday, March 18, 13:00 - 14:00

WHERE: Bedsten Hall. Room 2. Feshane

WHO: Moderator: David Boys - UNSGAB (United Nation Secretary General Advisory Board and PSI)

Speakers: · Olivia Kunje . Malawi · Raveendran Valai Anandham. India · Guillermo Tomas Amorebieta y Vera. Argentine · Adriana Marquisio. Uruguay

Others from the 55 persons from the PSI will also be present to answer questions. Academics from PSI Research Unit will also attend. For more information contact:

David Boys - utility officer - cell +33 6 07 09 26 47

Rolv Hanssen - media contact cell + 47 99 37 67 26

Account of 24 hours in police custody in Istanbul at the World Water Forum

By Ann-Kathrin Schneider, International Rivers, March 17, 2009

Account of 24 hours in police custody in Istanbul from 10am on March 16,
2009 to the morning of March 17, 2009*

On March 16, 2009 at 9.30am, Payal Parekh and me unfolded a banner that read "No RISKY DAMS" just before the opening ceremony of the World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey. We also shouted "No Risky Dams" about five times. We were in the middle of the balcony of room 7 at the Sütlüce Conference Center in Istanbul.

The banner stayed up for about one minute -- after that, security forces took the banner. One minute later, security forces asked us to leave the room. We stayed outside of the conference room with about ten security and police officers for some minutes, while they checked our IDs, which they kept.

After that, they escorted us to a police room inside of the Sütlüce Conference Center where they wrote a statement of events, in Turkish.
They asked us to sign the statement, which we refused because we didn't understand what the statement said. We asked for a translation of the statement, sentence by sentence, which we did not get.

After that, they led us to a car and drove us to a hospital. They did not take our cell phones away from us, so we were able to inform our friends about the developments. At the hospital, they led us to a doctor who asked us whether we had suffered any injuries, we said that we hadn't, she signed some papers, and we were escorted back to the car.

The police drove us to Hadic Merkezi Police Station in Beyoglu, Istanbul. There, a female policy officer did a body search on the two of us and they took our jewellery and our money, recorded everything we had, and gave it back to us.

Two lawyers, organized with the help of Turkish friends, arrived. We told them what had happened. The police finalized their statement and asked us to sign it. The lawyers translated the Turkish statement sentence by sentence. Since some details of the statement did not correspond with how we recalled the events of that morning, we refused to sign the statement and asked to give our own account of the morning's events.

Payal then reported the events of the morning to a policy officer. The lawyers helped translating her English into Turkish and the police officer wrote down the statement in Turkish. The lawyers translated the statement for us and both Payal and me signed the statement.

We then waited until about 5pm when our lawyers were called to talk to the head of the police station. The lawyers came back informing us that we had to leave the country within a couple of hours if we did not want to be put in prison for more than one year. They explained to us that our crime was that we tried to influence public opinion with the unfolding of the banner.

With the help of friends from Turkey and abroad we organized plane tickets for Payal to go back to the United States and for me to go back to Germany in the morning of Tuesday, March 17.

We were then taken to another police station and had photographs and fingerprints taken and were measured and weighed. After about one hour, we were sent back to the other police station, where we had spent the early afternoon, and spent the night there on some chairs in an office.
We declined the invitation to sleep in the downstairs women's cell. A Turkish friend brought us our luggage from the hotel and we left the police station at about 6am in the morning towards the airport, in a police car.

We reached the airport at around 6.30am on Tuesday, March 17 and spent another one and a half hours at the police station at Istanbul airport, before being escorted to the check-in desk and the gate by a police officer.

The customs officer told me that I was banned from entering Turkey for two years. At the gate, the police officer gave me my boarding pass and ID.

We did not receive any documents describing what crime we were convicted of and the charges. We do not know who ordered our deportation, whether it was the police or a public prosecutor.

World Bank presents a new study evaluating the water privatization experiences at the Forum covering up a biased neoliberal science and inquiry

By: Jørgen Eiken Magdahl, Tuesday, March 17, 2009, http://worldwaterforum.blogspot.com

On the first day of the World Water Forum the World Bank together with the International Water Association kicked of their efforts over the next week by focusing on privatization of water and sanitation services, as so many previous Forums have before them. This took place at the session called Towards a Vibrant Local Market Place  Opportunities and trends, experiences to date, and policy options for the future. Philippe Marin from the World Bank opened the ball by presenting what he termed an extensive study of experiences with privatization contracts based on objective analysis. This provides a smoke screen disguising the neoliberal biased scientific approach.

The World Bank study acknowledged that privatization has not been the magic formula it was wrongly presented as by the Bank in the early 90s. This represents a more defensive and careful approach to the history writing of the experiences with privatization, often having been arrogant and in denial of the flaws and the disastrous outcomes of such a strategy for poor people lacking the ability to pay increased tariffs. However, ignorant is still an appropriate word to describe the methodology and the way this study was conducted. On those premises it is not surprising that the overall conclusion is that privatization reforms still should and can contribute to ensure access to water.  The World Bank is still walking down the same path, characterized by a fixation with quantitative data in the form of measuring rates of bill collection, non revenue water, water losses and other indicator of so called efficiency. At the outset of the presentation Marin emphasized that the study was undertaken on the basis of objective performance data. In other word the World Bank continues to think inside the box, where efficiency measurement is king. This is not objective, as wrongfully claimed  but instead tied to an ideological obsession within the Bank related to neoliberal ideas about operational and economic efficiency without also looking at and integrating social and welfare considerations.
It is not only a numbers game, but must also take into account the qualitative (data) context in developing countries. Consequently, important aspects are bypassed - following the World Banks mode of thought and line of inquiry  such as the fact that poor people often do not have ability to pay for the increased prices in the wake of implementing privatization.
Thus, privatization leads to a real and substantial socio-economic exclusion from the deadly important access to water and sanitation. Running counter to this Marin was still claiming that price increase does not mean anything.
The comment was a response to the findings of the (still quantitative) report data showing that a tariff increases followed the act of privatization in all cases. Marin explained that this was of course not surprisingly when earning money is what private companies is set out to do, like he was a rocket scientist.

The neglect of socio-economic contextual issues was rejected by water justice activists in the audience, as was also the depolitization of the study presented. The political and democratic citizenship aspects and a lack of substantial participation were not addressed. It is tune with the World Bank overall attempts, in water and other sectors, to consistently depolitize the debate about development.

This takes us to the a more general remark, which is the total lack of taking the political context into consideration - not looking at implications of relative power differences, where the interests of private, wealthy consumers is favored over disempowered poor people - neither providing them with cross subsidized services nor a voice. Again, this is ideological and value laded corresponding to a neoliberal individualistic and voluntaristic approach where power difference and structural economic/political constraint for poor people is absent. Therefore, there is a need to look beyond the immediate hang-up with numbers and figures, also incorporating an analysis of structures that leads to economic and political unevenness. This might for example be neoliberal discursive ideology or the economic structures pressuring for complying with a demand of being competitive in an international economy. Both might lead to cut-backs in welfare and social spending, hindering subsidized access to water for poor people, in an effort to follow the mantra of national macro-economic stability and tight social budgets. For the last and final time, this is revealing the underlying and covered-up ideologically neoliberal scientific bias of the alleged objective performance data in the study on privatization. If this was a genuine attempt and desire to study the experiences with water privatization, it should at least have been undertaken by the World Banks independent evaluation office. But then I guess the outcome would not have been as the Bank intended, when they and we are aware that this World Banks Operations Evaluation Department have put forward a critique and a different conclusion in a (2005) report summarising recent evaluations of the World Banks development effectiveness. The report states that the record of attempts to unbundle and privatise infrastructure has been poor, especially in water (privatising ineffective government corporations has been very mixed, and voucher privatisation has been the worst of all). It also says that the record shows persistent over-optimism on privatization and recommends a rethink on the private provision of infrastructure.

Turkish media coverage

See the photo album on this subject:

http://psiutilities.typepad.com/photos/turkish_media_coverage/

and these articles on Hurriyet Daily News:

http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/domestic/11205942.asp?gid=243

http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/domestic/11218082.asp

 

PSIRU documents

Please click here to access a list of documents produced by PSIRU and PSI that are of relevance to the World Water Forum:

http://waterblog.world-psi.org/documents-.html

World Water Forum Takes Another Shot at Privatisation - Doomed to Fail

16/03/09

Media realease from Public Services International at the World Water Forum 5

The fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul will once again, as WWF 1 through 4, attempt to strengthen profiteering from water services and resources. Given that the WWF is organised by the privateers, this is no surprise. What is surprising is that, in the midst of the current global economic crisis, the privateers still think they can convince the world that market dynamics and profits are the best incentives for organising this sector.

The privateers will need to make some pretty sophisticated arguments in the context of the current crisis. They will also encounter determined opposition from civil society movements, including trade unions and NGOs from around the world. Turkish movements are especially incensed at their government's proposals to build hundreds of dams and to privatise entire rivers. Street demonstrations will be noisy and may get violent.

The workers in the water sector know first-hand what the World Bank has finally admitted in 2009 : private operators reduced staff levels and costs, but, instead of passing the savings on to citizens or reinvesting in improvements, took all of these gains through profits. Yet, if we want to extend water and sanitation services, more staff will be needed, not less. These staff will need appropriate training, decent wages and the necessary tools to do their jobs. And all 'profits' must be reinvested, not exported back to remote capitals and anonymous shareholders.

PUBLIC SERVICES INTERNATIONAL - PSI, a global union federation representing 20 million workers in 160 countries, will have a delegation of 50 union representatives in Istanbul. They will be present and visible in both the WWF and in the two alternative fora held in protest against the WWF.

PSI will present key research on the flaws of the privatisation model, on how the privateers control the WWF, on how the World Bank remains a captive of the privateers... PSI will also indicate policies for moving forward, for delivering water and sanitation services to all, on the basis of need, not profit. This will require public finance and public management, mechanisms which all OECD countries have used to ensure these services are accessible to all citizens.

To contact PSI at WWF: Utilities officer David Boys Mobile + 33 6 07 09 26 47

PSI Media Contact Rolv Hanssen +47 99 3767 26

EU Water Policies Under Fire as World Water Forum Approaches

Governments split over recognising right to water
 
The EU’s international water policies will face a double challenge from civil society campaigners and Southern governments when the World Water Forum starts in Istanbul next week (March 16-22) after a disagreement in negotiations in the run up to the Forum on the right to water [1].
 
According to a new report from Corporate Europe Observatory, the EU is still pushing for the inclusion of water in trade agreements, promoting privatised water services, and undermining water as a basic right [2].
 
A bloc of Latin American governments led by Uruguay is insisting that the Forum's Ministerial Declaration recognises the right to water, that water should be excluded from trade negotiations and that the World Water Forum should become part of a democratically accountable UN process. These demands - supported by a global coalition of civil society groups -  have so far been rejected by the US and EU governments.

The EU has previously been a prominent advocate of increasing the role of the private sector in water management and has explicitly rejected the right to water, but EU governments now seem split on whether to recognise water as a human right [3]. 

Uruguay and other Latin American governments are expected to seek support for a Complementary Declaration in opposition to the Forum's official Ministerial Declaration, if their demands are not met.
Research by Corporate Europe Observatory shows that the EU - while refusing to disclose its objectives in international trade talks - is putting pressure on developing countries to privatise their water services and to make privatisation practically irreversible by including water in trade agreements.  
Martin Pigeon, a researcher at Corporate Observatory (CEO) attending the World Water Forum said:
"The conference in Istanbul provides an opportunity for the EU to show if it has abandoned the failed privatisation approach and embraced truly sustainable water policies based on recognising and implementing the right to water via progressive public management."
 
Satoko Kishimoto, a water campaigner with Transnational Institute (TNI) added:
"In Istanbul, EU governments should back the Latin American governments who have turned their back on privatisation after really negative experiences. Attractive and workable alternatives to privatisation are available, such as public-public partnerships and democratisation of water management."

A new report published by TNI and the PSI Research Unit (PSIRU) calls for increased political and financial support for public-public partnerships, through which strong public utilities support weaker ones on a not-for-profit basis [4]. The new report shows that public-public partnerships are a fast-growing trend and that there are now more countries with PUPs than with public-private partnerships (PPPs) in water.
 
Civil society campaigners from across the world are expected to gather at an alternative forum in Istanbul to make their voices heard inside the official World Water Forum [6].
CEO and TNI will be blogging from Istanbul throughout next week: http://worldwaterforum.blogspot.com/

Contacts:
Martin Pigeon, Corporate Observatory: +32 484 671 909
Satoko Kishimoto, Transnational Institute: +32 474 486 268