PRESS CONFERENCE ON WATER AND SANITATION ISSUES

 

AT COMMISSION ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The recently appointed Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, with its pro-privatization bias, did not belong at the United Nations, Gemma Adaba of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) said at a Headquarters press conference this morning.

Echoing that view was a panel consisting of:  John Kidd from UNISON, a British public sector union, and Public Services International; Shiney Varghese, from the Institute for Agricultural Trade Policy; Monique Essed-Hernandes, representing the Women’s Environment and Development Organization; Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Executive Director of Tebtebba, an indigenous people’s organization from the Philippines; and Saradha Iyer, of the Third World Network.

Ms. Varghese expressed concern over the fact that Advisory Board members, although claiming to serve in their personal capacities, would continue to represent specific business interests.  Because the Board promoted water privatization, the panel was merely an attempt by the “world water mafia” to hijack water and sanitation matters from the United Nations.

Mr. Kidd, deploring the fact that people paid more for water in African countries like Ghana and Malawi than in the United Kingdom, said privatized water schemes served only to make water vendors extremely rich.  Multinational corporations were motivated only by lucrative contracts and would always favour urban over rural projects since cities already had some infrastructure in place.

Ms. Tauli-Corpuz, declaring that water and sanitation matters should be left to governments, warned against any attempt by the Commission on Sustainable Development to facilitate privatization. In light of the recent scandals involving such companies as Enron, Shell, and Halliburton, the United Nations should think twice before putting its faith in the private sector.  The Organization should also be wary of the World Bank, which continued to push for privatization.

Ms. Essed-Hernandes called for the greater integration of women and local communities into water management plans.  The alternative message was that the private sector would provide poor people with better lives.  However, that had not yet happened.

Ms. Iyer, concerned that water, sanitation, and human settlements had been lumped together in a thematic cluster, said that discussions on human settlements had been overshadowed by water matters.  In addition, the cluster approach risked the sidelining of cross-cutting issues.

She noted that while foreign direct investment (FDI) and official development assistance (ODA) levels were down, the Netherlands and Denmark were the only countries that had fulfilled their commitments to fund water and sanitation projects.  Meanwhile, the international community was spending much more on military expenditures while those who were concerned about water were “on a treadmill going nowhere”.

Asked how the World Bank encouraged privatization, Ms. Varghese said that both the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been pushing for privatization through conditions attached to their loans since the early 1990s.  Joining the clamour for privatization were the big water companies, including the French corporations Suez and Vivendi.  Suez, which had been instrumental in setting up the World Water Council, was actually represented on the Secretary-General’s Advisory Board.  The World Trade Organization (WTO) was also involved.  If the European Union managed to include water services within the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade, developing countries would not even be able to break private contracts, even if those contracts resulted in disasters.

Ms. Tauli-Corpuz added that corporations were trying to use the United Nations to legitimize themselves and chip away at the negative images they had earned.  However, the United Nations was supposed to support the weakest members of the international community, not to strengthen those who already held economic and political power.

Mr. Kidd said that when the United Kingdom had privatized its water in 1989, millionaires had been created overnight, since ownership of water services had been corruptly sold at a fraction of their true worth.  While only 5 per cent of water services worldwide were in private hands, costs to the public was increasing wherever privatization was taking place.  After all, it was all too easy to privatize and then raise water prices by 200 per cent.

When a correspondent said that the partnerships between governments and businesses, which the Commission seemed to be promoting, were not particularly helpful, Ms. Iyer responded that the governments of developing countries were sceptical because ODA was going to those partnerships, which required overly elaborate contracts, instead of themselves.  It was too early to determine how the partnerships were benefiting people on the ground because many were not reporting on their work.  The Commission should exclude partnerships that failed to provide progress reports.

Ms. Essed-Hernandes added that many governments felt pressure to enter into public-private partnerships because of declining aid.  However, since they did not have the skills to negotiate effectively, they often ended up with unfair deals.

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