It's a colossal
failure of political foresight that
water
has not emerged as an important issue in the
U.S. Presidential campaign. The links
between oil, war, and U.S. foreign policy
are well known. But
water
-- whether we treat it as a public good or
as a commodity that can be bought and sold
-- will in large part determine whether our
future is peaceful or perilous.
Americans use water even more wastefully
than oil. The U.S relies on non-renewable
groundwater for 50 percent of its daily use,
and 36 states now face serious water
shortages, some verging on crisis.
Meanwhile, dwindling
freshwater supplies around the world,
inequitable access to water, and corporate
control of water, together with impending
climate change from fossil fuel emissions,
have created a life-or-death situation
across the planet. Both Democrats and
Republicans have emphasized loosening U.S.
dependence on nonrenewable energy resources
in their
platforms,
but neither party gives significant air time
to the threats posed by water shortages.
This is not to say that no one is paying
attention. In fact, water has become a key
strategic security and foreign policy
priority for the United States government.
Cut Deals, Carry Water
Corporate interests
have pursued schemes to
privatize,
commodify, and export water for decades. We
have seen how this plays out in Canada. For
instance, in the late 1990s, Sun Belt Water,
Inc., sued the Canadian government under
NAFTA because British Columbia banned water
exports, preventing a deal that would have
sent B.C. water to California.
Corporations have also made attempts to ship
Canadian water as far as Asia and the Middle
East, proposals that fizzled after fierce
opposition from public citizens who were
beginning to understand the dangers of
permanently removing water from local
ecosystems and placing it under corporate
control.
Now the Pentagon, as well as various U.S.
security think tanks, have decided that
water supplies, like energy supplies, must
be secured if the United States is to
maintain its current economic and military
power in the world. And the United States is
exerting pressure to access Canadian water,
despite Canada's own shortages.
Under the name, "North
American Future 2025 Project," the U.S.
Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) brought together high level
government officials and business executives
from Canada, the United States, and Mexico
for a series of six meetings to discuss a
wide range of issues related to the Security
and Prosperity Partnership, a controversial
and tightly guarded set of negotiations to
expand NAFTA. [See
related story
.]
"As ... globalization continues and the
balance of power potentially shifts, and
risks to global security evolve, it is only
prudent for Canadian, Mexican, and U.S.
policymakers to contemplate a North American
security architecture that could effectively
deal with security threats that can be
foreseen in 2025," said a leaked copy of a
CSIS backgrounder. On the agenda for one of
two meetings in Calgary were, "water
consumption, water transfers, and artificial
diversions of bulk water" with the aim of
achieving "joint optimum utilization of the
available water."
The water and security connection deepens
with the fact that Sandia National
Laboratories, a vital partner with CSIS in
its Global Water Futures Project, also plays
a major role in military security in the
United States. While Sandia is technically
owned by the U.S. government, and reports to
the Department of Energy's National Nuclear
Security Administration, its management is
contracted out to Lockheed Martin, the
world's biggest weapons manufacturer. Ralph
Pentland, water consultant and primary
author of the Canadian government's Federal
Water Policy in 1987, believes that the
purpose of these cross-border discussions is
to secure sufficient water for Alberta tar
sands production in order to ensure
uninterrupted oil supplies to the United
States.
Energy extraction would be far more
attractive if a new source of water --
potentially from northern Canada -- could be
brought to the tar sands through pipelines
or other diversions. As long as the water
doesn't cross the international border, it
is within Alberta's power to do this.These
schemes to displace water from one ecosystem
to another in the service of corporate
profit are an environmental problem for the
entire planet, which is another reason why
water must form a crucial part of any
progressive discussion around U.S.
dependence on foreign energy resources.
Corporate interests understand the
connection and are using it to make their
case for private solutions to the water
crisis. In language that will be familiar to
critics who argued that the United States
invaded Iraq not for democracy but for
access to oil and profits for corporations,
a 2005 report from CSIS's Global Water
Futures project had this to say about water:
"Water issues are critical to U.S. national
security and integral to upholding American
values of humanitarianism and democratic
development. Moreover, engagement with
international water issues guarantees
business opportunity for the U.S. private
sector, which is well positioned to
contribute to development and reap economic
reward."
Water for All
Clearly, the powers that be in the United
States have decided that water is not a
public good but a private resource that must
be secured by whatever means. But there are
alternatives. North Americans must learn to
live within our means, by conserving water
in agriculture and in the home. We could
learn from the many examples here and beyond
our borders -- from the New Mexican "Acequia"
system that uses an ancient natural ditch
irrigation tradition to distribute water in
arid lands to the International Rainwater
Harvesting Alliance in Geneva, that works
globally to promote sustainable rainwater
harvesting programs.
Conservation strategies would undermine the
massive investment now going into corporate
technological and infrastructure solutions,
such as desalination, wastewater reuse, and
water transfer projects. And conservation
would be many times cheaper, a boon to the
public but not to the corporate interests
that are currently driving international
water agreements.
At the grassroots, a
global
water justice movement
is demanding a change in international law
to settle once and for all the question of
who controls water, and whether responses to
the water crisis will ensure water for the
public or profits for corporations.
Ricardo Petrella has led a movement in Italy
to recognize access to water as a basic
human right, which has support among
politicians at every level. The Coalition in
Defense of Public Water in Ecuador is
demanding that the government amend the
constitution to recognize the right to
water. The Coalition Against Water
Privatization in South Africa is challenging
the practice of water metering before the
Johannesburg High Court on the basis that it
violates the human rights of Soweto's
citizens. Dozens of groups in Mexico have
joined COMDA, the Coalition of Mexican
Organizations for the Right to Water, a
national campaign for a constitutional
guarantee of water for the public.
The U.S. and Canada
are the only two countries actively blocking
international attempts to recognize water as
a human right. But movements in both
countries are working to change that. A
large network of
human rights,
faith-based, labor, and environmental groups
in Canada has formed Canadian Friends of the
Right to Water to get the Canadian
government to support a U.N. right-to-water
covenant. And a network in the United States
led by Food and Water Watch is calling for a
national water trust to ensure safekeeping
of the nation's water assets and a change of
government policy on the right to water.
Such campaigns may have a fight ahead of
them, but the vision is within reach: a
United Nations covenant that recognizes the
right of the Earth and other species to
clean water, pledges to protect and conserve
the world's water supplies, and forms an
agreement between those countries who have
water and those who don't to work toward
local -- not corporate -- control of water.
We must acknowledge water as a fundamental
human right for all.
