In 1995, the vice-president of the World Bank, Ismail Serageldin said, “If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century would be fought over water.” Unfortunately, the water war had already started and he among many others are a huge part of it. This war is specifically over the privatization of water in poorer countries and is dominated by the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the G-7 countries, and large water corporations. They are able to make themselves the victims and the poor the villains in the eyes of the public. On top of that they leave those they take over unable to turn back or resist. As long as the water war continues, these massive powers will see this as an opportunity to make money and will not let anyone interfere with their schemes even if they have to step on them while making themselves look good.
In order to hide any traces of greed the large powers will always seek a way to make them look like heroes. In the late 1990’s the International Monetary Fund teamed up with large water companies in order to “minimize poverty”. However, they did not and instead the opposite occurred. These large companies put high-tech systems such as card systems in Orange Farm, Africa that must be charged with money in order to obtain water. These people who had nothing could not pay such fees. It left many people helpless despite their empty words of kindness.
President Lyondon Johnson of the U.S. once said in 1966, "It should be made clear that we are in a race with disaster. Either the world's water needs will be met, or the inevitable result will be mass starvation, mass epidemics and mass poverty greater than anything we know today." Using these words he launched the “Water for Peace” progra...
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...ept privatization of their water. By choosing to survive many things are lost including their culture and traditions. In India, people used to give free water to people on the streets but now that water is owned they are not willing to give up on their commodity. Their strategies to water conservation and harvesting are also lost. Because of this even if the water company returns control to the citizens they would not be able to maintain their source.
Water is sacred, without water there is no life. Companies have realized this and are taking advantage of those who cannot protect themselves. They step on these types of people in order to raise themselves and in the process they corner these people leaving them die. They will never stop their money scheme as long as this water market is prosperous no matter how many countries and people they have to go through.
Water is the foundational basis of life on Earth. Ecosystems, society and humans are completely dependent on it, and as the world population continues to grow, there will be more mouths to feed, and those people will need water to continue their daily lives. However, shortages and poor management leads to the destruction of natural habitats and human suffering. Desertification of land in China is ever-increasing, turning green, lush land into desert. However, this is due mainly in part, because of human activity, and global warming (Wang, Yang, Dong, & Zhang, 2009). The United States could experience a crisis similarly to China’s, but for now they have averted such a catastrophe, because of heavy regulation of water. Though there are water shortages in many parts of the world, it is unwise to export water from the Great Lakes to those regions. Two major reasons why diverting the Great Lakes is a terrible idea, one: it allows for waters wars to start on the basis of who is allowed to access it and for commodification purposes. Two, diverting water on such large scales could have cataclysmic effects on the local residents as well as the environment.
Maude Barlow’s “Water Incorporated: The Commodification of the World’s Water” gives a voice to a very real but vastly unknown issue: the privatization of water. I refer to it as vastly unknown because it wasn’t until this article that I was even aware such a power struggle existed. Barlow first introduces startling statistics, meant to grab the attention of its reader. Once she has your attention, she introduces the “new generation of trade and investment agreements.” (306) This includes referencing many different acronyms such as, FTAA, NAFTA, GTAA and WWF. FTAA, NAFTA, and GTAA are the villains of this story. Simply put, the privatization of water would end in socioeconomic turmoil and dehydration worldwide.
... upon solution to water access disagreements, social and political powers must be willing to compromise since the risks associated with disagreements regarding water allocation may be too great. As stated by Shiyyab (2004), “If sustained over a period of time, these problems will directly affect social harmony, domestic stability and eventually, regional peace.” (p. 30). Investments must be made by industry as well as local and national governments for purification of wastewater so that clean water, when needed, will be available. The necessity of obtaining water is a fundamental human right and,
Destruction of water resources and of forest catchments and aquifers is a form of terrorism. Denying poor people access to water by privatizing water distribution or polluting wells and rivers is also terrorism while drought and desertification are intensifying around the world, corporations are aggressively converting free-flowing water into bottled profits. Water must be free for sustenance, since nature gives us water free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our right to nature’s gift. Collective water management and rights were the key to water conservation and harvesting
Growing scarcity in nearby water resources is the issue addressed in “Will Water Become the Chief Commodity of the 21st Century?” by Christa Marshall. The thesis of this essay is will water become the chief commodity of the 21st century? The author’s main claim is the world faces a growing number of challenges surrounding water and her sub claim is these examples underscore the many options available to alleviate a growing global water crisis. The author argues where water demand will exceed available supplies could rise forty percent. Her conclusion is businesses need to gain a better sense of how much water they are actually using.
Although water is all around, very little is drinkable. Six billion people live on earth and 1.1 billion in 31 countries are unable to access safe, clean drinking water. California has only 20 years of water supply left. Ironically, even the wettest place on earth, Cherrapunji, India, has often water shortages. After years of millions of people dying of thirst and disease, a corporate movement to find a solution to the water crisis has now swept the world. Water, a fleeting resource vital to every life, every single day of the year, is now being taken out of the governments control and becoming a commodity bought and sold by big business, a.k.a privatization.
In the documentary, Blue Gold: World Water Wars, it follows several people and countries world-wide in their fight for fresh water. The film exposes giant corporations as they bully poorer developing countries to privatize their own supply of fresh water. As a result of the privatization, corporations make a hefty profit while the developing countries remain poor. Blue Gold: World Water Wars also highlights the fact that Wall Street investors are going after the desalination process and mass water export schemes. This documentary also shows how people in more developed nations are treating the water with much disregard, and not taking care of our finite supply. We are polluting, damming, and simply wasting our restricted supply of fresh water at an alarming speed. The movie also recognizes that our quick overdevelopment of housing and agriculture puts a large strain on our water supply and it results in desertification throughout the entire earth. The film shows how people in more industrialized nations typically take water for granted, while others in less industrialized nations have to fight for every drop.
This paper will answer the question, is it ethical to use fresh water as a political or military good? As water decreases in availability in the future, fresh water will be used as a political and military good more and more. Water is one of the few fundamental elements needed to sustain human life. As conflicts arise in the water strained areas of the world, it will be very enticing for one group to hold their opponents water hostage. Without access to fresh water the opponents would have no chance of winning a war and would have to give in to the first group’s demands.
Earth consists of 7 billion people and trillions of other living organisms. Of these species, every single being relies upon water to survive. Given that our global population is increasing by roughly 300 million people per year and a fresh water supply that cannot provide for more than 9.5 billion people, water availability is becoming problematic. Regions of conflict like the Middle East will be among the first to experience the delayed impact of the water deficiency. Dinyar Godrej a writer for the Internationalist said while referring to the Middle East: “there has been a water problem here as far back as I can remember.”1 While some perceive that our water supply is prospering, the science surrounding this problem strongly disagrees considering clean and accessible water is less than 0.007% of the total water left on Earth. Regions with existing geopolitical tensions situated in relatively dry areas will be the first to feel the effects of the upcoming water shortage because of their continuous lack of co-operation. The purpose of this essay is to investigate the issue concerning the lack of water in the Middle East. It will also investigate the conflict that will erupt in this tense region due to the lack of water and how this immense conflict will be resolved. Changes in our water intake must be dramatically reduced in order to eliminate the potential water shortage that will result in significantly enhanced tensions in the Middle East.
Corporations attempt to own as much of a commodified resource as possible, and this happened to water when countries define it as a commodity. Corporations buying and selling a finite resource every human needs can cause serious adverse effects. When something is so precious that no one can live without it, companies can easily ruin the lives of people involved, specifically lower income families and poor countries. It is difficult to treat water as a human right as well. Historically, human rights referred to protections ensured and guaranteed to be available, such as life and liberty. These rights are typically to protect citizens from the government or one another. Water does not need to be protected from others, but rather available to all. This statement, however, is too vague to create water regulations. We need to further define availability. In various areas, the government doesn’t provide water, but people can buy or acquire it locally, and it is difficult to decide whether this means water is available there. The best solution would be to define water as available to all for a similar price. Water and its distribution, for these reasons, are much too complicated to fall under a category with other
Every year about 5 million people die from a water related crisis. Whether it be dirty water or no water at all. People who live in countries like the United States of America don 't think about the growing water problem. Most of them have all the water they could ever ask for, but that 's not the case in most countries around the world. 1.2 billion people in the world don 't have clean drinking water. In third world countries usually the woman and children are the ones left without any clean drinking water. Everyone has the right to have clean drinking water and sanitation. People all around the world take advantage of the water they get when people in other countries are dying because they have no clean drinking water. The global water crisis
There is no reservation in saying that water issues are a certainly a global phenomenon. Depending on where you are situated in the world, water concerns range from drought due to climate change to pollution and privatization. Unfortunately for us, these concerns are not mutually exclusive either. This paper, however, is focused with the ethical implications of water privatization specifically with the commodification of bottled water. Water privatization is best understood as the private sector (as opposed to the public sector) participating and competing in the acquisition, sanitation and sale of water. Essentially, turning what is public good into an economic good. Bottled water has rapidly emerged as ubiquitous international commodity due to globalization. Nestle, the largest supplier of bottle water worldwide, is often at the forefront of criticism and contention when it comes to water commodification at both the national and international scale. This approach has justifiably lead to criticisms that companies, like Nestle, prey on socially and politically vulnerable regions (or those believed to be least politically and socially resistant) for their freshwater resources and because this, it adversely affects local communities by limiting their access, increasing freshwater prices, and degrading the environment. In this paper, I will argue that the commodification of water violates the ethical principal that access to clean water is a right. I will look through two ethical lenses: utilitarianism and deontology.
Poverty is unavoidable and one of the world’s biggest problem. The World Bank estimated that billions of people were living in poverty. Although there are people living in this state of condition, they are people in the developing countries who live in worst condition. “Poverty is the worst form of violence” Mahatma Gandhi. People in the developing countries are a greater risk of absolute poverty. Billions of people living in developing countries lack access to a clean environment therefore; this leads to diseases and malnutrition. Millions of people die each year from these diseases “ being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody is much greater hunger, A greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat” Mother Teresa.
One main causes of water scarcity is water mismanagement worldwide. Water mismanagement has become a crisis of governance that will impact heavily ...
Freshwater is quite scarce, but it is even scarcer than one might think: about seventy percent of all freshwater is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland and is unavailable to humans. Most of the remainder is present as soil moisture or lies in deep underground aquifers as groundwater. It is not economically feasible to extract this waster for use as drinking water. This leaves less than one percent of the world’s fresh water that is available to humans. It includes the water found in lakes, reservoirs, groundwater that is shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost. These freshwater sources are the only sources that are frequently replenished by rain and snowfall, and therefore are renewable. At the current rates of consumption, however, this supply of fresh water will not last. Pollution and contamination of freshwater sources exacerbate the problem, further reducing the amount of freshwater available for human consumption. Something must be done if humans want to even survive in the near future: the lack of clean drinking water is already the number one cause of disease in the world today. The first step is worldwide awareness of the water crisis: governments and the citizens they govern worldwide need to know about this problem and be actively involved in solving this problem.