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.
Water privatization at a glance seems like a knight in shining Armani. Foreign companies go into poor countries with bad water sources, shmooze the government with an offer to pay off the country's World Bank debt in exchange for a contract, and these white knights set up shop to make the water drinkable. In richer areas, the temptation of what these foreign companies brand as safer, cheaper, better managed water is a no brainer. Even in American cities, the offer was too good to pass up. Many of these states are learning they've been given a run for their money. Companies buying and selling water as a good has brought many unseen downfalls. As many around the world are learning, water treated as a commodity has a lower quality, higher price, and for many, may be the cause of much suffering; therefore, water privatization is a poor solution for the water crisis.
First of all, governments are intended to serve the people, where businesses intend to make profit. Water treated as a commodity will never be economically fair because of the way businesses work. Water doesn't r...
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Humans need water. In a world that is overpopulated, we use a lot of water and other natural resources. Currently, in our world, clean water is getting scarce. Recently, for example, Flint, Michigan, had a water crisis. In early 2016, the water was discovered to be tainted with lead and other toxins. Long before that, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and Governor Rick Snyder along with his council, knew about the lead, but to save money for the city of Flint in early 2014 Snyder had changed the city’s water source to the Flint River which had corroded pipes, causing people of all ages to be sick from the high amounts of lead
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.
“How can you buy or sell the sky-the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us? We will decide in our time” (Chief Seattle: 1855). In the Documentary “Flow – for the love of water” it visualizes the global crisis we face on Mother’s Earth as it pertains to the diminishing of fresh water. The Documentary portrays along with the help of experts that this global crises is affecting each and every one of us in today’s society including animals. The film shows us that water is constantly being wasted, polluted, and privatized by big co operations. Prime examples of these greedy companies were mentioned in the film such as Nestle, Thames, Suez, Vivendi, Coca Cola and Pepsi.
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.
The human race needs three things to survive; air to breathe, food to eat, and water to drink. A large majority of the public thinks these resources are infinite and plentiful. What they fail to realize is that they are not infinite, air can become polluted, food can carry pesticides, and water can transmit diseases very easily. In order to keep these necessities safe, many companies are taking the initiative by trying to cut down on pollution and stop using harmful pesticides. Water, however is not getting enough attention, especially in urban areas. Framework exists for these urban areas to be able to have successful water management, but some countries cannot afford these ideas or simply do not want
For the reason that citizens are not available to pay the high rates that those water corporations are billing the citizens with high rates that some people cannot afford to pay for their water service, such is the case of Detroit managed by emergency manager Kevyn Orr to streamline Detroit’s water operations. At the beginning, the corporations tell the state, they will not increase the water rates but after several months, Orr saw the shut off of water service for nearly 20,000 households for failure to pay. In the other hand is that corporations do not care about the poor people that they cannot even afford the food nevertheless cannot afford to pay for water service such as the true really in some African countries. For example, a 45-year old mechanism Oscar Olivera says, “families with monthly incomes of around $100 have seen their water bills jump to $20 per month more than they spend on food. I’d like to invite Mr. Wolfensohn to come to Cochabamba and see the reality he apparently can’t see from his office in Washington, DC.” and he also states, “I’d like to meet Mr. Wolfensohn to educate him on how privatization has been a direct attack on Bolivia’s poor people.”(155) Besides water is our right to get for free not to pay to those evil corporations that during the servicing progress not only destroy the environment but make the poor people be poorest and fight for their lives because of
Drinking water is essential and indispensable to life itself possible on the face of the earth, it is much more than a well, a resource, a commodity, drinking water is specifically a human right of first order and an element essential national sovereignty itself and, most likely, whoever controls the water control the economy and life in the not so distant future.
Since the beginning, water has been observed as the premier source of life; which is why nowadays there are several organizations fighting to make water accessible to those who need it most, Water For Africa, is an example of an organization that strives to make potable water available in the underprivileged regions of Africa. Water, however, is a need even in developed countries, that’s why organizations like The Council of Canadians aid in the distribution of clean water to the indigenous population of Canada. Canada is seen as an aiding country by their humanitarian acts, but its dark secret is revealed thus the controversy of its federal government has been sprung. Canada promises and guarantees water accessibility as a human right to its
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
"Water Crisis." World Water Council. 7th World Water Council, 2012. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/library/archives/water-crisis/
One main causes of water scarcity is water mismanagement worldwide. Water mismanagement has become a crisis of governance that will impact heavily ...
Page B. & Bakker K. (2005) Water governance and water users in a privatised water industry: participation in policy-making and in water services provision: a case study of England and Wales, Int. J. Water, 3(1), 38-60.
There is a lot of money involved for every business. For example, CoCa-Cola could “buy every single person in the world more than fifty cans of Coke or Sprite a year” (120). Their large stake in water is because if water goes away company goes away. This is privatization which is running show more than politics. This is creating a monopoly owns access water whatever want water will always be free access cost money. It is also saving the company money and making them “water neutral”. Fishman uses economics to his advantage because big companies see the business in water and economic value of it then start to use and think about it
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.
... build social awareness. Currently, we are not paying for the actual cost of water but costs of water distribution and sewer system (Glennon 225). That’s why water is so cheap. The price of water is not substantial enough to make people care about it.