In the 21st century, as global warming, pollution and rising populations create scarcities, profiteering has again raised its ugly head. This time, though, the target isn't housing, or fuel, or even food, but water. Gone are the days when drinkable water was abundantly present in all but desert climates, and free even to the poor - who had only to take a bucket or pail to the nearest stream to acquire it. Now, clean water is a valuable commodity whose cost rises exponentially with the poverty of its purchasers.
In the Kibera slum of Nairobi (Kenya), water sellers charge 25 cents for a 5-gallon jug. This may not sound like much, but the people of Kibera - squatters whose legitimacy the government refuses to recognize by delivering public water - often live on less than a dollar a day. Just the effort of gathering water for daily cooking and cleaning can take up to half a day, meaning many women don't have time to work outside their homes and many girls are unable to attend school.
These water sellers may offer water bought in bulk from the government and bottled. Equally as often, the water is stolen from broken, public water mains, where cracked and leaking plastic pipe runs alongside alleyways polluted with garbage and human waste.
In Honduras, a country just south of Mexico, in the wretched slums of Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, water sellers offer a gallon for 2.5 centavos or a barrel for 15 lempiras (19 lempiras equal a dollar). Salt water for washing is nearly as expensive at 13 lempiras. The residents of Tegucigalpa, at the bottom of Honduras' economic ladder, are lucky to earn $66 a month in sweatshops based on the maquiladora model, where suppliers import fabric and export such basic items as t-shirts without the burden of taxes. The corporations are making huge profits, the workers next to nothing, and water often represents a third of their budget. For the very poorest, who don't even have the luxury of a sweatshop job, drinking water must be sacrificed to afford even a meager diet of beans, and water-borne diseases like dysentery, cholera and typhoid are endemic.
In Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, most of the poor have no water service, even though during the 1990's, the World Bank funded water upgrades to the tune of $92 million. Unfortunately, the World Bank gave the contracts to two private corporations, Suez (pdf) and Thames (now part of German-based RWE AG), even though Indonesian law forbade foreign investment in drinking water delivery.
The World Bank was supported in its actions by the Suharto regime (backed by the United States). The two multinational conglomerates - Suez and Thames - got rich beyond their wildest dreams; the people of Indonesia got nothing, including no water. Floods in 2007 further impacted Indonesia's drinking water situation, and diseases like malaria, dengue fever and cholera are on the rise as the urban poor of Jakarta struggle to afford potable water, which can cost up to 25 percent of their incomes.
The situation is only marginally better in the developed world. In Spain, where drought is hitting both the central basin and the Mediterranean region, Catalonia has not seen rain in 18 months. The reservoirs are at 20 percent capacity, and Barcelona, a major city, is forced to import drinking water, and face rising costs with every peak in the price of diesel fuel and gasoline. Meanwhile, in Zaragoza, in the central plain, Expo 2008 features the Digital Water Pavilion, a virtual structure built from walls of water and containing 3,000 digitally controlled solenoid valves, several dozen pumps, 12 hydraulic stainless steel pistons and a digital control system based on open source software.
Engineers assure the water is fully recycled, but a lot is lost to evaporation in central Spain's hellish climate. The original plan was for rainfall to supplement evaporative losses, but it didn't rain in Zaragoza this summer. This water pavilion is a slap in the face to poor residents buying water off the backs of trucks at $5 per barrel, or 50 cents a gallon.
In Murcia, south of Zaragoza, speculators are buying water like oil, mostly from illegal wells, and selling it to developers who persist in water-intensive projects like swimming pools and sod-covered golf courses. Area farmers haven't helped by planting fields of lettuce. Local and regional officials have also done their part to exacerbate the situation by illegally selling water permits and looking the other way when water use exceeds legal parameters.
Official corruption regarding water supplies is rampant wherever water is literally worth its weight in gold, and this malfeasance now impacts 40 percent of the world's population. In the better neighborhoods in Kenya, residents who dispute their water bill may face shutoff. In China, government corruption allows industry to pollute water sources without penalty, depriving rural residents and city dwellers alike of clean water. In 2006, the residents of San Diego were overcharged for sewer services to subsidize large industrial users. In New Orleans, local officials took gifts from water service contractors hoping to win lucrative city contracts. In Atlanta, French-based Suez (the Indonesian contractor hired by World Bank) took over the water supply under a $428-million, 20-year contract in 1999, and immediately residents began noticing their water smelled and looked like sewage. Turns out the contract was awarded after Mayor Bill Campbell enjoyed a (presumably Suez-funded) $12,000 Parisian holiday.
This kind of corruption runs rampant throughout U.S. cities and towns, but in the U.S. even the poorest of citizens can usually afford drinking water (or are provided water by relief funding or relief agencies). Elsewhere, as in developing nations, this corruption puts the lives of billions of people at risk, either through a total absence of potable water or by allowing shady entrepreneurs to sell contaminated water. As Transparency International's 2008 Global Corruption Report states, "Water is vital and has no substitutes."
In the midst of this dark and pervasive corruption subverting access to humanity's most basic need, there shine a few rays of light. One is Peace Corps volunteer Eric Harrison, who was horrified when he saw Honduran children were drinking out of sewage-laden streams coming down from mountain villages around Marcala. Harrison is working to fix this situation, first by engineering clean water access through local grassroots organizations, and then by selling sustainable coffee which he ships to the U.S. at his own expense and sells for the benefit of these local organizers. Harrison's brand is Eco Cafe, and you can help him help poor Hondurans get the most essential element of life next to air by buying the brand.
Another "water angel" is Al-hassan Adam, head of the Ghana Coalition against Privatisation of Water. Adam has put the African government on notice that its citizens will resist water privatization and demand access to potable water via efficient, affordable public delivery. Adam is assisted in his efforts by the Blue Planet Project and its representative, Anil Naidoo, and both provide e-mail and phone contacts.
There are other water angels, but they are a drop in the bucket compared to those who would profit from the poor on such an elemental, human need. These government, corporate and individual profiteers are murderers, in the plainest sense, and they will not be stopped until every voice is raised in protest, or half the world's population is decimated by dehydration and disease.
Further Reading:
Water is even more vital to survival than food. The only thing that will kill you quicker than lack of water is lack of air. I live in a country that laughed (yes, seriously, the whole country laughed) when the first bottled water plant opened.
Now, nobody in their right mind would drink from a tap in Ireland. It's just too dangerous.
Will the air be next?
Written in September 2008