Andrew Preston

FIVAS:

Water privatisation has been on the agenda of the donor community for some 15 years or so, and struggles against privatisation have been waged almost as long. What’s your take on the current state of play?

Maude:

Well, water privatisation has been pretty thoroughly discredited almost everywhere. Suez, for example, has just announced it’s pretty well gone from Latin America. It’s been pulling out bit by bit, although I’m still stunned by the increase in their profits this year. All three of the major water multinationals had huge profits last year. And think, if you’re doing badly, and still making that kind of money, doesn’t that make our point?

And it’s not just in the developing world. For instance, a number of American cities have privatised, and they’re in the process now of undoing it. A couple of Canadian cities came close, and we stopped it. So there’s been a pushback in some of the so-called First World countries. It’s important to put that perspective in.

Since 1992 the private sector has only developed less than about 1% of what the UN has declared is needed, and at this rate, they’ll never meet the Millenium Development Goals – ever. Certainly not in the timeframe that’s been agreed to. I think the whole world knows this now, and it’s interesting – even at the World Water Forum in Mexico, which we should remember is run by the World Water Council, which is run by the big water companies and the World Bank, who all believe in privatisation, even they hardly spoke about privatisation.

They’re talking about public-private partnerships, which of course are the same thing, and they’re talking about more public accountability, working with communities and trying to be more transparent. They’re trying to back-pedal. They won’t come as far as to say that water needs to be a human right because they know that’s a contradiction to it being privatised. But at the same time they know they can’t deny it anymore. So they’re starting to work around language that would still permit them to be stakeholders.

It’s very interesting to watch the deep discrediting that’s happened and I could feel at the World Water Forum in Mexico City that they were not confident. In the session that we gave, one of the vice-presidents at Suez got up and yelled at us, which is kind of a reversal of the way it was in Kyoto when we all yelled at them! So you can feel the ground shifting here, and I keep reminding people that, unlike energy, our minerals or even our forests, water is still largely publicly owned in the world and we’re at the beginning of this debate. We have not lost control of water yet, and it’s still possible for us to win this because we came in on it early and we got our criticism and critique in early on. I think we’ve changed a lot of hearts and minds on the issue.

FIVAS:

In Mexico, the UN Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, set up by the Secretary General, presented a report which outlined ways to accelerate progress towards achieving the Millenium Development Goals. One of their solutions was a new form of public-public partnership between different public utilities, on a non-profit basis.

Maude:

Well, I can give you, as an example, Manila in the Philippines. You know, instead of privatising the city’s water and dividing it between two big companies, the World Bank could have brought in experts from the public sector in Japan who are fiercely proud of the work they are doing and really keep a very good, tight public system. They could have been brought over to promote and teach and share expertise with the public sector in the Philippines. So the UN really has come a long way. I think, under Kofi Annan, the UN has been flirting a lot with the private sector – they had their Global Compact with all these companies, some of them with very bad human rights and environmental records. Kofi Annan has said that the big players are the World Bank and the WTO and that he wants the UN to be one of those big players. Instead of remembering his job is to speak for people and governments and the human family, if you will. I think the UN is beginning to come back to that in this latest report.

FIVAS:

What about the rural sector? Much of the focus of water privatisation and the debate around it has been on urban water supply. Does that mean we’ve neglected the rural areas, and why have we done that?

Maude:

Well, not only have we neglected the rural areas, I think it’s even worse than that. I think we have robbed the rural areas for cities. Half the people in the world live in cities now, but that still means that half the people in the world live in rural communities. Because we have these burgeoning cities that are just teeming with people, we forget that. It’s a real crisis, and a lot of it, I would argue, is due to the same neo-liberal policies that have led to water privatisation. Millions and millions of farmers and subsistence farm families have been displaced off the land all over the world. They’re displaced by big agro-business. They’re displaced by their water being taken. They’re forced off the land and into the cities, so all of a sudden everyone’s attention is on what to do with these huge cities.

So I think it’s worse than neglect. It’s actually theft and I’ve seen it in many places. Just one example is Mexico City, where the World Water Forum was held. Mexico City has had to go many, many kilometres away for water supplies, which they basically just take. They confiscate from local communities and put up these great big barricades – almost like armed fortresses – around the water sources with armed guards, barbed wire and so on, so that the local people would get hurt if they tried to go in. They’d get shot. So, not only are we seeing a real rural-urban split, and in many cases deep discrimination against indigenous peoples and local communities, but we’re also seeing a neglect of the needs of those rural communities, their water being taken away, and very little thought or care or money going into helping them with the needs that they have. And we mustn’t forget that it’s those rural communities that feed us, and we treat them like that at our peril.

FIVAS:

The majority of people without access to clean water are in the rural areas, but you’re saying that this global water crisis is migrating to the cities along with the people.

Maude:

And because the power’s migrating, those cities are able just to confiscate water. They’re just able to claim it and say to the people in the rural communities: “well, there are more of us than there are of you, and we simply just have to take your water, and we’re sorry, but here goes, and if we need the military to do it, so be it.” I think you’re going to find more and more of a military presence around water sources in troubled parts of the world.

FIVAS:

In the report being published by ForUM, one of our conclusions is that Norway has some fairly good pro-poor policies and, with the change of government last year, has done some good things, such as withdrawing Norwegian demands to developing countries to open up their water sectors under GATS. But, at the same time, Norway still supports institutions and facilities in the international banks that promote and facilitate water privatisation to the detriment of the poor. Would you see that as a correct analysis, and what additional messages would you have for the Norwegian government?

Maude:

I think it’s absolutely correct, and I think it’s correct for many countries that take a good position at one level politically. Often you’ll see that the bureaucracy continues to grind along, doing the exact old thing. It’s a very familiar story in my country as well. But I do want to congratulate the government of Norway for doing this. I think it’s incredibly long-term insightful. I think that it’s courageous and important. I think symbolically it’s extraordinarily important when a government takes a position like this. We’re hoping that the government of Norway is going to work with us on the human right to water and the need for a UN Convention. So I’m hoping this will lead to the next step of something really positive.

FIVAS:

Could you tell us a little more about the UN Convention?

Maude:

Well, we’ve formed a group called Friends of the Right to Water. It’s a network of groups from the global North and the global South who, partly out a desire to be for something, rather than always being against something – be it big dams, pollution, government violence against communities on water, corporations, the World Bank, GATS, whatever! – are promoting the concept of the right to water. The right to water was never included in either the original UN Charter or the International Declaration of Human Rights. So it allowed the development of water to be moved over to the World Bank and the private sector in a way that other systems were not. If something is a right, it cannot be bought or sold. It really is not just a semantic argument. But we also want it not just to be a charter or convention at the UN, but also part of the constitution of countries.

Uruguay held a referendum at their election in 2003. A majority of the population had to agree even to get the referendum on the ballot. They won by two-thirds majority and they have a very exciting new constitution that not only says that water is a human right, but that it has to be provided on a not-for-profit basis. So that’s a very exciting development.

We’d like a UN convention that would supersede other statements round water, for instance, the WTO or regional or bilateral trade agreements. There are corporate rights ensconced in these agreements, and we would like, where there’s any dispute, for the UN declaration or treaty or resolution to override the corporate rights of these other institutions. So we’re looking at something quite radical and quite strong. We wouldn’t get anywhere, in terms of the support of the grassroots around the world, if we were writing something wishy-washy.

We would love to get the government of Norway supporting us on this, but what the government now has to do is to ensure that there’s follow-through. When you make a statement like that [Soria Moria], if you really mean it politically, it means you have to do something about your trade negotiators; you have to make sure your development aid is not going back to the same old private sector influences; that your representatives at the World Bank are taking a very strong stance against privatisation. Otherwise it’s an important first step, but it stops there.