By: Meera Karunananthan and Marcela Olivera
For more than two decades The Blue Planet Project (BPP) has worked with global frontline communities struggling for water justice—with more than 300 communities successfully taking water back into public hands. BPP takes a feminist and anti-colonial approach that centers around women, Indigenous Peoples and marginalized communities.
Water is life
According to the United Nations Water (UN-Water), we are “alarmingly off-track” regarding securing access to clean drinking water and sanitation for all. Two billion people lack access to safe drinking water and close to half of the world’s population lacks access to proper sanitation. Nearly four million people die every year from water-related illnesses, half of them children.
We need bold and ambitious plans, but top-down solutions that ignore both the challenges, needs, and dreams of frontline communities simply fail to reach the most vulnerable and marginalized people.
Water privatization perpetuates injustice
In 1999, the Bolivian government sold the water and sewage services in the city of Cochabamba to a private multinational firm called Aguas del Tunari Consortium. Residents saw their water rates rise by up to 200 percent. Small community-based water systems providing water to 60 percent of the population in the outskirts of the city were forced to buy licenses for water and rainwater harvesting was made illegal.
People from the city and surrounding countryside united to form the Coalition in Defense of Water and Life. Thousands of people took to the streets in protest. Hundreds of people were injured when the government sent the police and military to confront unarmed protestors—a 17-year-old demonstrator was shot to death.
After four months of protest, the company was finally expelled. For Bolivia, this was the first popular victory on such a scale in eighteen years of neoliberalism, and it changed Bolivian history forever.
False conservation strategies promote environmental racism
Nearly 30 years after the fall of apartheid in South Africa access to land and water remains highly unequal. Black small-scale farmers and rural communities struggle for access to basic supplies of water while predominantly white-owned luxury game reserves, industrial farms, vineyards, and golf courses enjoy abundant supplies on large tracts of privately owned land.
The African Water Commons Collective, a city-wide network of grassroots activists, organizes access to water in informal settlements and poor racialized neighborhoods in the outskirts of Cape Town known as townships. In 2018, during a period of severe drought when the city declared it was running out of water, the African Water Commons Collective challenged the city for allowing corporations to use excessive amounts of water. It was later revealed that the city overlooked Coca-Cola’s failure to comply with drought regulations. The company was using over 44 million liters of water per month, while ordinary people were subjected to harsh restrictions and exorbitant rate hikes.
Local control of water
In rural Senegal where 57 percent of the people live below the poverty line, communities have long pooled their own funds to provide drinking water through independent systems that operate on a not-for-profit and solidarity model. Not only do they provide free water to schools and local clinics, they also do not shut off water to members of the community who occasionally struggle to pay the bills.
At the behest of the World Bank, Senegal is privatizing rural drinking water supply despite tremendous public opposition from communities. In 2016, the government signed a contract with the Quebec-based company Aquatech to take over local community-run drinking water systems of more than two million people living in the regions of Thies and Diourbel.
In taking over rural water systems, Aquatech replaced the community-run systems with for-profit systems. Community activists have been harassed by authorities and arrested for protesting against Aquatech for hiking water rates and cutting off access to those who cannot afford to pay. In the town of Mboro the community was successful in kicking out Aquatech. Others have organized under the banner “Aquatech Dégage.”
We need better public systems
Around the world, public water systems are undermined by austerity plans, corporate tax cuts and other neoliberal reforms that prevent local governments from providing the quality services that people need. In the global South, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have promoted the most restrictive austerity plans through loan conditionalities to countries rebuilding in the aftermath of colonial devastation. While the majority of those who live in the global North enjoy the benefits of water and sanitation services—paid primarily by public taxes—the World Bank has consistently promoted full-cost recovery for services in the global South. This means all costs are transferred to the users, turning essential services into luxury items.
UN-Water calls for innovative financing and technologies to bridge the gaps in access to water. Equitable distribution of water requires strong public financing and appropriate technologies.
Stand together
In the midst of our fights, a very important development is the bonds of solidarity that have been created and the nature of connections that have begun between people. It’s not just about fighting back against the economic policies that are being imposed on us; it’s also about bringing us into contact with one another—recovering our relationships. We’re building alliances among ourselves that respect our differences and diversity of experiences. These serve to broaden our understanding of the daily challenges we each face while building a network of support that keeps us strong.
The struggle over who controls water is ongoing. What we’re fighting for is to create effective, participatory control by the people over common goods like water, health and education. We know that continued action in our streets and our communities is essential to social change.
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If would like to be part of a global movement promoting water justice based on the principles that water is a human right, a public trust and a part of the global commons, please consider donating today. It’s time we all stand together for water, land and life.