RIVERS OF LIFE AND RIVERS OF DEATH
by Len Parker
Water is life. The right to water
versus water rights has a long and ancient history. Its use and abuse
is at the heart of civilization.
From the time of Moses fracturing
(fracking?) the rock to bring forth water for the patched tribe of
Israel; to the bad irrigation methods of the ancients covering the
land with salt so crops no longer grew; to the range wars in old
cowboy movies where the poor farmers and townspeople fought the
greedy rancher barons over right of access; water has always been in
dispute.
New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key
opened a Pandora's box with the proposed partial sale of state owned
assets; including the publicly funded and constructed hydro-dams and
the rights to water in the rivers behind them.
It raised once again the ire of Maori
as to the actual ownership of water. Their concern is to what it will
mean if the water behind the dams and in the rivers becomes integral
to a part public-privately owned asset under new company law.
Under the Treaty of Waitangi, Maori are
the guardians (kaitiaki) of New Zealand/Aotearoa rivers, lakes.
streams and springs. Maori have, over many years, pointed out the
ecological degradation of waterways and fisheries caused by
pollution, run-off of nitrates and human waste.
The Crown authorities, on the other
hand, have been reluctant to acknowledge or release information on
the extent of this damage, take responsibility for it, or charge the
polluters. Rather, in the interest of trade, tourism and profit, New
Zealand has been sold to the world as clean and green.
Behind the curtain in this Wizard of Oz
fantasy journey on their 'Yellow Brick Road' is a hidden reality the
right to pollute waterways and control their flow, in the interests
of energy, growth and maximizing profit.
Increasing public ecological awareness,
however, is challenging this licence.
The Crown, in the need for energy to
drive industrialized society, constructed large dams at public
expense to ensure electricity supply. Now, with the proposed partial
sale of these revenue generating assets, the Government has raised
the question of ownership of the very water itself.
Not only has the question become: Who
owns the water? But who is ecologically responsible for its quality?
If there is one natural law that
overrides any that human ingenuity has constructed, it is surely the
right to self-preservation. This includes access to clean,
uncontaminated water; not as a commodity but as a right, something
owned in common.
Maori elders have eloquently defended
their customary rights and claims under the Treaty of Waitangi, and
have challenged the Government' s plan to sell power generating
entities to private investors. Maori concerns for future access to
this traditional taonga acknowledge that it will benefit us all.
Contrary to the deliberate
misinformation and propaganda spread in regard to Maori claims to
“ownership” of water, Maori Council co-chairman and retired High
Court judge Sir Eddie Durie said that it was untrue that his group
was trying to assert that Maori owned the water in rivers and lakes:
But they [Maori]
are saying there are particular streams, rivers, aquifers and springs
that they have used, and as a result of that use have acquired a
customary law interest [right] in those things.
Some argue that because we - as the
public and rate-payers - are required to pay for water, including the
waste water, it means it can be owned. This reminds me of a religious
minister's answer when asked, if religion was free, why was he
charging? - “It is free, he said; but you have to pay for laying it
on.”
Te Arawa's Tony Wihapi said:
Te Arawa accepted
that no one owned the water – until the Crown said it was going to
give 49 percent of it away. That meant Maori had to act, while
acknowledging. [this] ...Arawa accepted the right of the Crown to use
that water for the good of the nation.
With this right of use must come the
responsibility to keep these facilities in pristine condition.
Customary rights can be respected and honoured while its fishing,
traditional use, navigation and spiritual values and mana are
preserved. Private profit driven interests will not guarantee this.
What is at stake with any privatization
is the enclosure of the commons and disrespect for historic Maori
generosity and rights under the Treaty. Few will accept that private
shareholder ownership and exploitation for profit will be in the
interest of or for the public good.
The idea of owning a resource such as
water, on which all life depends – the birds, the trees, the
animals, the fish of the sea including ourselves - would seem the
height of arrogance. That water can be commodified or privately
owned, is truly a notion that only those obsessed with private
property could think up.
In the United States, the home of “free
enterprise”, Texas oil billionaire T. Bone Pickens acquired 200,000
acres (about 80,000 hectares) of groundwater rights in Roberts
County, “from which he expects to make more than US$1 billion on a
US$75 million investment.” He is also seeking the right to pump
Ogallala aquifer water and sell it to El Paso, Lubbock, San Antonio
and Dallas.
In her book Blue Covenant,
Maude Barlow also describes how Dorothy Timian-Palmer, former
water manager for Carson City and now president of Vidlers, also lays
claim to vast water reserves. Timian-Palmer's company has acquired
more than 135,000 acre-feet of water rights in Nevada and Arizona. In
2007 it was estimated to be worth US$500 million. “The company is
holding on to most of the water and planning to buy up more because
the price of water is steadily going up in the American Midwest.”
“No one owns the water!” says John
Key. Yeah right!
Water naturally flows if unimpeded, is
heated by the sun, evaporates as clouds and is distributed around the
world where it is deposited as rain. It is then recycled through
respiration of plants or further evaporation from lakes, rivers and
the great oceans, and in time may reach the aquifers, in the
hydrological cycle.
Greek philosopher Heraclitus may have
rightly said “We cannot step in the same river twice”, but
someone, somewhere, on this planet will drink of this water or be
showered by its rain. Or, increasingly nowadays, they may swept away
by torrential deluge or hurricane, buried under a landslide or frozen
to death in extreme weather conditions.
Over eons of climate change, the
advance and retreat of glaciers have carved out the paths of rivers,
and ground up and deposited the rocks, pebbles and fertile soil on
the river beds.
By building large dams on these rivers,
however, human ingenuity has created great lakes that have changed
the environment both behind the dams and below them, as decaying
vegetation within the lakes has produced methane and the release of
CO2. They also
restrict navigation, and there is even evidence that large dams can
cause earthquakes.
As the stilled water behind the dam
heats up there is loss from evaporation. When flood-gates are opened
this potential energy (as kinetic energy) flows out and erodes the
river bed below the dam. Cold water salmon can no longer successfully
lay their eggs or breed above or below the dam.
Globally, this practice has led us to
the brink of disaster. While we have been able to construct large
dams and generate much needed energy, we have also created a serious
dilemma. This is compounded by the delay in building wave, wind and
solar alternative renewable forms.
Fortunately in Aoteroa, as a country in
the South Pacific we border no other country. Elsewhere in the world,
wars can and will be fought between states over access to water.
Where rivers flow between nations and there is scarcity or where dams
impede their flow disputes arise. There is conflict between Sudan,
Ethiopia and Egypt over the Nile; between Syria and Israel over the
river Jordan and Palestinian aquifers; between China, Burma,
Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia over the Lancang Jiang where it becomes the
mighty Mekong; between Pakistan and India over the Indus.
China ...is
building a cascade of eight huge dams on the main stem of the Mekong
… The first two are already operating and generating concern
downstream all the way to the sea. As the turbines are switched on
and off to meet demand for power...water levels in the river
fluctuate by up to a meter a day for hundreds of kilometers
downstream... Even big boats find it difficult because of the surges
from the dams. Local fishers are losing their livelihoods as a
result. (Pearce, When Rivers Run Dry)
Some rivers like the Yellow River in
China and the Colorado in the U.S., the Rio Grande that borders
Mexico and even the Indus on many occasions never reach the sea.
Egypt. which has for thousands of years relied on the floods from the
Nile to enrich the fertile plains, has to import wheat as the silt
backs up behind the Aswan Dam.
How does this effect us? We are part of
a global village, and what effects one effects all – eventually. It
is not generally appreciated that the vast quantities of water used
in agriculture and farming are exported as virtual water in our
products.
Fred Pearce records that:
...It takes 1,000
litres [of water] to grow a kilo of wheat, 500 litres for a kilo of
potatoes and 11,000 litres to grow the feed for enough cow to make a
quarter-pound hamburger' and between 2,000 and 4,000 litres for that
cow to fill its udders with a litre of milk. (When Rivers Run Dry)
The battle over the rights to the
foreshore and seabed in New Zealand/Aoteraroa was waged against the
deception of both Labour and National. These parties claimed that no
one owned these natural resources (a self-evident truth), while
effectively dishonoring the treaty signed with Maori in 1840 as to
their customary rights.
Yet the Crown reserves the 'legal'
right to issue permits for exploration and exploitation of oil deep
beneath the ocean floor to private corporate interests. They ignore
the possibility of accidents, as in the Gulf of Mexico, and
consequent pollution of the ocean and damage to the fisheries. And
who pays?
Does Crown ownership mean the right to
allocate public assets to whoemver they choose? Under globalization
and the “free-market”, to subservient governments such as Key's
National Party, it means privatization of state owned assets for
profit – water included.
Therefore the question is, as Maude
Barlow and Tony Clarke point out in their book 'Blue Gold':
If water is
essential to life itself, then is it simply a basic human need or is
it a fundamental human right?
That was the debate on the floor of the
Second World Water Forum in The Hague in the Netherlands, in March
2000.
What role if any did New Zealand play
at that Forum?
The title of the
conference sounded like an official United Nations meeting about
conserving world water resources, but it wasn't ...It was convened by
big business lobby organizations like Global Water Partnership, the
World Bank and the leading for-profit corporations on the planet
...the discussions focused on how companies could benefit from
selling water to markets around the world.
While United
Nations officials were in attendance, along with a Ministerial
Conference attached to the event... they didn't organize it.
The main players and instigators were
some of the largest corporate water giants like Vivendi (now Viola);
and Suez; Lyonaise des Eaux; and Severn Trent Plc, as well as food
giants like Nestle and Unilever.
What happened at
the World Water Conference is the story of the separation of water
from the land and from 'the commons' which it is.. The debate over
whether water should be designated a 'need' or a 'right' was not
simply a semantic one, but went to the heart of the matter.
Under the banner
of the “Blue Planet Project” representatives of environmental,
labour, and public interest groups from both industrialized and
non-industrialized nations insisted that water be recognized as a
universal right.... The World Water Forum [Big Business] wanted water
to be officially designated as a “need” so that the private
sector, through the market, would have the right and responsibility
to provide this vital resource on a for-profit-basis.
A statement,
signed by government representatives (the Ministerial Declaration)
deferred to the corporate interests declaring water a basic need. It
said nothing about water being a universal right.
Cash-starved
governments have been rapidly turning to privatizing water or
entering into Public-Private Partnerships. But experience shows the
price of water supplied under private corporations or Public-Private
Partnership models is consistently higher than under municipal
governments.
Having given
substantial tax cuts to corporate interests, governments no longer
have sufficient revenues to balance their budgets. Although they
still receive large tax returns on state-owned public assets such as
power generation, their sale is demanded by international creditors,
the World Bank and institutions such as the World Trade Organization
and the secretive TPPA to repay debt. This is why Prime Minister Key
is determined to privatize the final part of power generation here.
Under deregulated
privatized power distribution in Aotearoa, we have experienced
constantly rising prices. The reason is simple: Private shareholders
expect maximum returns on investment and CEOs are obliged under law
to deliver, so they cut back on maintenance, staffing and wages and
out-source maintenance contracts and raise prices.
Efficiency it
isn't! To add to profits, capitalism encourages waste. The more
electricity the directors and management can sell, the greater the
profit they hope to achieve. This much-hyped competition doesn't last
as corporate raiders take-over their competitors through mergers and
acquisitions. If the owners are off-shore the profits will follow.
Even local shareholders can find ways to stash their accumulated
dividends in tax-havens, reducing internal revenue even further.
In 1998 the first
modern “water war' came to international attention when:
the indigenous people of Chochabamba, Bolivia, led by Oscar Olivera,
rose up against the privatization of their water services. [U]nder
World bank supervision, the Bolivian government passed a law
privatizing Chochabamba's water system and gave the contract to U.S.
giant Bechtel, which immediately tripled the price of water, cutting
off those who could not pay...The company even charged them for
rainwater they collected in cisterns.
As a result...the 'Coalition in Defence of Water and Life'.. was
formed and organised a successful referendum demanding the government
cancel its contract with Bechtel. When the government refused to
listen, many thousands took to the streets in non-violent protest and
were met with army violence that wounded dozens and killed a
seventeen-year-old boy. On April 10 2000 the Bolivian government
backed down and told Bechtel to leave. (Barlow)
More recently,
after being bailed out by the taxpayers during the crisis on Wall
Street, insurance giant AIG went down to the poor mining towns of
Middlesboro and Clinton in Kentucky (average income US$13,189 with
30% unemployed). There, they bought up the water rights and upped the
water charges by 50%. After a dispute with the local people, the
charge was reduced to 30%, still beyond reach of many.
To make it harder for Clinton residents to file complaints (about
billing). AIG closed the utility's local office as soon as it took
over the company. Pleas made by phone were rejected.
Similarly:
In 2000, furious farmers in [India's] Andhra Pradesh chased the then
World Bank head James Wolfensohn away from a privatization public
event sponsored by politicians friendly to the World Bank agenda. The
ministry ...admitted that consumers would bear the burden of this
change with tenfold increases in water rates. (Barlow).
Even at this
midnight hour, resistance to the sale of New Zealand's remaining
State owned assets must be supported. Yes, “There Must be Another
Way” but it isn't under capitalism.
So who will pay
the Ferryman? Who will bear the real long-term cost and consequences
of the sale of these assets? Surrendering them up to private
interests would seem to be their death knell and our vulnerable
Achilles' heel hidden behind a statement of perfidious and dishonest
intent by John Key.
