Rivers of life and rivers of death

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.