On Friday night and Saturday, November 26th and 27th the International Forum
on Globalization (IFG) held a Teach-In at Benaroya Symphony Hall in Seattle
on the subject of Economic Globalization and the Role of the WTO. The
following is a hypertext transcript of Maude Barlow, second speaker in
Friday night's event discussing "The Multiple Impacts of Economic
Globalization". She was introduced by the Acting Director of the IFG, Jerry
Mander. In the real player recording of this available on the web, the
following begins at 29 minutes, 28 seconds and runs up to 50 minutes, 43
seconds.
The ratitor urges one-and-all to join the IFG. It's Board of Directors
and Associates comprise a unique and unparalleled-in-the-life-of-our-time
collaboration of research, intelligence, and concern, magnificently
articulated by scholars, writers, academics, scientists, farmers,
geneticists, businesspeople, and lawyers. By joining this collective, we
support the further expansion of life's needs and thus become more infused
with the energy to serve and honor all the life expressing itself throughout
our planetary home.
The order form for the cassette tape recordings of this entire Teach-In
is available at http://www.ifg.org/tof4.html. They are magnificent. Maude
Barlow's 46-page BLUE GOLD - The Global Water Crisis and the Commodification
of the World's Water Supply is a Special Report issued by the IFG in June
1999. It is required reading for everyone concerned about the water of life
that nourishes and sustains us, and without which there would be no life, as
we define it, on Earth. Everyone is urged to purchase all these resources
from the IFG. Listen to the tapes multiple times, study and scrutinize BLUE
GOLD, learn what they communicate, share with your friends. The information
in these publications is extremely valuable!!!
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The Global Water Crisis and the Commodification of the World's Water Supply
Maude Barlow speaking at the Seattle IFG Teach-In
11/26/99
© 1999 International Forum on Globalization
And now I'll introduce Maude Barlow who is surely one of the most
inspiring battlers against globalization on the whole planet. Once
she found out about the infamous Multilateral Agreement on
Investment a few years she became like a whirlwind: she gave
speeches in every Canadian city, a whole lot of American and
European ones; she wrote two books together with Tony Clarke (also
on the program tomorrow); she was on every TV station in Canada;
she's tough, she's brilliant and she's fun too -- and she wins.
Now she's on the same kind of campaign about the privatization and
globalization of the planet's remaining fresh water. You can get
her booklet Blue Gold through the IFG. Maude is a major public
figure in Canada. She is national chair of the 100,000-member
Council of Canadians in Ottawa. She was the leading battler
against the US-Canada Free Trade agreement and against NAFTA. She
is the author of five books on trade and education issues. And
most Canadians I know say she could run successfully for Prime
Minister of Canada -- if she only would!
Well hello Seattle. Wow. This is just dynamite and I want to say
they should be very worried. They should be. I'd like to start off
tonight by saying some thank yous on your behalf to a few people.
Too many to name so I'll just name a few. I do want to say to
Jerry Mander and Debi Barker and Victor Menotti and all the people
at the International Forum on Globalization who have put this
fabulous weekend together, Thank you for all of us.
I also want to say on behalf of all of us a tremendous thanks to
Lori Wallach and Mike Dolan and Margrete Strand-Rangnes and Sally
Soriano and all the people at Public Citizen and the organizing
committee here in Seattle who have put together the incredible
week that you're about to witness, Thank you.
I have a third thank-you to somebody who has been a Trojan Horse
for us, a trade warrior for us for many many years, who brought
many of us into this fight and who has single-handedly taken on
the WTO in an incredible way, who spent the last six months in
Geneva sending out to us daily submissions on what was happening
-- Martin, you might have been lonely but we love you -- Martin
Khor thank you very, very much.
I've got two things on my jacket. The first is a button that says
"Seattle, 11-30-1999, The Day the WTO Stands Still", let's make it
happen. And I've also got a gold ribbon on my lapel. I spoke last
night in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to the National Farmer's Union
and a Canadian Farmwomen's Conference. The women asked me to take
this ribbon to Seattle, to wear it all week to give me courage and
remind me what we're doing here. They reminded me and I will tell
you that although we have had record exports of agricultural
products in the last year we have the lowest net farm income at
the Farm Gate since 1926 when Canada first started taking any kind
of statistics on this. So something is really wrong and I wear
this proudly on behalf of the farmers of my country.
I came across a little quote from Woodrow Wilson in 1907. I
thought it might set the tone for us as we get ready for this
week. Woodrow Wilson said this about trade:
Since trade ignores national boundaries and
manufacturers insist on having the world as a market,
the flag of the nation must follow him and the doors of
the nations which are closed against him must be
battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must
be safe-guarded by Ministers of State, even if the
sovereignty of an unwilling nation be outraged in the
process. Colonies must be obtained or planted in order
that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or
left unused.
He sure got his dream, didn't he?
Here we are on the eve of the millennium, we're gathered to
confront the largest concentration of corporate power ever
assembled. Trade ministers and the negotiators of 135 countries
are going to be greeted by the WTO host committee, co-chaired by
Bill Gates of Microsoft and Phil Condit of Boeing Corporation.
These folks have [boo's ensue from the audience] -- I know indeed,
my dears -- They have promised their corporate friends that for a
certain amount of money (and the more you pay the higher access
you get), you can speak directly to the politicians and the trade
negotiators. Needless to say there is no such official welcoming
host committee made up of environmentalists and justice advocates
and union activists, although I dare say we're going to give them
the odd, unofficial welcome this week.
The WTO has become the most powerful institution in the world and
I think we need to remember why we are here and why it is so
dangerous because it now touches every part of our lives. What
makes the WTO so powerful and so dangerous is that it has both the
legislative and judicial power to challenge the laws, policies and
programs of countries that do not conform to the lowest common
denominator rules set by the WTO and to strike them down if
they're seen as being hostile to unregulated trade.
In fact, as we know, the WTO has become the most powerful tool of
transnational capital. These corporations work hand-in-hand with
trade bureaucrats in Geneva and Washington and Ottawa and
everywhere that they exist, to establish what is in essence a
system of global corporate governance.
At the heart of the WTO is an assault on everything left standing
in the commons, in the public realm. Everything is now for sale.
Even those areas of life that we once considered sacred like
health and education, food and water and air and seeds and genes
and a heritage. It is all now for sale. Economic freedom -- not
democracy, and not ecological stewardship -- is the defining
metaphor of the WTO and its central goal is humanity's mastery of
the natural world through its total commodification.
I want to take my few minutes here tonight to sound the alarm
about one aspect of this. You're going to hear so many different
areas of concern around the WTO. What I want to address is the
potential impact of the WTO on the very source of life which is
water. The destruction of aquatic ecosystem health, of the
increasing water scarcity, are in my opinion the most pressing
environmental problems facing human kind.
The first myth to counter is that there is a lot of water to go
around -- we're treating it badly but there's lots of water. This
is not true. The amount of fresh water available in the world is
only one-half of one percent of the total world's water stock. And
every year that needs to stretch to welcome 85 million new people
into the world. Yet we are depleting, diverting and polluting that
finite supply at an astonishing rate.
Today 31 countries are facing water stress and scarcity and over a
billion people lack access to clean drinking water. We know that 5
million people, most of them children, die every year from
illnesses caused by poor drinking water. If we do not change our
ways, by the year 2025, as much as two-thirds of the world will be
living in either water scarcity or total water deprivation. This
is the major environmental crisis of our time.
Ground water over-pumping and acquifer depletion are now an urgent
problem in the world's most intensive agriculture areas. Water is
being depleted many, many times faster than nature can replenish
it. This means that instead of living on water income we are now
living on water capital and we are facing water bankruptcy.
The global expansion in mining and manufacturing is increasing the
threat of pollution and these underground water supplies are
contaminating acquifers all over the world. 90% of most of the
world's communities still dump their raw sewage directly into the
waterways of the world.
At the same time, over-exploitation of the planet's major river
systems is threatening another finite source of water. From the
Nile in Egypt to the Ganges in south Asia to the Yellow River in
China and the Colorado in America, these are just some of the
major rivers that no longer reach the sea. And we've diverted and
over-tapped and dammed our waterways to the point that they no
longer exist in their natural forms.
All through Latin America, China and Asia massive
industrialization is affecting the balance between humans and
nature in rural communities. Agribusiness growing crops for export
is claiming more and more of the water once used by family and
peasant farmers for food self-sufficiency and industry is creeping
up the major river systems drinking them dry as they go.
Already as big industrial wells probe the water millions of
Chinese farmers have found their wells pumped dry and 80% of
China's major rivers are so degraded that they no longer support
fish. Similarly 75% of Russia's lake and river water is unsafe to
drink.
There is simply no way to overstate the danger of this water
crisis to the planet today. The World Bank and many others have
said that the wars of the next century will be about water. I want
to emphasize that no piecemeal solution is going to prevent the
collapse of whole societies and ecosystems and that a radical
re-thinking of our values, priorities and political systems is
urgent.
And yet -- and yet -- just as humanity is beginning to face this
stark crisis, political leaders of just about every stripe have
embraced the ideology of economic globalization. They are
integrating their national and local economies into a single,
deregulated global market thereby freeing transnational capital
from the constraints of domestic law.
All over the world, governments are dismantling environmental
legislation while allowing industry to police itself, essentially
commodifying nature. In fact, forces are already at work that
would see water become a private commodity to be sold and traded
on the open market, controlled by transnational corporations and
guaranteed to the private use of capital through global trade and
investment agreements of the WTO.
In industries ranging from municipal water and waste water
services, to an explosion in bottled water, to the mass bulk water
removals by tanker, corporations are lining up to exploit the
increasingly desperate global demand for water. "Water is the last
infrastructure frontier for private investors", says the European
Bank for Reconstruction and Development president.
The world of privatized water is overwhelming dominated by two
transnationals from France, Vivendi SA, and Suez Lyonnaise des
Eaux, the General Motors and Ford Company of the water world. They
are joined by mega-energy industries like Enron that has just set
up a water division headed by the dreaded Rebecca Mark who swears
she will not rest until the entire world's water is privatized.
Then, of course, there are global shipping companies eager to
begin the global trade in commercial bulk water.
Governments and international government agencies are paving the
way for the commodification of water. The UN Economic and Social
Council Commission on Sustainable Development actually proposes
that governments turn to large multi-national corporations for
capital and expertize and called for an open-market in water
rights. At a recent UN conference in Paris, governments proposed
to turn water into a global commodity driven by market forces and
higher prices and they called for an enlarged role for the private
sector.
Now in this they have a good friend in the World Trade
Organization. Because high on the list for negotiations this week
in Seattle are Services. And high on the list within the Services
sector is an item called "Environmental Services" which includes
water. If environmental services are put on the table every
member-country of the WTO will have to open its municipal water
services -- and in fact the governance of all its natural
resources -- to global private competition. And the transnational
corporations will have the right to bid for public funding in
these areas. By the way, this same service agreement is talking
about opening up health, education and social programs as well.
Further, both the WTO and the North American Free Trade Agreement
have adopted the GATT definition of a "good" which includes water.
Now this is very important. Because Article 11 of the GATT
specifically prohibits the use of export controls for any purposes
and eliminates quantitative restrictions on imports and exports.
The WTO and NAFTA both ensure what's called "national treatment"
to transnational corporations which means they basically can help
themselves to a country's water the moment it issues its first
permit.
The GATT does have a provision called Article 20 which purportedly
allows countries to use certain measures to protect natural
resources. But the use of Article 20 can be challenged as a
disguised barrier to trade and every time any country has tried to
protect an environmental or health law by using Article 20 against
a WTO challenge the WTO has won. In any case, the few measures
allowed by Article 20 are not permitted under NAFTA which gives
additional rights to North American corporations to sue for
financial compensation if these rights are denied to them.
Already we have a huge case in Canada. Sun Belt Water of Santa
Barbara, California is suing the Canadian government for 10.5
billion dollars in damages because the company lost a contract to
export bulk water when the government of British Columbia banned
its export in 1993. The corporation rightly says that NAFTA gives
it the right to involve itself in Canadian government policy. I
quote the President, Jack Lindsay, who says, "Because of NAFTA we
are now stakeholders in the national water policy of Canada."
But Americans have equal cause for concern. Alaska has become the
first jurisdiction in the world to pass legislation permitting the
export of bulk fresh water for commercial purposes. A British
Columbia company called Global Water Corporation has signed a
contract with Sitka, Alaska to export 18 billion gallons of
glacier water per year and ship it by tanker to be bottled in one
of China's infamous free trade zones.
The company boasts on its website that the deterioration of the
world's water quality is a great investment opportunity and I
quote "Water has moved from being an endless commodity that may be
taken for granted to a rationed necessity that may be taken by
force." If Alaska were to change its mind, under the international
trade rules as they exist, Global Water Corp could sue the U.S.
government for all lost profit, present and future. And yet when
several governors around the Great Lakes asked Mr. Clinton this
past week if he would allow the water issue to be raised at the
talks this week, he said No.
This must not be allowed to happen. Water must be exempted from
both NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, as I might add, so
must the trade in genes, seeds, air, health, education, social
services, natural resources, and culture.
This is not to say that those of us living in water-rich areas of
the world don't have a responsibility to those living in areas of
water-deprivation. Particularly since we have to recognize that
it's the corporations of the First World that have done such
damage in the Third. But there is a world of difference between
water sharing and water trading. You can be sure that under the
WTO it would not be the world's poor who would gain access to
water. Rather, countries, water-intensive corporations, free trade
zones and wealthy communities able to pay top dollar, would win
that prize.
This is just the first step to prevent the commodification of the
world's water. In Canada we formed a coalition of civil society
groups called Water Watch. We're developing what we call a Water
Ethic based on the principle that water belongs to the Earth and
all species, is a vital part of the Earth's heritage, and is a
fundamental human right. Therefore, water must be preserved in the
public domain for all time and protected by strong local,
national, and international law.
At stake is the whole notion of the commons: the idea that through
our public institutions, we recognize a shared human and natural
heritage to be preserved for future generations. We believe that
citizens and communities around the world must be the keepers of
our waterways and must establish community organizations to
oversee the wise and conserving use of this precious resource.
I quote to you a lovely way of describing how water is so personal
to us by Michael Parfit from the National Geographic. He says
Watersheds come in families, nested levels of intimacy.
On the grandest scale the hydrologic web is like all
humanity -- Serbs, Russians, Koyukon Indians, Amish, the
billion lives in the People's Republic of China -- it's
broadly troubled, but it's hard to know how to help. As
you work upstream toward home, you're more closely
related. The big river is like your nation, a little out
of hand. The lake is your cousin. The creek is your
sister. The pond is her child. And, for better or for
worse, in sickness and in health, you're married to your
sink.
In closing I want to say that it is my fervent hope that civil
society, you and me and all of us who are gathering here this week
in Seattle, will adopt this Water Ethic and make our mark as never
before in this international gathering. And just who are we,
coming together from all over the world, here in Seattle? We are
the seed-keepers of democracy. We are educators and front-line
health care workers. We are First-Nations people. We are
anti-poverty and social-justice activists. We are committed
environmentalists. We are working people from every corner of the
Earth. We are old and young and everything in between. We
represent the majority of the Earth's people and we demand to be
heard in the corridors of power. We stopped the MAI in its track,
and we found that we prefer winning to losing.
We put these people on notice we will be here beyond Seattle. And
we are committed with our lives to building a different model and
a different future for humanity, the Earth, and other species. We
have envisaged a moral alternative to economic globalization and
we will not rest until we see it realized. Thank you.
________________________________________________________________
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| Tape recordings of IFG Teach-Ins are produced by Maria |
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| Useful consciousness: In a closet in her |
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| on the impact of big corporations on our |
| society. --San Francisco Bay Guardian |
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