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!!!
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------



  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.


 
      ________________________________________________________________
      |                                                              |
      |    Tape recordings of IFG Teach-Ins are produced by Maria    |
      |    Gilardin's TUC Radio. As Maria explains, "When looking    |
      |    for a name, I came across a pilot's handbook and found    |
      |    the acronym TUC, an aeronautical term. `Time of Useful    |
      |    Consciousness' is the time between the onset of oxygen    |
      |    deficiency and the loss of consciousness. These are the   |
      |    brief moments in which a pilot may save the troubled      |
      |    plane."                                                   |
      |                                                              |
      |         "Maria Gilardin's TUC Radio might be the last        |
      |         truly subversive voice on the dial.                  |
      |                                         --Daniel Zoll        |
      |                                                              |
      |         Useful consciousness: In a closet in her             |
      |         apartment, Maria Gilardin produces radio shows       |
      |         on the impact of big corporations on our             |
      |         society.         --San Francisco Bay Guardian        |
      |                                                              |
      |    Contact TUC Radio for a copy of the TUC catalog and a     |
      |    schedule of upcoming TUC broadcasts                       |
      |                                                              |
      |         Box 410009                                           |
      |         San Francisco, CA   94141                            |
      |         call (415) 861-6962                                  |
      |         or E-mail tuc@tucradio.org                           |
      |         www.tucradio.org                                     |
      |                                                              |
      |______________________________________________________________|




	   http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/ifg112699MB.html
	   http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/ifg112699MB.pdf
	   http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/ifg112699MB.txt