In the year 2000, the United Nations have decided on eight Millenium Development Goals to improve the living conditions of the world's poorest people by 2015. (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml) One of the main targets is to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water (http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-127190-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html#tab_3-1) How can we push the right for water? Which
social and political frameworks do we need to achieve the Millenium
Development Goals? How
can we get societies to help achieve the Millennium
Development Goals? Please refer to page 55 in the baseline study for further information and lead questions.
Introduction and lead questions
submitted by Bianca Buhl on January 10, 2010
Seitenanfang
© 2010 European Science Parliament | by compuccino.com
Further thoughts
Dear Alice,
thank you for your thoughts on privatization. I think you should publish them in the 'Water, Science and Economy' forum, where people discuss similar topics. You might get more comments there.
Betty, do you have ideas how water could be pushed as a basic human right?
Privatization : a major threat
Water privatization is a short-hand for private sector participation in the provision of water services and sanitation, although more rarely it refers to privatization of water resources themselves. Because water services are seen as a public service, proposals for private sector participation often evoke strong opposition. Globally, more than 90% of water and sanitation systems are publicly owned and operated.
There are different types of private sector participation in water supply and sanitation
The four most common models for increasing transfer of responsibilities to the private operator are:
management contract, lease contract, concession, and full privatization (this model has been used in Chile and England).
Typically, there are five reasons given by proponents of privatization to involve the private sector in water supply and sanitation:
- mobilizing financing for investment
- need for technical expertise
- increasing efficiency
- improvement of service quality
The impact of private sector participation can vary substantially from one case to the other. In the case of water privatization in England, tariffs increased by 46% in real terms during the first nine years and operating profits have more than doubled in eight years. On the other hand, privatization increased investments and led to a higher quality of river water. However, it has been also argued that privatisation has led to both a decline in quality and supply with much of the infrastructure being left to decay.
Privatization proposals in key public service sectors such as water and electricity are often strongly opposed. Opponents may include political parties, civil society groups, and groups of citizenry. Opposition to privatization includes fear that giving multinational corporations control over the necessities of life would be disadvantageous; that as a result profits would be valued over service, and expensive centralized projects will be undertaken to the exclusion (of even outlawing) of small wells or rain water collection. Past and current water privatization regimes and proposals have denied peoples' rights to collect rain water.
A definition of water right...
Water right in water law refers to theright of a user to use water from a water source, for example : a river, stream, pond or source of groundwater... In areas with plentiful water and few users, such systems are generally not complicated or contentious. In other areas, espeically in arid areas where irrigation is practiced, such systems are often the source of conflict, both legal and physical. Some systems treat surface water and ground water in the same manner, while others use different principles for each.
But there is another meaning to ''water right'' : the access to water has to be recognized as a basic human right and not as a commodity.