Posted by WTO Watch Qld on April 1, 2003 at 23:07:50:
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Water is not a commodity and must not be left to the whims of the
market because no person or entity has the right to profit from it.
Water must not, therefore, be commodified, privatized, traded or
exported for commercial gain. Water must be excluded as a good, a
service and an investment in all international, regional and bilateral
trade agreements.
WATER IS LIFE - A Civil Society World Water Vision for Action
Public Citizen's Water For All Campaign www.citizen.org
1) COMING EVENTS
2) CALLS TO ACTION
3) GATS UPDATE
4) FOCUS ON WORLD WATER FORUM and WATER
a) Statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
b) Report from World Water Forum
c) World Creating Food Bubble Economy based on Unsustainable Use of Water
------------------------------------------------------------
1) COMING EVENTS
These are the details for the Brisbane meeting of the ALP's task force which is seeking community input into the GATS prior to the Senate Inquiry
Details re times and venues for other cities are avaiable from Craig Emerson.
Tuesday 8 April
11am
Woodridge Senior Citizens Centre, 53 Defiance Rd, Logan Central
The format of the forum, will be a presention on the GATS US-FTA, general
questions and answers from those attending. It will then be followed by
individuals and groups who wish to make a more formal submission to the taskforce.
Please let craig Emerson know if you are able to attend and if you wish to be
allocated some time for a submission.
Craig Emerson
Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Trade
Phone: 07 3299 5910 (Woodridge) 02 6277 4659 (Canberra)
Fax: 07 3208 8744 (Woodridge) 02 6277 8418 (Canberra)
Web: www.craigemersonmp.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) CALLS TO ACTION
MEMBERS OF THE SENATE INQUIRY INTO GATS AND AUS/US FREE TRADE AGREEMENT HAVE AGREED TO EXTEND THE CLOSING TIME FOR SUBMISSIONS (deadline was originally, Friday 21 March)
EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS NOW FRIDAY 11 APRIL 2003
For information on how to make a submission (includes extended closing date for submissions), please visit:
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/fadt_ctte/GATS/index.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ON LINE PETITION FOR QLD CITIZENS
This is a petition website sponsored by the Qld government. Only Qld citizens may sign. It would be good to get a VERY big response to this petition. It has been placed on the website by the Alliance to Expose GATS. The petition will be presented to the Qld parliament to coincide with the WTO ministerial in Cancun in September. Please circulate through your networks. Go to
http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/Petitions/cgi-bin/Petitions.cgi?PetNum=148&PetType=1
If that link doesn't work, please go to www.parliament.qld.gov.au and click on Petitions.
The text of the petition is:
"Queensland citizens draw the attention of the House to increasing community concern about the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Australia is currently involved in a new round of negotiations on the GATS through the World Trade Organisation (WTO). We are concerned that this negotiation process is not open nor is there sufficient accountability to the Australian community for the decisions made in this process. We are concerned that further trade liberalisation under GATS will have a significant effect on the provision of public services in Australia, on the ability of Governments (local, state and federal) to regulate in the public interest and thus will undermine our democratic processes. We therefore ask the House to request the Minister for Trade to make no further commitments under the GATS until (1) the Senate inquiry into the GATS has made its report; (2) the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has publicly released full details of all the requests made of Australia and by Australia in the current round of GATS negotiations; (3) the WTO’s Council for Trade in Services has carried out an ‘assessment of trade in services in overall terms and on a sectoral basis with reference to the objectives of the GATS’ as mandated in the GATS negotiating guidelines; (4) the Commonwealth Government has commissioned multi-disciplinary research into the socio-economic impact of trade liberalisation in Australia since 1994, as recommended by the 2001 Joint Standing Committee on Trade’s inquiry into Australia’s relationship with the WTO."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
3) GATS UPDATE
Trade Minister Mark Vaile announced on March 26 that the government will publish its offers in response to the requests it has received from other countries in the GATS negotiations, at the same time as the offer is lodged with the WTO in Geneva (next week). While this is very encouraging news, it does mean that ther will be no opportunity for parliamentary and community comment on the offers before they are lodged in Geneva.
You will also note that he has made a commitment that no offers will be made in the areas of public health, public education, or the ownership of water.Again, this is very encouraging, but let's just wait and see..........
These concessions were made by the Minister 'in response to considerable community interest.' So....let's keep the pressure on.
The following is an extract from the speech the Minister made to the press Club.
" Next Monday marks the first, truly substantive deadline for the 145 WTO member countries in the Doha Round of global trade negotiations.We are due to submit initial negotiating offers on services, and we are due to agree the so-called modalities - or negotiating guidelines - on agriculture.
On services, I am pleased to report encouraging progress in the negotiations, and to announce two new initiatives by the government.
In response to considerable community interest, the Government will make public Australia's initial offer, at the same time it is lodged in Geneva early next week.
This initiative reinforces the Government's commitment to an open and transparent services negotiation. It builds on the information already available to the public, and on the extensive consultations my Department has held.
On previous occasions, I have underlined our Government's commitment to upholding Australia's sovereign right to regulate and fund public services.
Australia will not be making any offers in the GATS negotiations in the areas of public health, public education, or the ownership of water.
I expect that by next week we will have received offers on services from our major trading partners. These will set benchmarks for liberalisation in services as a key part of the Doha Round.
The offer we make on services next week will reflect the reform we have undertaken in our services sector. It will reaffirm our commitment to progress across all parts of the Doha negotiating agenda."
================================================
4) FOCUS ON WATER
(ED: the World Water Forum has been meeting on Kyoto from March 16-23.)
a) Statement by Sergio Vieira De Mello
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Third World Water Forum (Kyoto, 16-23 March 2003)
Distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen,
You have gathered in Kyoto for the Third World Water Forum to discuss a
range of issues of crucial importance to that essential - but limited -
natural resource, "water." The Third World Water Forum is being held during
the International Year of Freshwater 2003 which was launched by the United
Nations General Assembly to highlight growing global concerns about the
increasing shortage of water and its implications for human life and
relations among nations.
Water is essential to life itself as well as to good health. The right to
water has been recognized as a human right. This right is protected by
international law including through the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the
Child. Yet, despite the centrality of the right to water to human dignity,
one billion people still lack access to safe drinking water, more than 2
billion to proper sanitation and more than 3 million people die each year
from water-borne diseases.
Recently, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights confirmed that 'the human right to water entitles
everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and
affordable water for personal and domestic use.' Beyond personal and
domestic needs, water is necessary for realizing many other human rights,
such as the rights to adequate food, health and housing. Safe water is
especially necessary to reduce the risk of water-related disease. It should
be noted that the principle of non-discrimination applies to the right to
water which means that special attention and measures should be ensured to
benefit the vulnerable and disadvantaged.
The Third World Water Forum therefore comes at an important juncture in the
strengthening of activities and initiatives aimed at the protection and
promotion of the human right to water for all. I am pleased to draw your
attention to two recent initiatives in particular, namely the recent
General Comment of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on
"the right to water" and a joint publication of the World Health
Organisation and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on
"water as a human right".
Access to water must never be compromised and all efforts should be made to
ensure the minimum essential levels of access for human life and dignity.
Your actions to safeguard water as human right will undoubtedly benefit
millions of the most disadvantaged.
=============================================
(C) All rights reserved
b) Kyoto, Japan, 20 Mar (IPS/Marwaan Macan-Markar) --
Just as the US-led war on Iraq has undermined the significance of the United Nations, an international
conference on water here may soon be fighting the same charge.
For activists at the Third World Water Forum (TWWF) here, evidence that the meeting has been seeking legitimacy for a global water agenda beyond the
scope of the United Nations' authority has grown from a trickle to a flood since the eight-day forum began on 16 March.
The most contentious issue has been over financing future water projects, resulting in a widening gulf between the positions maintained by the World Water Council
(WWC), an independent think tank and principal organiser of the forum, and civil society groups here.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have expressed their anger during the discussions on water issues here and through the many flyers and background
notes being distributed to counter the tide of the WWC's positions.
The WWC is backing both private sector and public sector involvement to solve the world's water problems, ranging from lack of safe and adequate water supply
for millions of the world's poor. This French-based body is also open to the continuation of mega water projects, like large dams, for irrigation and hydropower.
The NGOs working on environmental, grassroots and human rights causes are livid at what they see is an attempt by the WWC to use the water forum to secure
legitimacy for the concept of enabling water corporations to flood the predominantly public-service dominated water sector.
Tomoko Sakuma of the Japan Centre for a Sustainable Environment and Society is also critical of the attempt by the WWC to seek a "new level of
legitimacy," through the ministerial meeting at the TWWF.
Over 100 government ministers are billed to participate in a special meeting at the end of the water forum, which has attracted over 18,000 people ranging from
water and health experts, government and UN officials, company executives and NGO activists from nearly 160 countries.
"The water forum is not the United Nations or an inter-governmental group. It does not have that legitimacy," says Sakuma. "They are trying to achieve that
through the ministerial meeting, making it a government forum."
Other NGOs have argued along the same vein about the WWC, implying that it is creating the groundwork to achieve its policy objectives by operating
outside the UN system.
The California-based International Rivers Network had a flyer that began:
"Who's Behind the World Water Forums? A brief guide to the world water mafia."
"A web of think tanks, corporations, agencies and lobby groups is attempting to control the global discourse of water problems and solutions," it went on.
"(The WWC) is a lobby group heavily weighted with engineering and construction companies, dam-building state agencies and water supply corporations."
Public Services International (PSI), a French-based global trade union, sees the WWC's vision being "blurred by profit motive". It argues in a note that the
council's aim is to change "the public systems out of existence" and "restructuring government in the service of water multinationals instead of expanding and improving
public water systems".
On Thursday, Joji Carino of the Tebtebba Foundation, a Philippines-based NGO that represents indigenous people, challenged what she called the still
continuing bias at the WWC towards building large dams during the first round of discussions on 'Dams and Sustainable Development'.
"What is happening here is an attempt to seek approval to build large dams despite evidence about the scale of damage attributed to large dams," she says.
On the privatisation of the water sector, the WWC has been talking the language of compromise. "The council does not advocate a particular stance, but the
private sector is within the water sector and has always been," Francois Guerquin, a WWC spokesman, told the media.
By midweek, the WWC released a statement on public and private sector partnerships saying that "the success or failure of a country's water sector has nothing
to do with its ration of public-private involvement".
The WWC aims at using the discussions and debates at the water forum to seek endorsement for an action-oriented blueprint to dramatically change the
course of global water management.
Ministers from over 100 countries are due to support this declaration that the TWWF
is to produce by the end - consequently conveying governmental support for it.
For the WWC, the Kyoto event is the appropriate follow-up to a UN summit on sustainable development in September last year, when international leaders
pledged to reduce by half the 1.1 billion people who have no access to safe water and the 2.4 billion people who lack adequate sanitation by 2015.
But by Thursday evening, the WWC language had failed to draw the NGOs into its ranks, revealing how unbridgeable the divide is between those who hold power here
- be it policymakers or those with the purse strings - and the powerless, the NGOs working on the ground.
This divide was starkly reflected at the end of two days of discussions on the public and private sector partnerships to fund the water projects needed to
accomplish the goals set at the UN summit last year. The private sector participants and the civil society representatives delivered two separate statements to the TWWF
secretariat to be included in the final declaration.
"There is no transparency in the process here, unlike at the United Nations," says Carino, the Filipino activist. "It is a process we are suspicious about."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
c) WORLD CREATING FOOD BUBBLE ECONOMY BASED ON UNSUSTAINABLE USE OF WATER
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update22.htm
Lester R. Brown
On March 16, 2003, some 10,000 participants will meet in Japan for the third
World Water Forum to discuss the world water prospect. Although they will be
officially focusing on water scarcity, they will indirectly be focusing on
food scarcity because 70 percent of the water we divert from rivers or pump
from underground is used for irrigation.
As world water demand has tripled over the last half-century, it has
exceeded the sustainable yield of aquifers in scores of countries, leading
to falling water tables. In effect, governments are satisfying the growing
demand for food by overpumping groundwater, a measure that virtually assures
a drop in food production when the aquifer is depleted. Knowingly or not,
governments are creating a "food bubble" economy.
As water use climbs, the world is incurring a vast water deficit, one that
is largely invisible, historically recent, and growing fast. Because the
impending water crunch typically takes the form of falling water tables, it
is not visible. Falling water tables are often discovered only when wells go dry.
Once the growing demand for water rises above the sustainable yield of an
aquifer, the gap between the two widens each year. The first year after the
line is crossed, the water table falls very little, with the drop often being scarcely perceptible.
Each year thereafter, however, the annual drop is larger than the year before.
The diesel-driven or electrically powered pumps that make overpumping
possible have become available throughout the entire world at essentially
the same time. The near-simultaneous depletion of aquifers means that
cutbacks in grain harvests will be occurring in many countries at more or
less the same time. And they will be occurring at a time when world
population is growing by more than 70 million a year.
Aquifers are being depleted in scores of countries, including China, India,
and the United States, which collectively account for half of the world
grain harvest. Under the North China Plain, which produces more than half
of China's wheat and a third of its corn, the annual drop in the water table
has increased from an average of 1.5 meters a decade ago to up to 3 meters
today. Overpumping has largely depleted the shallow aquifer, so the amount
of water that can be pumped from it each year is restricted to the annual
recharge from precipitation. This is forcing well drillers to go down to the
region's deep aquifer, which, unfortunately, is not replenishable.
He Quincheng, head of the Geological Environmental Monitoring Institute in
Beijing, notes that as the deep aquifer under the North China Plain is
depleted, the region is losing its last water reserve--its only safety
cushion. His concerns are mirrored in a World Bank report: "Anecdotal
evidence suggest that deep wells [drilled] around Beijing now have to reach
1,000 meters [more than half a mile] to tap fresh water, adding dramatically
to the cost of supply." In unusually strong language for the Bank, the
report forecasts "catastrophic consequences for future generations" unless
water use and supply can quickly be brought back into balance.
India, which now has a billion people, is overdrawing aquifers in several
states, including the Punjab (the country's breadbasket), Haryana, Gujarat,
Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. The latest data indicate that
under the Punjab and Haryana, water tables are falling by up to 1 meter per
year. David Seckler, former head of the International Water Management Institute,
estimates that aquifer depletion could reduce India's grain harvest by one fifth.
In the United States, the underground water table has dropped by more than
30 meters (100 feet) in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas--three key grain-producing states.
As a result, wells have gone dry on thousands of farms in the southern Great Plains.
Pakistan, a country with 140 million people and still growing by 4 million
per year, is also overpumping its aquifers. In the Pakistani part of the fertile Punjab plain,
the drop in the water table appears to be similar to that in India. In the province of Baluchistan,
a more arid region, the water table around the provincial capital of Quetta is falling by 3.5 meters per
year. Richard Garstang, a water expert with the World Wildlife Fund, says that "within 15 years
Quetta will run out of water if the current consumption rate continues."
In Yemen, the water table is falling by roughly 2 meters a year. In its
search for relief, the Yemeni government has drilled test wells in the
Sana'a basin, where the capital is located, that are 2 kilometers (1.2
miles) deep--depths normally associated with the oil industry--yet it has
failed to find water. With a population of 19 million growing at 3.3 percent
a year, one of the highest rates in the world, and with water tables falling
everywhere, Yemen is fast becoming a hydrological basket case. World Bank
official Christopher Ward observes that "groundwater is being mined at such
a rate that parts of the rural economy could disappear within a generation."
In Mexico--home to a population of 104 million that is projected to reach
150 million by 2050--the demand for water is outstripping supply. In the
agricultural state of Guanajuato, for example, the water table is falling by
2 meters or more a year. At the national level, 52 percent of all the water
extracted from underground is coming from aquifers that are being overpumped.
Water scarcity, once a local issue, is now crossing international boundaries
via the international grain trade. Because it takes a thousand tons of water
to produce a ton of grain, importing grain is the most efficient way to import water.
Countries that are pressing against the limits of their water supply typically satisfy
the growing need of cities and industry by diverting irrigation water from agriculture,
and then they import grain to offset the loss of productive capacity. As water shortages intensify, so too
will the competition for grain in world markets. In a sense, trading in grain futures is the same as trading in water futures.
In China, a combination of aquifer depletion, the diversion of irrigation
water to cities, and lower grain support prices are shrinking the grain
harvest. After peaking at 392 million tons in 1998, the harvest dropped to
346 million tons in 2002. China's food bubble may be about to burst. It has
covered its grain shortfall for three years by drawing down its stocks, but
it will soon have to turn to the world market to fill this deficit. When it
does, it could destabilize world grain markets.
Although some countries have already made impressive gains in raising
irrigation efficiency and recycling urban wastewater, the general response
to water scarcity has been to build more dams or drill more wells. But now
expanding supply is becoming more difficult. The only other option is to reduce demand
by stabilizing population and raising water productivity. With nearly all the 3 billion people
to be added by 2050 being born in developing countries where water is already scarce,
achieving an acceptable balance between water and people may now depend more on stabilizing population than
on any other single action.
The second step in stabilizing the water situation is to raise water
productivity, not unlike the way we have raised land productivity. After
World War II, with population projected to double by 2000 and with little
new land to bring under the plow, the world launched a major effort to raise
cropland productivity. As a result, land productivity nearly tripled between
1950 and 2000. Now it is time to see what we can do with water.
-----------------------------------------------------
Terrie Templeton WTO Watch Qld gumbus@powerup.com.au