ENVIRONMENT: Dispute Arises over Water Laws

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

KYOTO, Japan, Mar 19 2003 (IPS) - Patricia Wouters wants champagne to flow if the international water conference here can call for water laws to be implemented. She is up against environmentalists determined to block such laws.

"It will be a major achievement, a first," says Wouters, director of the International Water Law Research Institute at the University of Dundee in Scotland. "It will affirm that the water law issue is becoming more mainstream."

Such a move would also strengthen efforts at the Third World Water Forum (TWWF) to achieve "good governance" on water-related issues, says Wouters who has been a water lawyer for 10 years. "You cannot debate water and governance without the law."

Other lawyers are backing this demand. "The laws will help to draw the line between public control and private use, and who can acquire the right to use water and the conditions it can be used in," says Prof Dan Tarlock from the Chicago-Kent College of Law in the U.S. "Yet it cannot be a top-down approach, because water law is about water for all."

The issue of water laws figured only marginally at the second water forum held at The Hague in 2000. A freshwater conference in Bonn in 2001 became a turning point, when ministers backed a proposal for countries to strengthen governance of water affairs, the Global Water Partnership (GWP), an international network on water resources management says in a study on ‘Effective Water Governance’ distributed here Tuesday.

But efforts to get developing countries to incorporate water laws are running into a wave of protests by environment and human rights activists who fear it could legitimise a system disadvantageous to millions of the world’s poor.

"The growing emphasis on water management is new because of the increasing corporatisation of the water sector," says Anuradha Mittal, co-director at Food First, an independent think tank on food and development policy in the United States. "And if it is seen as a problem of management, the private sector says they are better managers."

New water laws are being pushed to make water "a private commodity and not part of the global commons," she says. "This is a brainchild of the water mafia."

Ruth Caplan of the Alliance for Democracy in Washington says if language supporting new water laws is endorsed at the water forum, "it will confirm that the World Water Council (a principal organiser of the TWWF) is more about creating a world for corporations to profit." Water is a human right that cannot be subject to market forces, she says.

These concerns surface in a new book ‘The Water Barons’ by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. "The days of the free glass of water are over in the view of these companies," the introduction to the 143-page book says.

The book looks at the growth of six globally active water companies over the last 12 years in countries such as South Africa, Argentina, the Philippines, Indonesia and Columbia. "The water companies are chasing a business with potential annual revenues at anywhere between 400 billion dollars to three trillion dollars," it says.

The Kyoto forum which runs March 16-23 has thrown up difficulties governments face in this new terrain. "Achieving equality through water rights is a complicated issue," Apichart Anukularmphai, a Thai water expert said at a panel discussion on water governance in south-east Asia.

Three south-east Asian nations – Vietnam, Thailand and Laos – have developed new national water laws. A similar attempt in Sri Lanka failed midstream when the government withdrew support for a water management bill on the eve of the TWWF.

The GWP draws attention to success stories in water law reform. "Chile has been a world leader in water governance," it states. "A major emphasis in the Chilean water reforms has been on the correct pricing of water resources to reflect opportunity costs over and above the tariff."

The report says "similar attempts are under way in Costa Rica and Ecuador where downstream users pay the watershed owners and managers for watershed services."

These laws recognise the need for water rights, how to get water to the poor and who pays for water and how much, says Wouters. "After all, you have only so much water for capture and use."