Credit: UN Peacekeeping

By Riccardo Petrella
BRUSSELS, Jun 30 2022 (IPS)

On Sunday 19 June, we gathered in Sezano, municipality of Verona (VR), at the Monastery of the Common Good to affirm the need and urgency to ban war, all wars, and build peace without yes or no buts.

To the powerful world leaders who want to continue the war in Ukraine (USA, Russia, NATO member states, the European Union which has become a war front, Ukraine) we say STOP your new world war for world domination, of which the one in Ukraine is a dramatic expression.

Why do you still need tens of thousands of dead in the war camps you call liberation camps and tens of millions of people starving to death because of your economic sanctions (countersanctions, retaliations) that only benefit the profits of your big global corporations?

Enough of Putin, Biden, Stoltenberg, Von der Leyen….the world does not need your war in Ukraine. Stop spending over 2.1 trillion dollars on armaments under the hypocritical pretence of saving the peace.

For 70 years, the United States has been at permanent war on every continent with some 800 military bases of occupation in hundreds of countries around the world– and, following the collapse of the Soviet Union– trying to establish themselves in Ukraine as well.

China has only one military base abroad and Russia has only three!

One must know how to lose the victory to know how to build peace.
Because war has never solved problems, it is pure destruction.
War itself is a crime– and if you keep proposing wars, you are a criminal.

The greatest victory is to make peace, because the right to life is a universal right, for everyone and because it shows that you want and know how to live with others. and do not want to dominate others, but live together in the present to promote a future ever more just and united, in common.

Because the world emergency is to put an end to the profits and enrichment of the strongest and collaborate in building hospitals (not tanks), schools (not fighter planes), food production (not fighter planes), to the production of food (not missiles), of drinking water (not toxic gases), to the toxic gases), to the promotion of fraternity (not arms trade).

We must Stop All Wars that are currently martyring and killing people in Syria, Yemen, Congo, Palestine, Western Sahara, Kurdistan, among others.

The cynical silence of the West on the new military invasions by Erdogan’s Turkey in northern Iraq and north-eastern Syria inhabited by Kurdish populations is intolerable.

Inhabitants of the Earth, defend peace and the rights of all! Denunciation is necessary. Building peace, starting with an immediate cessation of hostilities, is even more necessary and positive for all.

Listen to the Intergovernmental Panel on United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicts that global warming is three and a half years away to exceed 1.5 degrees.

Do not listen to the US, Russia, France, Britain, China, North Korea, Israel,
India and Pakistan who are building nuclear weapons. Listen to the 130 UN countries that support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Signed in from:
Brussels, Verona, Palermo, Rome, Montreal, Trois Rivières, Coyahique (Patagonia CL), Rosario, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Clermont-Ferrand, Paris, Poitou Charentes, Neuchâtel, Dakar, Beirut, Lisbon, Toronto, Vancouver…

For further information, please contact petrella.riccardo@gmail.com or the Agora ‘s site agora-humanité.org Riccardo Petrella is president of the association.

IPS UN Bureau

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Colombia was one of the first countries in the Americas to receive the COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX Facility. Credit: PAHO/Karen González

By Riccardo Petrella and Roberto Savio
BRUSSELS / ROME, May 10 2021 (IPS)

The news of the Biden Administration’s willingness to lift intellectual property rights protections in the case of the Covid-19 pandemic has sent the world into turmoil, even though in recent days this willingness had become increasingly airy.

Big step forward? Victory for the “South” and the movements that have been fighting for this (including, for more than a year, the Agora of the Earth’s Inhabitants – agora-humanite.org – even though from the beginning we considered that the provisional suspension was a “par défaut” solution)?

Are we experiencing humanitarian compassion and confirmed dominance of the rich over the poor?

Interesting aspects

The position taken by Biden constitutes the change expected by the world. The media pressure on Biden and on the Democratic representatives in Congress was so strong that a negative or uncertain response would have cost Biden a great deal in terms of his global image. The language and form were also good, in total contrast to the previous administration. Biden did not disappoint.

Second point. He has given a breath of hope and credibility back to the ‘international community’ in a dramatic phase for the entire world population. We are still a long way from the “All Brothers” of Pope Francis, but the Catholic Biden has not failed to wink at his Pope’s public incitement

Finally, he forced the EU to follow suit. Yesterday, for the first time in many years of rejection, the EU also declared itself willing to discuss it.

Crucial aspects

The fact is that on the substance the change is not so evident.

Why? Let us examine carefully the statement of Katherine Tai, the US Trade Representative at the World Trade Organisation (WTO)

1. The statement begins with yet another statement of faith on the protection of intellectual property rights. “This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in services of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for Covid-19 vaccines”.

No dissociation from the founding principles of the dominant economy, nor a clear and open contrast with the world of business and the pharmaceutical industry, especially American. Moreover, the support given is rather restrictive, limited only to anti-Covid-19 vaccines. By introducing such a restriction in a very complex scientific and technological field (the production of basic materials indispensable to vaccine production, for example, is excluded), the effective possibilities of suspending protection are considerably reduced.

2. Article 31 of the WTO-TRIPS treaties provides for the possibility of waiving the protection of intellectual property in the event of serious needs and for public intervention. We mention in particular the “compulsory licence”, which authorises a State to allow the “local” production of all therapeutic tools (tests/diagnoses, medicines, vaccines…) without the consent of the companies holding the patents. In fact, this is the first time that the United States has not been generous but has shown that it accepts the respect of those WTO-Trips rules that it had always, since 1995, fought against because they were considered contrary to its interests.

In other words, the important ‘political’ change is that the United States, from being disrespectful of international treaties that do not suit them, has become a state that is willing, in the case of Covid-19 vaccines, to discuss how to apply the existing rules. The treaties, moreover, already specify the conditions under which exceptions to the protection of intellectual property can be applied. If one adds the above-mentioned restriction, one has to admit that the US position is rather tortuous and bizarre. But why do they do it?

3. A possible answer is given in the official statement. The US does not commit itself to anything specific. They say “We will actively participate in text-based negotiations at the WTO need to make that happen”, and correctly state that “These negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved”. That is, the US does not say, “well, as of tomorrow we will apply the rules of provisional suspension according to the conditions mentioned in the Treaties”. No, the statement insists that the negotiations will take a long time. How long? Three months, a year, three years? According to experts in the field, it will take, if all goes well, almost a year to rewrite the rules. And in the meantime?

4. It is clear from this that the real strategy of the US is to prioritise logistical and financial solutions concerning essentially the production of vaccines, their distribution and marketing at affordable prices, especially for the 92 low-income countries and other middle-income countries in increasing economic difficulty. The statement says “The Administration’s aim is to get as many safe and effective vaccines to as many people as fast as possible.

As our vaccines supply for the American people is secured, the Administration will continue to rump up its efforts – working with the private sector and all possible partners – to expand a vaccine manufacturing and distribution. It will also work to increase the raw materials needed to produce these vaccines”.

Considering the problem and solutions of the health crisis as a problem of production, supply and purchase, market prices and consumer solvency is typically an American/capitalist approach.

As is the appeal that since the security of supply of vaccines for the American people has been guaranteed, the US will increase its efforts to increase the production and distribution of vaccines at affordable prices paid for by the public authorities. Well, we have some difficulty in assessing this as a major step forward.

A mainly public health policy and solutions to the dramatic pandemic go beyond the processes of vaccine production and consumption. No opening is made for a public vision of the pharmaceutical industry and the world health system.

Vaccines, and first and foremost knowledge/science/, remain private under patent ownership. The market remains the principle and the fundamental regulatory mechanism. The financial imperatives of the market dictate the choices of the public authorities.

Hence the absence of any mention of the fact that the central axis of world health policy must shift from the rules on trade (WTO) to the rules on universal rights to health and the health system under the responsibility of public international bodies such as WHO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO…).

According to the American government, states are there to ensure the proper functioning of health markets, and to defend the security of their citizens in the context of a ‘world economic governance’ dominated by the rules of the WTO and the World Bank. The richer states have the task of helping the poorer ones. See the role of Covax and its probable financial strengthening.

We remain in the midst of the structural dualism of “rich and poor” and the logic of the inevitability of aid and the domination of the “North” over the future of the peoples of the “South” and the planet.

The oxygen crisis in India is a major example of the consequence of the inadmissible commodification and privatisation of oxygen for therapeutic purposes that has been going on for several decades.

Forget health as a universal human right, a common good, a public good! Forget ‘public health policy’.

In conclusion

The US position is new, but in some ways, it goes in a direction that is not necessarily better. It is also important that the US forced the EU, however recalcitrant, to state yesterday that Europe is also willing to negotiate.

No one can say what the outcome of the negotiations will be. In the meantime, putting the emphasis on increased vaccine production (“now that the American people are safe….”) means that the fundamental, structural premises unfortunately remain unchanged.

Of course, the fact that the ‘good’ emperor has finally listened to the cry of the people is not to be dismissed. But is this enough to sing victory? Whose victory?

Why should the peoples of the Earth thank the USA for the step taken?

In order to hope that the symbolic value of the change made by Biden will be transformed into an effective process in favour of the right to health and life of all the inhabitants of the Earth, other changes are objectively necessary.

The compassion of the powerful is only an illusory remedy.

*Riccardo Petrella is Professor Emeritus of the Catholic University of Louvain (B) and Roberto Savio is President of Other News; co-founders of the Agora of Earth’s Inhabitants.

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A healthcare worker at a testing facility collects samples for the coronavirus at Mimar Sinan State Hospital, Buyukcekmece district in Istanbul, Turkey. Credit: UNDP Turkey/Levent Kulu

By Riccardo Petrella
BRUSSELS, Nov 30 2020 (IPS)

The holding of this Special Session (the 37th in the history of the UN) is of considerable importance. It is a unique opportunity to define and implement joint actions at the global level to fight the pandemic in order to ensure the right to life and health for all the inhabitants of the Earth. As the President of the UN General Assembly wrote in his letter of convocation: “Let us not forget that none of us are safe until we are all safe”.

This is a historic moment. The future of the UN is at stake, and above all the capacity of our societies to give life a universal value free from any subordination to market, economic and power “reasons”.

Health, life, is not a question of business, profits, national power, domination or survival of the strongest. The right to health for all is not only a question of access to care (medicines, vaccines….).

This special session is also very important because it represents a great opportunity for us citizens. It encourages us to express our priorities and wishes, to put pressure on our elected leaders so that their decisions comply with the constitutional principles of our States and with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Peoples.

As the Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth, we have already intervened in September with the UN Secretary General in defense of a health policy without private patents for profit and free of charge (under collective financial responsibility.

On 23 October, at the WTO (World Trade Organisation) level, the “rich” countries of the “North” (United States, European Union, Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan…) rejected the request made by South Africa and India, supported by the WHO (World Health Organisation) and other countries of the South, to temporarily suspend the application of patent rules in the fight against Covid-19.

The suspension was intended to allow people in impoverished countries fair and effective access to coronavirus treatment. We deeply deplore it. With this rejection, the aforementioned countries have flouted the political and legal primacy of the right to health according to the rules and objectives set at the international level by WHO over the “logics” and market interests promoted by WTO. This is unacceptable.

Is humanity at the beginning of the end of any global common health policy inspired by justice, responsibility and solidarity?

Inequalities in the right to health have worsened as part of a general increase in impoverishment. According to the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report of the World Bank the COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021.¹

The vaccine market is valued at about $29.64 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow to $43.79 billion at a CAGR of 10.3% through 2020. The sector is marked by a high degree of concentration: four major pharmaceutical groups dominated in 2019 in terms of turnover generated by the marketing of vaccines.

Leading the way is the British company GlaxoSmithKline, followed by the American Merck and Pfizer, with 7.3 and 5.9 billion euros respectively, and then the French company Sanofi with over 5.8 billion euros last year.

The concentration of vaccine production is also impressive. Europe currently accounts for three-quarters of global vaccine production. The rest of the production is divided mainly between North America (13%) and Asia (8%). In Europe, there are pharmaceutical giants such as Roche, Novartis and Bayer.

The resulting social fractures from above-mentioned trends make it more difficult to implement measures and actions in line with common, shared objectives, in the interest of all, especially the weakest who are at risk.

The spirit of survival and nationalist, racist and class divisions have been reinforced. With a few exceptions, the commodification and privatisation of health systems have contributed to the transfer of decision-making powers to private global industrial, commercial and financial subjects.

National political powers, which are responsible for the processes of commodification and privatisation, are less and less able to design and impose a global and public health policy in the interest of the world’s population.

Mainstream narratives, values, choices and regulation practices must change

The world situation is dramatic. This does not mean that it’s impossible to reverse to-day’s trends. Here below we mention the solutions that Agora of the Inhabitants has submitted to the attention of the president of the UN General Assembly in view of the Special Session on Covid-19.

Our proposals were the subject of a consultation with associations, groups, movements and citizen networks during the month of November. We have received 1,285 signed personal emails of support from 53 countries.

First, the Special Session must strongly reaffirm the principle that the health of all the inhabitants of the Earth is the greatest wealth we possess. Health matters, health is a universal right. It should not belong only to those who have the power to purchase the goods and services necessary and indispensable for life. Our States must stop spending almost 2 trillion dollars a year on armaments and wars.

The health of 8 billion human beings and other living species is more important than the power of conquest and extermination. To this end, it is necessary to change the priorities of global finance by investing in the economy of global public goods (health, water, knowledge/education.

The Special Session should: – propose the creation of a public cooperative financial fund for health, as an integral part of a Global Deposits and Consignments Fund for Global Public Goods; – commission UNIDIR or a commission of independent experts to submit a study report on immediate reductions in military expenditure and the reconversion of its allocation to the development, production and distribution of public goods and services in the health and related fields of water, agro-food and knowledge.

Second, universal rights to life imply that the goods and services indispensable for life should no longer be subject to private appropriation nor to exclusive collective appropriation. Therefore it is necessary to build the common future of all the inhabitants of the Earth by promoting and safeguarding the common public goods and services indispensable for life.

Water, health, seeds, housing and knowledge and education, are the most obvious common public goods. They cannot be dissociated from universal rights. Patents on life (and artificial intelligence) are a strong example of the dissociation between goods that are indispensable for life, such as medical care goods (infrastructure, medicines, and so on) and the right to life.

Hence, we propose:

• to recognise that health (goods and services) is a global common public good that must be safeguarded, protected and valued by the community, under the responsibility of democratically elected public authority institutions, at the different levels of societal organisation of human communities, from the local to the global community of life on Earth;
• approve the abandonment for the period 2021-2023 of application of the rules concerning patents on living organisms, in particular on all the tools for combating the Covid-19 pandemic (diagnostics, treatment, vaccines). The monopolies left to patent holders have no relevant social, ethical, economic and political value. To this end, the Member States of the United Nations and its specialised agencies, representatives of all the peoples and citizens of the Earth, commit themselves, for want of anything better, to use as of now existing instruments of international law such as compulsory licensing;
• decide to set up a global Task Force, under the aegis of the UN, to revise the legal-institutional regime of intellectual property in the Anthropocene, the aim of which would be to abandon the principle of the patentability of living organisms for private and profit-making purposes and to define a new global regime on intellectual property in the light also of the experience accumulated in recent years in the field of artificial intelligence.

Third, it is of fundamental importance to abandon submission to the dictates of “In the name of money”. “You are not profitable? You are not indispensable. In any case, your life is not a priority”. It is not because a person is not profitable for the capital invested that he or she is no longer indispensable. Being without purchasing power does not mean becoming without rights. Life is not money. Living beings are not commodities, resources for profit.

To this end, the Special Session should:

• highlight the need for the re-publicization of scientific research (basic and applied) and technological development. The pooling of knowledge and health protocols, medicines and vaccines must be part of the immediate measures to be taken. In this perspective;
• propose the approval of a Global Compact on Science for Life and Security for all the inhabitants of the Earth;
• to convey in 2022 a UN world conference on the global common public goods and services. The current mystifying use of the concept of ‘global public goods’ in relation to Covid-19 vaccines underlines the urgency and importance of the proposal.

Fourth, a global health policy requires a global political architecture capable, above all, of outlawing predatory finance. The “global security” of the global public goods in the interests of life for all the inhabitants of the Earth can be achieved by creating global institutions with corresponding competences and powers.

The Earth inhabitants do not need new winners, new global conquerors. They need world leaders and citizens who are convinced that the future of life on Earth requires a new and urgent Global Social Pact for Life. In 25 years’ time, the UN will celebrate the centenary of its founding.

The Special Session must make it clear that there can no longer be a debate on small adjustments to the global regulatory model known as “multilateralism”.

The Special Session should:

• recognise Humanity as an institutional subject and key actor in the global politics of life. The opening of a Global Common House of Knowledge, based on the existing pooling of knowledge, experiences, technical tools (case of Costa Rica concerning health…) will be a significant concrete step forward;
• propose the urgent creation of a Global Public Goods and Services Security Council, starting with health, water and knowledge.

It is time for governments and citizens to get or regain common control of health policy. The Special Session must set the record straight. The right to health for all is not only a question of (economic) access to care (medicines, vaccines…) but, more, a question of building the human, social, economic (such as employment…), environmental and political conditions that shape an individual and collective healthy state.

Agora of the Inhabitants of the Earth

¹ Extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, is likely to affect between 9.1% and 9.4% of the world’s population in 2020.

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By Riccardo Petrella and - -
LOUVAIN, Jun 23 2008 (IPS)

The latest Human Development Report 2007/2008 of the UNDP on climate change forecasts that in less than 20 years, 2.4 billion human beings will live in shanty towns and poor suburbs that lack water and sanitation and suffer high rates of infant mortality, writes Riccardo Petrella, founder of the International Committee for a World Water Contract, is professor emeritus at the Catholic University of Louvain. In this article for IPS, Petrella writes that the world\’s major political challenge for the next thirty years and beyond is guaranteeing the right to a human life for all: in other words, the complete eradication of poverty from the world, and more precisely, the elimination of those approaches and processes which have led to the mass pauperisation of the world\’s populations. The solution involves a total and radical redefinition of the future of cities in which cities have to be given back to citizens. The author calls shifting the investment and use of local and global resources towards the generation of collective wealth in poor suburbs, namely the production of communal goods: water, health, education, housing, agriculture for local needs, renewable energies, energy saving, etc. This will involve a battle for the global restructuring of the current financial system, whose latest, umpteenth crisis proves such change is absolutely necessary.

The latest Human Development Report 2007/2008 of the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) on climate change forecasts that in less than 20 years, 2.4 billion human beings will live in shanty towns and poor suburbs – places where affluent westerners would not even want their cats to live. Their lack of water and sanitation and the high rate of infant mortality bring into sharp relief the dramatic challenge of life/non-life facing billions of human beings.

It is estimated that the shanty towns of the main urban conglomerations of Africa, Latin America, and Asia (which have 42 of the 61 largest cities of the world, each with over five million inhabitants) now contain over one billion human beings in conditions of long-term poverty, collective physical, social, and moral violence and exclusion, and negation of the minimum standards of existence worthy of being called human. The city-dwellers of the countries of the North tend to see these populations as incapable, born to destitution and deprivation, and therefore easy prey for religious, ethical, and political fanaticism – a potential army for global terrorism.

In reality, poor suburbs and shanty towns reflect the dysfunctional growth of cities and are the weak and most vulnerable elements of our current urban civilisation. While the city of London can afford to spend EUR 1.2 billion every year to protect itself against the risk of floods, storms, and other natural disasters, a few days ago the suburbs of Rangoon and the city of Bogalay in Burma were swept away by a cyclone that left more than 50,000 dead. Their inhabitants were simply poor.

Looking back over the last thirty or so years (from when the countries of the North imposed the Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP) on the rest of the world) there can be no doubt that the ruling classes of the North, as well as those of the South (in thrall to the former), have no intention of taking the essential measures needed to bring about the disappearance of the shanty towns (and of poverty) and transform them into civilised places for human beings.

The inconclusive outcome of the last meeting, in April 2008, in Japan of the Civil G8 (the international coordinators of NGOs working to combat poverty and the sherpas of G8) provided yet another confirmation that the world’s ruling classes seem to prefer allowing the shanty towns to become permanent ghettos while preventing their inhabitants from emigrating to the countries of the North. The only immigrants from the South welcomed in the North are those with university qualifications, preferably a PhD.

The world’s major political challenge for the next thirty years and beyond is guaranteeing the right to a human life for all: in other words, completely eradicating poverty from the world, and more precisely, eliminating those approaches and processes which have led to the mass pauperisation of the world’s populations. It also means that the solution involves a total and radical redefinition of the future of cities in which cities have to be given back to the citizens.

How? Through a policy that shifts the investment and use of local and global resources towards the generation of collective wealth in poor suburbs, namely the production of communal goods: water, health, education, housing, agriculture for local needs, renewable energies, energy saving, etc. This will involve a battle for the global restructuring of the current financial system, whose latest, umpteenth crisis proves such change is absolutely necessary.

We need a three-pronged global strategy focused on providing housing, safe water, and adequate sanitation to small districts of cooperative housing. Financing should come from new regional systems for income tax collection, underpinned by a 10 percent reduction in military spending in the context of a policy of gradual disarmament – an urgent albeit extremely challenging objective.

Who should make the first move? We, the activists of the various Norths and Souths of the world. New life must be breathed into the fight on a continental and global scale by local communities for a different world, focusing on water, food, health, and housing, and bearing in mind that there is a great difference between the late 1990s and the first few years of this century. People today are much more aware of the problems of life on this planet than they were a few years ago, even the affluent.

The great wave of conservative oligarchic revolution which has trampled the world’s continents over the last thirty years has not yet ended, but the damage it has caused is also having an adverse effect on the lives of those in charge. That does not mean that the ruling classes will make root-and-branch changes to the system. They will try to implement moderate adjustments and palliatives (like the green neocapitalism and the European Union’s proposals to combat global warming) or solutions that are worse than the problems (like zero tolerance of illegal immigrants and fighting the poor instead of poverty). But they will not succeed in thwarting the fight for life. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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By Riccardo Petrella and - -
LOVAINA, Aug 14 2007 (IPS)

It is well known that even in countries where mineral water is public property, it is private companies that are making major and easy profits from selling it, writes Riccardo Petrella, founder member and General Secretary President of the International Committee for the World Water Contract, and professor at the Catholic University of Louvain. In this article, the author writes that the \’\’business\’ of bottled mineral water has become one of the most lucrative and fast-growing sectors around the world. The Swiss private bank Pictet forecasts that by 2015 private companies will supply water to almost 1.75 billion \’\’consumers\’\’. In this context, it is not surprising to learn that water management companies are among the most hotly bought and sold businesses, much the way shoes or refrigerators are. The last major instance of this was the sale of of Thames Water, which in fifteen years passed from being a public entity to a private British company to a holding of a German energy giant and now of an Australian bank. It should not be excluded that in ten more years Thames Water could pass into the hands of a Chinese company specialising in urban waste removal.

It is now becoming equally well-known that the private water distribution companies, as well as those private-public concerns ever more numerous in the water service sector, are taking possession and/or control of potable water around the world.

The French firms Suez-Ondeo and Vivendi-Veolia alone manage the water supply of over 250 million people, a number that doesn’t include those whose water is provided by companies in which Suez and Vivendi have major stock holdings. The Swiss private bank Pictet forecasts that by 2015 private companies will supply water to almost 1.75 billion ”consumers”. In this context, it is not surprising to learn that water management companies are among the most hotly bought and sold businesses, much the way shoes or refrigerators are.

The last major instance of this was that of Thames Water – the largest water company in the UK and number three in the world (after the two French firms named above)– which was bought by Australia’s Macquarie Bank from Germany’s RWE. RWE, a European energy giant, had bought Thames Water in 2000 for 7.1 billion euros in its bid to become Europe’s top multi-utility company (bridging energy, transport, waste removal, water, telecommunications…). This move towards a multi-utilities strategy also pushed the Italian energy company ENEL towards a possible acquisition of Acquedotto Pugliese. For various reasons, the management of RWE recently decided to focus exclusively in its area of expertise with the goal of keeping its position as one of the world’s energy giants in the process of restructuring and consolidating. Thus Thames Water was sold as quickly as it had been bought.

Macquarie Bank paid 14 billion euros for Thames Water. An Australian bank specialising in financial services and infrastructure investments, it has never had anything to do with water. For example, it owns the airports of Brussels and Copenhagen. At present it has about 8900 employees in 24 countries.

So why did Macquarie invest so heavily in the water sector – also buying the American company Acquarion for USD 860 million. Certainly not because it has an industrial-environmental plan to modernise the water infrastructure for the 13 million inhabitants of greater London and the 50 million other people Thames Water serves.

The reason is purely financial: to increase the Group’s profits by entering a very profitable sector destined to become even more so in the future as long as the process of water privatisation continues and potable water grows in shorter and shorter supply. Then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher privatised water in 1989 stating that the English didn’t care who supplied their water. The important thing, she reasoned, is having a high-quality product at an affordable price, she said.

But privatisation has not worked out as expected: the price of water has not dropped but rather shot up, and as far as quality of service is concerned Thames Water was recently reprimanded by the authorities for failing to reduce the number of leaks to the quantity legally agreed.

As for Britains’ apparent lack of concern for the nationality of the water supplier, in fifteen years Thames Water passed from being a public entity to a private British company to a holding of a German energy giant and now of an Australian bank. It should not be excluded that in ten more years Thames Water could pass into the hands of a Chinese company specialising in urban waste removal.(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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By Riccardo Petrella and - -
MEXICO CITY, Apr 1 2006 (IPS)

Yet again the economic and political forces that control the World Water Forum (WWF) have succeeded in blocking the principle of access to drinking water as a human right (universal, indivisible, indefeasible) from being recognised in the final ministerial declaration of the Fourth WWF held in Mexico City from 16-22 March, writes Riccardo Petrella, Secretary-General of the International Committee for the World Water Contract. In this article, Petrella writes that the rejection confirms that the World Water Council, organiser the tri-annual WWF, is but the emanation of a world water oligarchy at the beck and call of the French water lobby, which is comprised of the two largest water multinationals, the French government, and the World Bank. Now that the wind has begun to blow less uniquely in favour of the privatisation of water, the liberalisation of water services, and the privatisation of the common good, it is time that the principle of the right to life for all people as the foundation of social justice and of a true democracy become the rallying call of a new world water politics. It is time to take back from the market and finance the power to govern the destiny of human society.

Yet again the economic and political forces that control the World Water Forum (WWF) have succeeded in blocking the principle of access to drinking water as a human right (universal, indivisible, indefeasible) from being recognised in the final ministerial declaration of the Fourth WWF held in Mexico City from 16-22 March.

This time they did so not only in spite of the explicit requests of tens of thousands of people representing hundreds of civil society organisations from around the world but also in opposition to the explicit formal request of the European Parliament in a March 16 resolution this year that was signed by all political groups.

The representative from the United States allowed himself the ‘ ‘luxury” of irony stating: ”Access to water a human right? Sure, if you pay for it.”

The rejection confirms that the World Water Council, organiser the tri-annual WWF, is but the emanation of a world water oligarchy at the beck and call of the French water lobby, which is comprised of the two largest water multinationals and the French government. Also part of this oligarchy are the World Bank, whose vice president for the environment was the first president of the Council in 1996, and the governments of Canada, Japan, Holland, Egypt, and Australia, which have major interests in the water industry. Then there are certain bodies within the United Nations (UNESCO, FAO, UNDP, OMM) and various scientific groups and professionals that are dependant on financing from activities promoted by UN agencies and multinationals.

The Council is a private organisation based in Marseilles and constituted under French law. Representatives from private French and English businesses have always occupied important positions on the board of directors. The current president of the Council, Loic Fachon, has been since 2005 president of the Groupe des Eaux de Marseille, a private company whose capital is divided equally between Vivendi and Suez (respectively number one and two in the water business). It is easy to understand why Fachon commented in Mexico City that the question of public or private property and the management and control of water is a false problem; the real issue is providing water in an efficient and economic manner — as if it makes no difference in terms of outcome, objectives, and organisation methods whether such management is in the hands of the private sector or the public sector.

The refusal of a private organisation that has managed to impose itself as the predominant site of analysis and debate on world water politics to take into account the proposal of the European Parliament (which represents 450 million citizens) speaks volumes about the nature of the democratic culture of the current majority of dominant groups.

I believe, however, that this refusal signals the beginning of the eventual disappearance of the World Water Council. What will follow is the clear delegitimisation of the body. In fact, in the same resolution the European Parliament set out the only proposal taken up at the Mexico forum — that the coordination of the shaping and execution of world water politics should be entrusted to a new agency in the UN that would guarantee the co-ordination of the work of the twenty-four UN agencies active in the water sector. This agency would take on the role assumed in the last ten years by the Council.

Now that the wind has begun to blow less uniquely in favour of the privatisation of water, the liberalisation of water services, and the privatisation of the common good, it is time that the principle of the right to life for all people as the foundation of social justice and of a true democracy become the rallying call of a new world water politics.

The European Parliament could make itself the proponent of this new politics and with changes in the content of water policy and the creation of this new water agency –which would be non-bureaucratised but linked to the world of civil societies and pre-existing international parliamentary organisations (the EP, Pan-African Parliament, Parlatino, Indian Parliament) — erect the two pillars of its contribution to the development of a world economy founded on water conservation and on the human right to water as a common global public good. This world water agency could convene for the first time in 2008 on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to underline the crucial linkage between water and human rights. It is time to take back from the market and finance the power to govern the destiny of human society.(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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By Riccardo Petrella and - -
LOUVAIN, Mar 1 2005 (IPS)

On March 22, World Water Day, the UN will launch the second International Decade for Action \”Water for Life\” (2005-2015), writes Riccardo Petrella, a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain. In this article, Petrella writes that the goal of first decade (1981-1991) was to assure access to potable water to all inhabitants of the planet by 2000. As we know, this goal was not achieved – far from it. This failure was due primarily to the fact that the leaders of the rich and powerful countries did not implement the measures that they themselves considered essential, particularly allocating 0.7 percent of GDP per year for aid to underdeveloped countries. Instead, between 1975-2000, they provided on average 0.23 percent, or less than a third of what they had promised. With the ascendance of the vision of today\’s financial globalisation, the eradication of poverty came to be considered impossible. Were it to happen, it would be achieved not through public will but by market mechanisms. Creativity, life, identity, and even individual survival are all vetted in the arenas of the global competitive markets, whose specific function is to select the \”best\” products and services, the more \”profitable\” places for investment, production, and consumption, promising the most \”competitive\” success. The fundamental question, Petrella writes, is whether the right to life of billions of human beings can be squared with the prolongation of the present human disaster by another ten years. I do not believe that the majority of Europeans, Africans, Asians, and North and South Americans think so.

On March 22, World Water Day, the United Nations will launch the second International Decade for Action “Water for Life” (2005-2015). The goal of first decade (1981-1991) was to assure access to potable water to all inhabitants of the planet by 2000. As we know, this goal was not achieved – far from it. This failure was due primarily to the fact that the leaders of the rich and powerful countries did not implement the measures that they themselves considered essential, particularly allocating 0.7 percent of GDP per year for aid to underdeveloped countries. Instead, between 1975-2000, they provided on average 0.23 percent, or less than a third of what they had promised.

Thus in the year 2000, there were 1.5 billion people without access to clean drinking water and 2.4 billion without sanitation; between 15 and 30 thousand people died each day from illnesses as a result — the equivalent in victims of between 26 and 52 tsunamis each year. This situation must be seen in the context of world poverty: in 2000, 2.7 billion people lived on less than 2 dollars per day, of whom 1.3 billion lived on one dollar per day, referred to as the “extremely poor”.

Faced with a human disaster of this scale, the world’s heads of state met in New York in September 2000 for the United Nations Millennium Summit, where they approved the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Though in spirit this project was particularly ambitious, in fact, the leaders abandoned the objective of eradicating poverty and consequently the lack of access to clean water. Instead, they asserted that the only realistic major goal was to cut by half the number of people in extreme poverty and lacking access to water and sanitation by the year 2015. In effect, they accepted that in 2015 there will still be more than 3 billion poor and between 1.5 and 2 billion people without potable water — this in a world in which total wealth more than doubled between 1975 and 2000 and will be 1.5 times higher in 2015 than in 2000.

How are we to understand this abandonment of the goal of eradicating poverty, a striking political and ethical abdication by the international community at the dawn of the 21st century, heralded as the gateway into the “knowledge society” and “knowledge economy”?

For a quarter-century the globalisation of the economy and society, characterised by its champions as a “natural” and “inevitable” phenomenon, has been presented as a narrative grounded in four alleged principles. First, the principle of the market, according to which society is but a nexus of transactions between individuals in ever more globalised markets. Then there is the principle of free enterprise, which holds that the private sector is the most adept at organising and optimising these transactions. The third principle is that of capital, which defines value in contemporary societies exclusively in terms of financial capital. Finally there is the principle of science and technology, which are largely responsible for the evolution of today’s global world, virtual communication, and world products and services.

In this context, creativity, life, identity, and even individual survival are all vetted in the arenas of the global competitive markets, whose specific function is to select the “best” products and services, the more “profitable” places for investment, production, and consumption, promising the most “competitive” success.

With the ascendance of this vision, the eradication of poverty came to be considered impossible. Were it to happen, it would be achieved not through public will but by market mechanisms. A solidary society cannot exist unless it is competitive first: this is the logic involved here.

This vision include these tenets:

-that water is, like all other “things”, a commodity, which as a part of the dominion of the market should obey its rules.

– that it is up to the private sector to insure the “optimal management” of the planet’s water resources in the framework of international water-service markets. To this end, it is necessary to promote the broadest possible liberalisation.

-that the just remuneration of capital must inspire the organisation of the financial engineering necessary to finance the costs of providing water and hydro-services. According to the report of a group of experts directed by Michel Camdessus, former director-general of the International Monetary Foundation, at the request of the World Water Council, the financing of water must obey the principle “you use it, you pay for it” (we are far from the domain of a right to water) and through recourse to the capital markets. And if poor countries want to insure the arrival of private capital to assume management of water distribution, they must, the report says, guarantee private property rights, the certainty of profits, and the solvency of local water “consumers”;

-finally, that we must not panic if quality potable water for human use becomes increasingly rare and if we have to tackle the grave problem of apportionment, particularly for the US, China, and India, not to mention Africa, with the risk of generating a new breed of conflicts over water. Technology, together with the market, is there to resolve problems: desalinisation of sea water, biotechnology to develop plants that need less water, virtual water, major transnational and continental management of water reserves, transportation and marketing networks on a vast scale.

The new International Decade for Action “Water for Life” has adopted as its objective the reduction by half of the number of people without access to potable water. The fundamental question involved here is whether the right to life of billions of human beings can be squared with the prolongation of the present human disaster by another ten years. I do not believe that the majority of Europeans, Africans, Asians, and North and South Americans think so. What if we ask them? (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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