On Dec. 2 two water conferences were held in San Francisco, attended by very different groups of people.
Downtown, in a room deep within the Hyatt Regency hotel, executives from PepsiCo, Dean Foods, GE, ConAgra, and other major companies gathered for the Corporate Water Footprinting Conference. The agenda that the conference made public included a presentation by Nestlé on assessing water-related risks in communities, Coca-Cola's aggressive environmental water-neutrality goal, and MillerCoors plan to use less water to make more beer.
But what these giant corporations, which are seeking to control more and more of the world's water, really discussed the public will never know. Only four media representatives were permitted to attend — all from obscure trade journals not trafficked by the typical reader — and both the Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle were denied media passes.
The event was sponsored by IBM, and tickets were $1,500 — out of reach for many citizens and environmentalists who might have liked to attend.
And why might people take such a keen interest in the kind of corporate conference that probably occurs routinely in cities throughout the world?
Because there's almost universal agreement that the world is in a water crisis — and that big businesses see a huge opportunity in the privatization of water.
Only one half of 1 percent of all the water in the world is freshwater. Of that, about half is already polluted. Although water is a $425 billion industry worldwide — ranking just behind electricity and oil — one in six people still don't have access to a clean, safe glass of it. If the pace of use and abuse remains, the 1.2 billion people living in water-stressed areas will balloon to more than 3 billion by 2030.
That includes California. On June 4, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought after two lackluster seasons of Sierra snowfall. Scientists are predicting the same this winter. You can see how the state is mishandling the issue by looking at some recent legislation. Schwarzenegger and Sen. Dianne Feinstein have proposed a $9.3 billion bond to build more dams, canals, and infrastructure. At the same time, the governor vetoed a bill that would have required bottled water companies to report how much water they're actually drawing out of the ground.
In that context, while the big privatizers were hobnobbing at the Hyatt, activists were attending a very different event, the "Anti-Corporate Water Conference," held at the Mission Cultural Center. It was free and open to the public and the media. More than 100 people gathered to hear a cadre of international organizations share information on how to keep this basic human right — water — in the hands of people.
Speakers included Wenonah Hauter, director of Washington, DC-based Food and Water Watch; Amit Srivastava of Global Resistance, a group that works to expose international injustices by Coca-Cola; Mark Franco, head of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, which lives among water bottling plants near Mount Shasta; and Mateo Nube, a native of La Paz, Bolivia, and the director of Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project.
Nube ...
Regarding the "inherent conflict between conservation and profit:" assuming the profit-making party intends to stay in business, and there exists any competition at all, then there is no conflict. Unfortunately, in CA at least, there is no real competition when it comes to the water supply. Inefficient public water policy at the state level has screwed us all.
I was hoping you might spend a bit more time discussing the agricultural influence on the California water shortage. Public water policy allows for a water subsidy to CA farmers that is worth billions of dollars every year. CA farmers pay about 20% of the market rate for a foot-acre of water, use about 70% of the state's total water supply, and produce around 10% of the state's economic output.
Loose water policy with respect to these farms encourages them to plant extremely thirsty crops like rice and cotton (crops which should NEVER be grown in the Central Valley) and provides zero incentive for them to make even cursory attempts at water conservation.
They do, however, have an incentive to hang on to their water subsidies. Many farms are letting fields lie fallow this year and are selling their subsidized water allotments to CA cities at market rates, which means that we're paying for this water twice. 'course, if I had access to that much water at 20% cost, I'd probably try to do the same thing. So would you.
If we're to have an honest and comprehensive discussion about water and water policy, then there's no reason at all to leave out the largest consumers of water in this state. Nothing should be off the table here.
End the farm water subsidies, end the problem - here in CA, anyway. Take a look at New Zealand's elimination of all farm subsidies, and you'll see how well it can actually work out.
Culture Change is an activist group that works for fundamental change, recognizing overpopulation and petroleum dependence. We also stand for economic justice and peace. We have an office in The Mission district but are more based in Humboldt County and Portland, Oregon. Our main project is the Sail Transport Network.
My article on the corporate water conference is on our website:
"Water Fight: corporate bottom line versus foes of privatization and plasticization"
[link]
This article can complement the thorough job by the Bay Guardian's Amanda Witherell.
Reject plastic! Strive for local economics!
Thanks,
Jan Lundberg
True, people need water for basic survival, but the vast majority of human water use does not fall into that category. Most water is consumed for purposes that that only make sense if the price of water is below a given price. Where effective pricing structures are in place, price motivates investments in conservation and water efficiency, and water is directed to the most beneficial applications. This isn't an "infinite market," irrespective of price.
As another commenter has noted, agricultural subsidies are a major culprit in inefficient water use in California (and elsewhere). But even there, private consumers do, in effect, "go on strike" every day--when they choose not to use water for certain purposes at certain prices. For example, you probably won't see farmers flooding their fields or homeowners watering their lawns with bottled water.
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