Who should control our water?

 

 Who should control our water?

Climate change and soaring population growth are two of the many large challenge’s national governments, scientists and international bodies face in water resource management. Only 2.5% of the world’s water is freshwater safe for consumption, weather extremes have made this water supply unreliable with some areas experiencing flooding and the consequent contamination of water supplies and others experiencing drought on varying scales. These issues have brought complex challenges for water management, industry, agriculture and urbanising cities due to the aggravating demand. The UN estimates that during the last century water use has exceeded the rate of population growth (UN, 2006) this is attributed to net migration into cities causing hyper-urbanisation, expansion of industrial and agricultural sectors in effort to develop economically.

 Two major challenges have resulted from the nexus of environmental and hydrpolitical management of water supplies, one being water scarcity and physical availability of freshwater to populations and two, being the access to clean and safe water. In the developing world, close to 27% of urban settlers lack access to piped water at home and an even larger number to clean amenable water. Privatisation was once seen as a ‘cure’ to the failures of developmental institutions in maximising access to clean and abundant supplies of freshwater in the developing world, now a growing body of local campaigns across the globe a rolling back corporate ownership and challenging water privatisation in an effort to regain control over the world’s most vital resource. Here we challenge the nature of privatisation in East Africa, the state of governance and its impact on water supplies and ponder on the ‘right formula’ for water management.

Water has become financialised, in its scarcity become an opportunity for profit, an asset to be securitised in which major invest funds have been targeted at the water industry. Similarly, sanitation has become a thriving industry dominated by multinationals. Privatisation of water supplies remains highly controversial (O’Brien, 2018) ; the process usually involves municipal authorities leasing water provision to private companies in a public-private partnership. In theory, privatising water supplies leads to more efficiency, in states were funding is inadequate opening up water supplies to market forces attracts more FDI, thus raising the finance needed for infrastructural projects. Lastly, privatisation was also aimed at tackling corruption, in 1999 the World Bank wrote that “poor governments are often too plagued by local corruption and too ill equipped” (Hall, 1999) to manage their water supplies and this was in reaction to what was widely agreed to be the failure by highly centralised governments in developing countries to deliver basic services to their citizens (Golooba-Mutebi, 2012) and in its establishment would also empower local communities to participate in the decision-making process. However, the common narrative is shifting, and data is increasingly showing that privatisation has not raised the standards nor the extent of water supplies, particularly in the developing world. However, upon seeing the mixed legacy of water privatisation across East Africa, others argue that tackling corruption within the system and developing grassroot approaches to water management is more likely to draft better results (Hall et al. 2005). In this segment, I want to explore the extent to which governance and politics plays a role in the success of privatising water supplies, why remaining public is not the way forward and how communities can become more resilient even when governments fail them.

References:

Golooba-Mutebi, F. (2012). In search of the right formula: public, private and community driven provision of safe water in Rwanda and Uganda. Public Administration and Development, 32, 4-5, 430-443.

Hall, D. (1999). Privatization, multinationals, and corruption. Development in Practice, 9, 5, 539-556.

Hall, D., Lobina, E. and De La Motte, R. (2005). Public Resistance to Privatisation in Water and Energy. Development in Practice, 15, 3-4, 286-301.

O'Brien, H. (2018). ‘Is Privatising Water Supplies Really the Best Solution’. Blogpost: China Dialogue, Available at: https://chinadialogue.net/en/business/10797-is-privatising-water-supply-really-the-best-solution/.

UN.org. (2006). Water Scarcity | International Decade For Action 'Water For Life' 2005-2015. Available at: https://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml.