[mobglob-discuss] THIRST FOR PROFIT - From SchNEWS August 15, 2003

[Gordon Flett]

_______________________________________________

WAKE UP! WAKE UP! IT'S YER TAP DANCING... SchNEWS - 

  THIRST FOR PROFIT

  "How do you feel about your public services? Would you like them to
  stay public? Or would you prefer it if they were forcibly
  prised open to foreign corporate competition by way of a new
  international law? All in the name of trade, of course." - Paul
  Kingsnorth, The Ecologist.

  Modalities. Appellate bodies. Singapore issues. Single undertakings.
  Come again? Welcome to the dictionary of the World Trade
  Organisation (WTO) who've been busy inventing their own language to
  bore us all into submission and pull the wool over our
  eyes so we just don't see their plans for the corporate carve up of
  the planet. Last weekend nearly 200,000 people in France
  saw through this fog of language and took part in a weekend rally
  against the WTO, whose fifth ministerial meeting in Cancun,
  Mexico is less than a month away.

  For the past few years, the WTO have been trying to expand its
  snappily titled General Agreement on Trades in Services (or
  GATS - see SchNEWS 286), whose "privatise everything!" small print is
  a wet dream for corporations. The EU is using GATS to
  target everything from public healthcare, welfare, water, energy and
  transport networks in the developing world as its new
  golden goose. Its 109 'requests' for developing countries was a
  strictly classified document that got leaked onto the web.
  But why do they want to keep it a secret?

  One of those requests from the EU is that 72 developing countries
  make commitments to open up their water supplies to
  competition.

  The effects of this would be disastrous for the world's poor. Take
  Brazil for example. In Porto Allegre, the local water
  company DMAE is publicly owned, and financially independent from
  state control thanks to water bills paid by the 1.4 million
  city inhabitants. All profits are re-invested in the water supply,
  and through public meetings, everyone can have their say
  in what they think should be priority. This participatory model has
  been a massive success. 99.5% of the city's population
  now have access to clean water - the highest rate in Brazil. Overall
  consumption has gone down while the water rates are some
  of the lowest in the country.  But under GATS if the Brazilian
  government imposed legal requirements for all water companies
  to act like DMAE it would be a 'barrier to trade' and illegal.

  In the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, a proposed privatisation was
  strongly opposed by the water workers' union, so the Dhaka
  Water Authority contracted out one zone to the union, while another
  zone was given to a private water company for a year's
  trial. The union co-operative's results were so much better that they
  won the contract. Many more people now have access to
  running water and there has been a sizable reduction in water losses.
  But should the Government of Bangladesh give in to the
  EU's request then if any of their policies tried to expand the
  cooperative model they would likely to be in violation of GATS
  rules.

  The city of Santa Cruz in Bolivia boasts one of the best-run water
  companies in Latin America and the only not-for-profit
  co-op in the world responsible for water supply and sanitation in a
  major urban centre. The EU is requesting that Bolivia put
  its water supplies under GATS rules. Should they agree then the
  promotion and implementation of these alternative models
  elsewhere in Bolivia would be illegal.

  In Panama strikes and demonstrations in 1998 forced the then
  president to back down on plans to privatise the national water
  company and in Trinidad the UK water company Severn Trent, were
  kicked out of the country after 5 years after they'd put
  prices up while providing a worsening service.

  The Bolivian mountain city of Cochabamba was also the setting for an
  epic struggle for control of the water supply in early
  2000. Thousands protested at the sell-off of the city's water system
  to the US multinational Bechtel, who raised water bills
  by up to 300 per cent and required people to get a permit to collect
  rainwater in rooftop tanks. Eventually massive protests
  drove the corporation out and led to the water system being taken
  back into public ownership - an unprecedented reversal of a
  major privatisation.

  So what would happen now if the Bolivian government decides to open
  up all its water services to corporate competition?  Well
  the WTO has learnt that whenever governments try to sell off
  essential services they have faced mass protests. So they've
  come up with the GATS trump card - that once a service has been
  'liberalised' (that's WTO talk for privatisation) there's no
  going back. As the WTO website once put it, GATS helps to "overcome
  domestic resistance to change."  Which means even if
  there is massive protests or a government wants to take back control
  from a failing private company, it won't be able to
  unless it is ready to face the trade sanction consequences.

  Clare Joy from the World Development Movement says "The record of
  water liberalisation and privatisation around the world has
  been a disaster. Many developing countries and impoverished
  communities have rejected the idea of providing water for profit
  yet the European members of the G8 are pushing them into a trade
  agreement, lobbied for by business and negotiated in secret,
  that will lock in liberalisation regardless of the cost to the poor
  and vulnerable."

  Or as Paul Kingsnorth puts it "This is the story of Cancun - the
  story of a continuing power grab by private corporations
  operating under the fig leaf of the World Trade Organisation; a
  global colonisation of pretty much everything by
  profit-seeking private interests. And this is the key thing to grasp:
  this is not about 'trade' at all; it's about power and
  who gets it. Governments or corporations? Ordinary people or
  profiteers? The answers to those questions will affect all of
  our lives."

  Time we started reminding them of the language of the street protest.

  * Join the protests to derail the talk's
  www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/cancun

  * Decode the gobbledegook - the World Development Movement has loads
  of excellent resources on GATS  0207 2747630
  www.wdm.org.uk

  ###################################################
  Why is the European Union so keen to get its hands on other countries
  water supplies? Well 70% of the world's private water
  supplies are owned by just two French companies Vivendi and Suez. The
  third largest is Thames Water, now part of German
  utilities conglomerate RWE.
  ###################################################
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