Environmental Justice

The new draft National Water Policy (NWP) circulated by the Ministry of Water Resources to water experts suggests that the government is poised to withdraw from its responsibilities of water service delivery, and that multinational corporations and financial institutions might have too big a say in water allocation and policy.

Profit maximization is the iron rule of capitalism, setting limits to ecological reform. A profit-based economy that requires continuous economic growth makes ecological catastrophes inevitable.

However, a closer look shows that some important points are missing. To begin with, water is not articulated strongly enough as a fundamental human right in this draft. This is despite India voting in favour of the United Nations General Assembly resolution on Right to Water, in 2010. But there are various suggestions to institutionalise the treatment of water as an economic good. In addition, the draft NWP proposes to limit the role for government in public services. When in other parts of the world water services are being brought back into public realm due to negative experiences with private sector water provision, this policy suggests that the government should function simply as a service facilitator, and that service delivery should be handed over to local communities or the private sector.

The area has a relative abundance of water resources, and local authorities generate substantial income by selling water to large cities such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan and Hong Kong. These water transfers are necessary to sustain the region’s large industrial centres, but as this report outlines, reservoirs in the Dongjiang basin have been expanded three times since 1974, and as a result many villages have been displaced by reservoir expansions and efforts to protect water supplies from human pollution. Water is being transferred to industrial cities where it can generate the greatest profit, at the expense of people displaced from the reservoir area.

FLOW: For Love of Water is a new documentary premiering in New York and Los Angeles today that takes on the global water crisis. We speak with filmmaker Irena Salina and water rights activist, Maude Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians, founder of the Blue Planet Project and author of several books, including Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

QUILLAGUA, Chile — During the past four decades here in Quillagua, a town in the record books as the driest place on earth, residents have sometimes seen glimpses of raindrops above the foothills in the distance. They never reach the ground, evaporating like a mirage while still in the air.

The water supply in Hong Kong has been run by the government since the British occupation. Recently a book authored by Lam Pun Lee raised many criticisms about the publicly run water supply. In it he argues that water supply suffers from low productivity if compared to other public enterprises, low profitability etc. As a public servant in the waterworks department, how would you respond to these complaints? More importantly, do you think Hong Kong’s water supply should remain in the public’s hands?

On this the first anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster questions remain to be adequately and correctly answered on: is life in Japan back to normal? What lessons were learnt about the hugely funded nuclear industry? What do we really know about radiation and nuclear energy, what impacts do these have on our lives?

A year on from the Fukushima disaster, is life in Japan back to normal? What lessons have we learnt about the massive nuclear industry? What do we really know about radiation and nuclear energy? What impacts do they have on our lives?

  Author(s): Bharat Lal Seth Issue: Dec 31, 2011 Asian Development Bank’s new plan insists on the private sector answer to water woes TAKING stock of its water operations, the…