Three Way News
Your Source. For everything. Really.
Contributors
- Hammer
- Jambo
- Libby Mae
Current Poll
Recurring features
Hammer's Favorites
- Dobson v. Sponge-Bob
- Calvin, the nest egg
- Pat's predictions
- Bachmann spins Cupertino
- 205 atheists assume the bench
- Fox spins Oil for Food
- Fact check: highest taxed state
- Gen. Myers v. Reality
- Janice Rogers Brown
- Killing Field
- Kline hates Big Bird
- Vote Luca Brasi!
- Cornyn's Stalinist Supreme Court
- Rumsfeld's hidden metrics
Jambo's Favories
- Dolphin research updates
- We all shine on
- If you have to write...
- Columnist NY Times should have
- Truth about taxes
- Fourth of July
- Movie objects
- Lost in supermarket
- Dysfunctional Farmer Labor party
- Punks you hated
- Some preacher from east
- Winning issues
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Portenting potables
The Guardian UK reports today on the state of water privatization in the developing world:
Millions of people could have to wait years for clean water as some of the world's largest companies pull out of developing countries because of growing doubts about privatisation projects, a major UN report reveals today.
Political and consumer unease about multimillion-pound schemes that were intended to end the cycle of drought and death that has afflicted many countries is forcing major multinationals to think again. "Due to the political and high-risk operations, many multinational water companies are decreasing their activities in developing countries," says the UN's second world water development report, published today in Mexico City.
...Many companies have met intense political resistance in the past five years after winning large contracts to supply cities but then having to raise prices significantly. Some have been forced out of countries, others have left voluntarily.
..Water privatisation was seen by the World Bank and G8 countries as the most effective way to bring clean water to large numbers of poor countries throughout the 1990s, but in spite of investments of $25bn (£14bn) between 1990 and 1997, the rich have mostly benefited at the expense of the poor. Sub-Saharan Africa has received less than 1% of all the money invested in water supplies by private companies in the last 10 years.
..In a separate report, the UK relief and development charity Tearfund claims that aid for water and sanitation from the EU and its members has been falling for five years, despite the fact that 6,000 children die every day as a result of poor water and sanitation. More aid money is going to middle-income rather than low-income countries, it says.
What a colossal waste of time and money water privatization schemes are. Paul O'Neill's book talked about this issue a little bit at page 254:
O'Neill had been asking questions for a week. ... Using data on the depth of Ghana's water table, he estimated that the 10 million Ghanaians without clean water...could be supplied potable, well-drawn water for $25 million.
...O'Neill was armed for Uganda, with a population of 24 million. Uganda's water table is even higher than Ghana's -- easier and cheaper to drill. He laid it out, with gusto, for Museveni--as if he were offering a gift. All of Uganda with clean water for $25 million.
One of Museveni's aides interjected. ... "It will cost many times your price," he said. ...[A study] had been done by a U.S. consulting firm. It recommended a complex array of treatment plants and heavy metal pipelines. Total cost: $2 billion.
"President Museveni," O'Neill said, shaking his head, "this is recommending you build a water system like in Detroit or Cleveland. You won't need that for a hundred years. You just need to drop wells, and mostly maintain them. Your people can handle the rest..."
There's a lot more profit in a $2 billion development contract than a $25 million program to drill some wells. Bono could probably fund most of it himself (to be fair to Bono, which I am loathe to do, his work in this area has been almost heroic). If you rely on the profit motive to provide potable water, you're going to see $2 billion proposals far more often that $25 million plans.
I don't think water privatization ever makes sense -- I greatly prefer cooperative model for public utilities. But I understand the argument for privatization in a modern economy where everyone can afford what water they need for survival. We've tried privatization for a decade with no results. Let's give O'Neill's way a try. Even if it's an utter failure, at least it'll be much cheaper than our last global failure.
