Check it out... just last year a supertanker left Canada to sell water to Southeast Asia...
Subject: WATER IS LIFE. Don't let them corporatize your water.
3/6/01
Think of oil and gas in corporate hands.
NOW THINK OF WATER IN CORPORATE HANDS.
Joshua2
=======================================================
> Our New Resource Crisis
> By Peter Phillips
>
> Imagine, that we are beyond the energy crisis-in
> that we are used to paying double or triple prices
> for what in the previous century was a small part of
> the family budget. But now we are faced with a new
> shortage that taps another precious resource. Water
> only comes through the tap fours hours a day and we
> are forced to pay ten to hundred times what we paid
> in the 90s. Welcome to the world of privatized
> water, where fresh water is treated like a
> commodity, traded and sold in the international
> market to the highest bidder.
>
> No longer can you assume a God-given right to drink
> from a mountain spring, but instead you will have to
> pay a toll to drink from Enron Springs, Monsanto
> Wells or receive tap water from Bechtel Water Works.
> Global consumption of water is doubling every 20
> years, more than twice the rate of human population
> growth. According to the United Nations, more than
> one billion people already lack access to fresh
> drinking water. If current trends persist, by 2025
> the demand for fresh water is expected to rise by 56
> percent more than the amount of water that is
> currently available. Multinational corporations
> recognize these trends and are trying to monopolize
> water supplies around the world. Monsanto, Bechtel,
> Enron and other global multinationals are seeking
> control of world water systems and supplies.
>
> The World Bank recently adopted a policy of water
> privatization and full-cost water pricing. This
> policy is causing great distress in many Third World
> countries, which fear that their citizens will not
> be able to afford for-profit water.
>
> Last year in a little known case of high scale
> international water marketing, a supertanker was
> reported to have filled up with water from Lake Erie
> and after paying the Canadian Government they
> shipped the water to Southeast Asia.
>
> Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians,
> Canada's largest public advocacy group, states,
> "Governments around the world must act now to
> declare water a fundamental human right and prevent
> efforts to privatize, export, and sell for profit a
> substance essential to all life. Research has shown
> that selling water on the open market only delivers
> it to wealthy cities and individuals. The finite
> sources of freshwater (less than one half of one per
> cent of the world's total water stock) are being
> diverted, depleted, and polluted so fast that, by
> the year 2025, two-thirds of the world's population
> will be living in a state of serious water
> deprivation." Governments are signing away their
> control over domestic water supplies by
> participating in trade treaties such as the North
> American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in
> institutions such as the World Trade Organization
> (WTO). These agreements give transnational
> corporations the unprecedented right to the water of
> signatory !
> compan
> ies.
>
> Monsanto plans to earn revenues of 0 million and
> a net income of million by 2008 from its water
> business in India and Mexico. Monsanto estimates
> that water will become a multibillion-dollar market
> in the coming decades.
>
> This international water crisis news story was
> selected by over 150 faculty and student researchers
> at Sonoma State University's Project Censored in
> California as the number one most censored news
> story for 2000. Credit for original reporting goes
> to:
>
> International Forum on Globalization: Special Report
> 6/99, The Global Water
> Crisis and the Commodification of the World's Water
> Supply by Maude Barlow
> www.ifg.org/bgsummary.html
>
> THIS, July/August 2000, Just Add Water by Jim Shultz
> In These Times, Water Fallout: Bolivians Battle
> Globalization 5/15/00 by
> Jim Shultz www.inthesetimes.com
>
> Canadian Dimension, 2/2000, Monsanto's
> Billion-Dollar
> Water Monopoly Plans
> by Vandana Shiva
> www.purefood.org/Monsanto/waterfish.cfm
>
> Canadian Dimension, 2/00, Water Fallout, by Jim
> Shultz
>
> San Francisco Bay Guardian, 5/31/00, Trouble on Tap,
> by Daniel Zoll
> www.sfbg.com/News/34/35/bech2.html
>
> San Francisco Bay Guardian, 5/31/00, The Earth
> Wrecker, by Pratap Chatterjee
>
> Peter Phillips is an Associate Professor of
> Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of
> Project Censored. Research for this story is from
> the book Censored 2001, 25th Anniversary Edition,
> scheduled for release in March of this year from
> Seven Stories Press.
>
> Peter Phillips Ph.D.
> Sociology Department/Project Censored
> Sonoma State University
> 1801 East Cotati Ave.
> Rohnert Park, CA 94928
> 707-664-2588
>
Original: Project Censored: Water Privatization!!