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Caracas World Social Forum backs call to “take water out of free trade agreements”
(January 2006) Activists from across the world meeting in packed classrooms and theatres over a week in Caracas, Venezuela gave strong support to the growing demand for water to be taken out of free trade agreements and pushed for the campaign against water privatization to be strengthened in the run-up to the World Water Forum in Mexico in March.
Water activists from Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Italy and France made the most of a week-long World Social Forum in Venezuela to develop a coherent declaration outlining the demands of social movements which will form the backdrop to campaigning before and during the World Water Forum in Mexico. The conclusion was overwhelming: “Water is not a commodity.”
Activists said that privatization therefore had to end and that water should be managed in the public sphere in a participatory way. Luis Fernado Novoa from REPRIB in Brazil said: “Privatising water has become the proof of love for markets by governments. If they are prepared to sell watenr which is essential for life, than it shows that they must be committed. But it is an ideology that has to be stopped.”
As Free Trade Agreements in all their forms threaten this public control over water, campaigners called for “the exclusion of water from the market-based rules imposed by the World Trade Organization, Free Trade Agreements and other international investment and trade accords.”
Activists from Uruguay in particular expressed concern that their referendum victory where the population voted for public water is now under threat by a proposed free trade treaty with the US. Campaigners also called for the abolition of the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which allowed the US multinational Bechtel to sue Bolivia after it was thrown out by a popular revolt in Cochabamba.
Oscar Olivera, from the Coordinadora which led the rebellion against Bechtel said. “We have forced Bechtel with huge international pressure to back down, but these multinationals should not have the rights to sue people for making their own decisions over water.” He explained that Bolivians were in the process of recovering control over their communities, territories and now their State.
The popular demands for public water during the week were made clear in both the declaration on water, but also the overall declaration issued by social movements at the end of the World Social Forum. Santiago Arconada who works with Water Working Groups in Venezuela noted the opportunity of a changing political scene in Latin America with the rise of left of centre Governments: “This is a great opportunity to advance by pushing Governments who have a tendency to support public water to at least put a brake on privatization.”
André Abreu from France Liberté added that the French experience showed that the tide against privatization of water is turning: “Five years ago, we couldn’t even talk about public management of water, but in Grenoble we regained public control over water. Grenoble is now known to be the best water utility in France, which has led 50 mayors to sign a memo calling for public water.”
At the end of the World Social Forum, the Venezuelan Water Working Groups, who participated throughout the week, invited activists out to see their work in some of the poorer neighbourhoods that line the hills at the edge of Caracas.
In the community of Pedrera Antimáno made up of ramshackle brick houses and open ditches with raw sewage, trenches were being dug and pipes laid that will bring regular drinking water and the first enclosed sewage pipes to the community. The technical plans that form the basis for the work were proudly laid out by Yunelly Ortega, a local member of the Working Water Group who had developed them with other volunteers in the community. “We never could have imagined this a few years ago. We used to have to fight to get water and when it was installed it would often break because the work was done badly. But we now manage the process, and PDVSA (the State oil company) and the Government is giving us support.”
The visit with its proof of the power of community control of water seemed a fitting end to the week and inspiration for the struggle to end private control of water that will need to focus its efforts in the run-up to the World Water Forum in Mexico in March 2006.
