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 Asian Development Bank (ADB) has set guidelines for an investment of US $2-2.5 billion annually in the water sector for the next 10 years. The guidelines, called Water Operation Plan, however, do not define the exact approach to water operations.

Critics say the plan gives countries the option to seek financial help and expertise from the private sector on water projects. This facilitates and encourages governments like India to allow private investments to address the issue of water scarcity and find markets for companies based in donor countries.
The first-of-its-kind guidelines, approved in October, are based on the understanding that water has an economic value. “These guidelines prove that ADB’s plans have been unsuccessful until now due to public opposition to water service charges,” says Hemantha Withanage, executive director of Centre for Environmental Justice, a non-profit in Sri Lanka. An ADB evaluation of its water projects in 2008 found that attempts at tariff reform, achieving cost recovery in services, initiating regulatory reforms and involving the private sector remained “intractable”. Another assessment in 2010 found that nearly half of the projects failed to meet targets like increased tariff and cost recovery.

The guidelines make clear that countries cannot risk waiting for investments, and can seek to advocate projects involving investment and expertise from the private sector. “They are attempting to commodify water in Asia,” says Withanage.

ADB has for long held that limited participation of the private sector in water services is a cause for concern because of the limitations of the public sector to expand investments. The drive to foster a culture of payment for water as a service has suffered from a general unwillingness to charge. Providers therefore remain short of capital. “The public and private both have failed,” says Avilash Roul, executive director of NGO Forum on ADB, a network of 250 non-profits formed to make ADB accountable to the impacts of its projects. The governments cannot outsource their responsibility to provide basic services to the people. Private players can at best invest their money for such activities which must be controlled, managed and owned by the public sector enterprises, adds Roul.

Through the guidelines, ADB intends to make the relationship between water, food and energy stronger. “Many Asian countries are experiencing chronic water shortages. Since nearly 80 per cent of the region’s water is used in agricultural production, water shortages can contribute to shortages of food,” says Alan Baird, senior water supply and sanitation specialist with ADB.

Combined with energy insecurity, the increasing shortages in water and food may reverse Asia’s hard-won gains in poverty reduction, he adds. Therefore ADB is committed to funding hydropower development. “Integrated water resources management has transformed into this so-called nexus which ADB adopted last year. This points to how smoothly ADB policies can morph, for instance, to support hydropower structures in the eastern Himalayan rivers,” says Roul.

According to ADB, the water-food-energy “nexus” is critical in achieving equitable water security across Asia. “It is not an exercise to promulgate dam building,” says Baird. ADB works with a broad range of stakeholders. In 2010, 80 per cent of loans, grants, and related project preparatory technical assistance approved included some form of participation from civil society organisations, says Baird. “Despite ADB’s proclamation of a multi-stakeholder to help prepare this ‘magna carta’ on water, its definition of stakeholders mainly involves governments who oblige the bank, private sectors and institutions who have already partnered with the bank’s funds in implementing its activities,” says Roul.

World Bank partners with Nestlé to “transform water sector”
New venture aims to privatize water country by country

[WASHINGTON, DC]: Today, the World Bank launched a new partnership with global corporations including Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Veolia. Housed at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), the new venture aspires to “transform the water sector” by inserting the corporate sector into what has historically been a public service. The new partnership is part of a broader trend of industry collusion to influence global water policy.
The venture — called the 2030 Water Resources Group Phase 2 Entity —  aligns global corporations that have major financial stakes in water governance with the World Bank, one of the world’s leading development institutions. Nestlé Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe has been appointed to chair the Water Resources Group, which has already received $1.5 million in IFC funding. Nestlé is the world’s largest water bottling corporation.

Advocates for people’s access to water point to this as the latest example of water corporations’ efforts to interfere in legitimate, democratic water governance. The Water Resources Group presents a conflict of interest to the World Bank’s goal of poverty alleviation. It also advances an approach to water governance that is in incompatible with the U.N. recognized human right to water.
“This is an unmistakably activist campaign by the private water industry to gain funding and credibility for a radical power grab, with the help of the World Bank,” said Corporate Accountability International’s Senior Organizer Shayda Edwards Naficy. “According to the World Bank, 34% of private water contracts are in distress or terminated before maturity. Last April, the IFC’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman reported that an astounding 40 percent of complaints received from all regions and sectors were water-related. This is evidence that water privatization has been fraught with a range of problems, including broken promises for expanded service, wasted public funds and threats to human rights, especially for the lowest income families. For the Bank to sanction this approach despite a track record of failure points to compromised decision-making at the Bank due to pervasive partnerships with and financial stakes in corporations.”
Currently, 90 percent of the world’s water-users access water through public delivery. Turning these systems over to private corporations would result in rate hikes, cutoffs  and significant layoffs of water sector employees. Focusing on the private sector also distracts from the need to support governments in protecting human rights.

The Water Resources Group aims to “develop new normative approaches to water management,” paving the way for an expanded private sector role into best and common practices, worldwide. In order to be eligible for support from this new fund, all projects must “provide for at least one partner from the private sector,” not simply as a charitable funder, but “as part of its operations.” The group’s strategy is to insert the private sector into water management one country at a time, through a combination of industry-funded research and direct partnerships with government agencies. Currently, the Water Resources Group is formally working with the governments of Jordan, Mexico, and the Indian state of Karnataka, and discussions are ongoing with the governments of South Africa, China and several other countries slated for participation in the next phase.

“Corporate Accountability International has consistently demonstrated the World Bank’s inherent conflicts of interest, acting as an investor, a government advisor, an arbitrator and a public relations vehicle in support of profiteering in the water sector,” said Naficy. “Global water corporations must not be allowed to tap into public ‘development funds’ to promote their private agenda because case after case shows that profitability and fulfillment of human rights in the water sector are at odds.”

Corporate Accountability International (formerly Infact) is a membership organization that has, for the last 34 years, successfully advanced campaigns protecting health, the environment and human rights. Through its Campaign Challenging Corporate Control of Water, Corporate Accountability International is playing a leadership role in the global movement to secure the human right to water, and people’s access to water; prevent corporate control of water; preserve and protect water resources and systems for the public good; and preserve water resources as an ecological trust.

Canadian Dimension July-August issue 2011

CY GONICK

1. 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.
2. Voluntarism, technological fixes and market incentives as they have been constructed cannot achieve even the weak Green House Gas targets gov­ernments have committed to. Even so, many govern­ments such as ours and that of theUSA, haven’t even initiated these market mechanisms like carbon taxes or cap and trade.
3. We need to accept that we WILL pass the terrible tipping points that climate scientists like James Han­sen have been talking about for at least a decade now. And that the catastrophes they predict will happen, gradually at first and then rapidly as the feedbacks kick in.
4. As the consequences of passing the tipping points eventuate, with droughts, floods, rising sea levels, growing numbers of climate refugees – states every­where will begin to exercise authoritarian measures to preserve order and to ensure that increasingly scarce water, food and energy resources are pre­served for the rich and to feed the material require­ments of corporate enterprise. Robert Heilbroner predicted this outcome back in 1974 in his Inquiry into the Human Prospect. Joel Kovel discussed the prospect more recently.
5. We can already see the beginnings of the move towards authoritarianism – the xenophobic response to immigration throughout Europe, the attempt to destroy unionism in the USA, the harsh way protest­ers against austerity measures are being treated, to say nothing of police repression against G20 pro­testers inToronto. And Stephen Harper’s deliberate efforts to silence his critics by shutting down or reori­enting research and advocacy organizations.
6. It is essential for us to be critiquing market-based solutions and those, including most mainstream environmental organizations, who promote these solutions and insist on working within the system. We need to expose environmental organizations who accept funding from corporate-based foundations that are extensions of the energy industrial complex and thus allow themselves to be used by the perpetrators of climate change and bolstering their legitimacy.
7. We need to be putting forth more structurally based solutions such as stopping the tar sands, massive investment in solar, wind and geothermal renewables and expanding public transit. Yet, we should accept that these solutions are and will be totally rejected by capitalist states and that, in any case, renewable energy cannot meet the mass energy requirement of consumerism and relentless economic growth especially in the light of ongoing neoliberal globalization.
8. We need to be talking now about how we will respond to the ecological catastrophe as it unfolds and to the authoritarian actions of capitalist states to repress popular resistance against harsh austerity measures and to increasingly destructive methods of extracting oil and natural gas from less accessible sources.
9. It will be essential to show how the economy can be transformed so that it does not require continuous growth and yet provides for the basic requirements of all citizens.
10. Intellectual argument is not sufficient. Our move­ment will have to turn towards widespread forms of direct action to stop the ecocide and the austerity measures that shift the burden of the ecological crisis onto the lower and working classes.

By Ian Angus & Simon Butler
From Grist

The United Nations says that the world’s population will reach 7 billion people this month.

The approach of that milestone has produced a wave of articles and opinion pieces blaming the world’s environmental crises on overpopulation. In New York’s Times Square, a huge and expensive video declares that “human overpopulation is driving species extinct.” In London’s busiest Underground stations, electronic poster boards warn that 7 billion is ecologically unsustainable.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich’s bestseller The Population Bomb declared that as a result of overpopulation, “the battle to feed humanity is over,” and the 1970s would be a time of global famines and ever-rising death rates. His predictions were all wrong, but four decades later his successors still use Ehrlich’s phrase — too many people! — to explain environmental problems.

But most of the 7 billion are not endangering the earth. The majority of the world’s people don’t destroy forests, don’t wipe out endangered species, don’t pollute rivers and oceans, and emit essentially no greenhouse gases.

Even in the rich countries of the Global North, most environmental destruction is caused not by individuals or households, but by mines, factories, and power plants run by corporations that care more about profit than about humanity’s survival.

No reduction in U.S. population would have stopped BP from poisoning the Gulf of Mexico last year.

Lower birthrates won’t shut down Canada’s tar sands, which Bill McKibben has justly called one of the most staggering crimes the world has ever seen.

Universal access to birth control should be a fundamental human right — but it would not have prevented Shell’s massive destruction of ecosystems in the Niger River delta, or the immeasurable damage that Chevron has caused to rainforests in Ecuador.

Ironically, while populationist groups focus attention on the 7 billion, protestors in the worldwide Occupy movement have identified the real source of environmental destruction: not the 7 billion, but the 1%, the handful of millionaires and billionaires who own more, consume more, control more, and destroy more than all the rest of us put together.

In the United States, the richest 1% own a majority of all stocks and corporate equity, giving them absolute control of the corporations that are directly responsible for most environmental destruction.

Read more from Angus and Butler in their new book Too Many People?A recent report prepared by the British consulting firm Trucost for the United Nations found that just 3,000 corporations cause $2.15 trillion in environmental damage every year. Outrageous as that figure is — only six countries have a GDP greater than $2.15 trillion — it substantially understates the damage, because it excludes costs that would result from “potential high impact events such as fishery or ecosystem collapse,” and “external costs caused by product use and disposal, as well as companies’ use of other natural resources and release of further pollutants through their operations and suppliers.”

So in the case of oil companies, the figure covers “normal operations,” but not deaths and destruction caused by global warming, not damage caused by worldwide use of its products, and not the multi-billions of dollars in costs to clean up oil spills. The real damage those companies alone do is much greater than $2.15 trillion, every single year.

The 1% also control the governments that supposedly regulate those destructive corporations. The millionaires include 46 percent of members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 54 out of 100 senators, and every president since Eisenhower.

Through the government, the 1% control the U.S. military, the largest user of petroleum in the world, and thus one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Military operations produce more hazardous waste than the five largest chemical companies combined. More than 10 percent of all Superfund hazardous waste sites in the United States are on military bases.

Those who believe that slowing population growth will stop or slow environmental destruction are ignoring these real and immediate threats to life on our planet. Corporations and armies aren’t polluting the world and destroying ecosystems because there are too many people, but because it is profitable to do so.

If the birthrate in Iraq or Afghanistan falls to zero, the U.S. military will not use one less gallon of oil.

If every African country adopts a one-child policy, energy companies in the U.S., China, and elsewhere will continue burning coal, bringing us ever closer to climate catastrophe.

Critics of the too many people argument are often accused of believing that there are no limits to growth. In our case, that simply isn’t true. What we do say is that in an ecologically rational and socially just world, where large families aren’t an economic necessity for hundreds of millions of people, population will stabilize. In Betsy Hartmann’s words, “The best population policy is to concentrate on improving human welfare in all its many facets. Take care of the population and population growth will go down.”

The world’s multiple environmental crises demand rapid and decisive action, but we can’t act effectively unless we understand why they are happening. If we misdiagnose the illness, at best we will waste precious time on ineffective cures; at worst, we will make the crises worse.

Read more on population. Check out our series 7 billion: What to expect when you’re expanding.The too many people argument directs the attention and efforts of sincere activists to programs that will not have any substantial effect. At the same time, it weakens efforts to build an effective global movement against ecological destruction: It divides our forces, by blaming the principal victims of the crisis for problems they did not cause.

Above all, it ignores the massively destructive role of an irrational economic and social system that has gross waste and devastation built into its DNA. The capitalist system and the power of the 1%, not population size, are the root causes of today’s ecological crisis.

As pioneering ecologist Barry Commoner once said, “Pollution begins not in the family bedroom, but in the corporate boardroom.”

Ian Angus is coauthor of Too Many People? Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis. He is editor of the ecosocialist journal Climate and Capitalism.Simon Butler is coauthor of Too Many People? Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis. He is editor of Green Left Weekly.

Workers protest against “redeployment” and demand reelection of the union,

BYD may face class action lawsuits if unable to solve dispute.

15/10/2011

Globalization Monitor

Yesterday, October 14, about three hundred “redeployed” BYD’s sales workers protested against BYD at the front gate of its plant in Pingshan, Shenzen. The protest was soon stopped by the company security. BYD, the Chinese battery and auto maker backed by billionaire Warren Buffett, started to restructure its sales department and “redeploy” its employees to other departments or stop their duties in September this year.

October 14, about three hundred "redeployed" BYD's sales workers protested against BYD at the front gate of the plant and they was soon stopped by the company security.

The “redeployed” employees are still very angry with BYD’s arrangement and its refusal to admit and announce its layoffs openly. Recently, BYD called the employees to offer them back their positions; however, the employees do not trust BYD anymore and think they will be laid off after they come back to work.

The workers raised the following questions and demands to the management, as follows:

1.  The company should admit that it has violated labor Contact Law when the management unilaterally modify labor contract to repositioning employees.

2.  The management must fix the above problem by:

a. paying financial compensations to those leaving the company because of its decision to redeploy them.

b. for those who wish to stay in the company BYD should ensure that their wages and work post should remain the same as enshrined in the contract.

3.  Employees who have joined protest shall not be penalized by BYD

4.  Re-election of union representatives is needed to ensure trade union representing employees’ interest.

The employees claim that BYD has violated the Labor Contract Law as they were unilaterally “redeployed” without their prior consent. At first the employees wanted collective bargaining with the management to force BYD to give a concrete response to their complaints, but there was no reply from BYD.

BYD employees have called for a joint class-action lawsuit against BYD. They also call for the reelection of the workplace union.

BYD’s share price has fallen significantly since June this year, dropping from 33 yuan (US$5.17) to 17.98 yuan (US$2.81), falling below its issuance price of 18 yuan (US$2.82). If BYD does not address the workers’ grievances properly, it may face another big financial crisis.

read more…

26^th September, 2011

To ThyssenKrupp Elevator (HK) Limited,

Work 33 hours a Day? No More Toleration! Strike and Get What We Deserve! Fight for Reasonable Pay and Secure Public Safety

ThyssenKrupp Elevator (HK) Limited is one of the three biggest elevator production company in the world and the sales record was 5.2 billion euro last year. While the company earns tremendous amount of money, she fails to treat her workers fairly.

During past few years, inflation erodes what workers can benefit from the enforcement of the statutory minimum wage. However, what we get is even worse than average workers in Hong Kong. Our salary has only increased by 0.5% in 2010 and 3% in 2011.

Generally in elevator maintenance industry, the salary of a newly-admitted assistant technician is 8500 HK dollars per month, while that for 4-to-10-year experience technician and 10-year experience technician are 12000 dollars and 14000 dollars respectively. Yet our salary is much lower than the average standard. A worker with 8-year experience only gets 7100 dollars per month. On the other hand, a newly-hired technician can get 8500 dollars. It is simply unfair. The company knows she can only compete for other company by increasing the salary for the new-comers, but this amounts to exploitation to the current workers who work so hard for the company.

As an elevator maintenance technician, our job is to ensure smooth operation of the elevator so that the people can use it safely. If we can work in pairs, not only the maintenance can be operated more smoothly, the working safety of workers can also be ensured. The company fails to enforce the labour law, since we often have to work alone, which tremendously increase the danger of operation. Three years ago, the company promised to increase workforce so as to enforce what labour law requires. Nevertheless, the company fails to do so and the problem persists.

As there is not enough workforce, we have to work overtime at night in case of any emergency. We also work to get overtime pay to compensate for the extremely low salary. As the company will not compensate a full-pay leave for our overtime work, we have to work continuously for 33 hours if we have to be on duty at night shift. This obviously threatens our health. What’s worse, this adversely affect the quality of services provided and may mean an increase of chance of elevator operation problem, which may in turn increase the chance of accident and impede public safety. read more…

China’s most famous “dam immigrants” are surely the 1.4 million people displaced by the Three Gorges Dam, completed in 2006. This report, however, will tell the stories of less well-know dam immigrants in the Dongjiang river basin of Guangdong province.

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.

This report documenting those dam immigrants’ daily life in two resettlement sites in Guangdong’s Dongjiang basin: Researchers carried out interviews with residents of both sites, and documented how their quality of life and access to water have been negatively affected by resettlement.

read more…

Gold Peak Workers Campaign Update

Ex-GP workers win new compensation deal after six years of struggle

New developments in the campaign for just compensation:

A. Lawsuit and public actions of the ex-GP workers

16 August 2010, a group of ex-GP workers gather at the entrance of Huizhou City Court
In September 2010, 152 former workers from GP’s Huizhou factory all with excessive cadmium levels won their lawsuit against Gold Peak Ltd. The court found in favour of the workers’ claim for RMB 6.03 million cash compensation. Apart from the 152 workers who filed the claim, the award also included a further 110 workers with excessive cadmium levels who did not file the lawsuit but were in a similar situation. Each worker received between RMB 15,000 - RMB 25,000 making it the largest amount of compensation awarded since 2004. Most of the workers involved consider the award a victory. At the time of writing, the total compensation won by the GP workers amounts to more than RMB 50 million.

Inspired by the compensation package GP won by affected workers following the closure and relocation of GP’s Jet Power plant in 2009, the 152 workers filed their claim[1] on 27 January 2010. In June 2010, the lawsuit came to a stalemate and both the court and the Huizhou government insisted that GP and their former employees negotiate an agreement. However, on 19 August 2010, GP left the negotiation table leaving the workers with little option but to organise collective action. During the following weeks, the workers petitioned the GP plant, the court and the city government office and occupied the Huizhou City Petition Bureau for two weeks.

read more…

An Interview with a Waterworks Union Activist

Globalization Monitor

July 2007

(Notes: In July 2007, in the preparation for the Chinese version of the book Reclaiming Public Water, a joint publication by TNI and CEO, we conducted an interview with an activist from the Government Waterworks Professionals Association, Hong Kong. The activist chose to remain anonymous.)

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?

Firstly, the author of the book in question hypothesized that water is a commodity. Yet water services are a basic human right and an indispensable responsibility for a government, and there is consensus among many people and experts over this. Hence the author of the book passed his judgment based on profitability is in itself questionable. He simply dismissed out of hand that for decades the government has not intended to make a profit from the water supply in the first place; it merely wants to cover the basic costs. The government supplies water to remote villages where most often the residents are underprivileged. It may cost several ten thousand dollars to set up the water mains but this is a basic right for these citizens. Therefore it is not appropriate to judge this question according to profitability.

Another hypothesis of the author was that private water supply is more efficient than public water supply. I don’t know what sorts of data are provided to support his argument. One must looks at objective criteria though. And the fact is that our current performance has already reached the standard required by the WHO, with a water supply coverage reaching 99%. Over the past years our work has gained public recognition and we have strived to improve our services.

Keeping the water supply in public hands also implies more quality control over the services. The government has set out many regulations to control the operation of the public services in general, ensuring the justice, openness and transparency of the work. Whereas in the private sector decisions will be more discretionary and there is much less public monitoring, hence it is vulnerable to insider trading, secret exchanges of benefits, or a monopoly. In our view, if Hong Kong’s public water supply becomes privately run, the first threat to the public would be the monopolization of the water supply by a private supplier. We have witnessed this phenomenon in gas and electricity etc. In the face of problems, the government is unable to coerce the private corporations to charge reasonable levies. If the water supply is privatized, the private company would inevitably raise the prices to maximize its profit.

Regarding the question of efficiency, the Water Supplies Department has already achieved very high standards, with 99 percent of compliance rate with WHO standards. For countries such as the UK and France, compliance is much lower than HK. Some may have compliance as low as 80 percent or even 70 percent.

In addition, I think we should first ask every resident if they are dissatisfied with the current water supply. In terms of quality, stability, customer service or crisis management, do they find the water service at present satisfactory or not? We understand that there is always a possibility for further improvement but there are lots of other ways to achieve this other than privatization. I personally don’t understand why the author thinks that privatization is the only way.

In fact, back in 1998, the Department was already looking into room for improvement. Later, the Department came up with proposals including procedural simplification, cost reduction, personnel shuffles and so on. The number of employees was cut from 6000 to 4500. At the time, the Department was one of the ten departments which had the greatest number of employees. This is no longer the case now. read more…

Thanks to Michael Walker who wrote a book review of our publication: No Choice But to Fight. We are glad that we can post his review here.

Book Review: No Choice But to Fight

Anyone remotely interested in workers’ rights in the developing world should get this book! Because it is self-published by Globalisation Monitor it does not appear in Amazon and probably few people in the big developing economies have seen it. It is really easy to get a copy – GM sells it for a song or you can simply download it in PDF format off their website.

Clearly this is not a book written to make a profit; it’s been written because the story is just so extraordinary and needed to be told.

The book describes the appalling neglect of the operators of the Gold Peak battery factory in Huizhou in China’s Pearl River Delta Manufacturing area, whose workers suffer cadmium poisoning after coming into direct contact with the poisonous chemical. The workers largely self-organise to find justice, bypassing the official union and going directly to the authorities and to the press. Only very late in the game do they receive support from groups across the border in Hong Kong. It is all rather tidy: The owners of Gold Peak and their major customers are in Hong Kong, only a few dozen miles away from the factory.

I finished the book feeling upbeat for the future of China’s workers. Injustice transcends cultural barriers, and they weren’t going to take it laying down.

The site management had poor health and safety controls from the beginning. Rather like big tobacco, they did not respond to it and tried to duck the issue when workers began to realise something was wrong. For a considerable time workers attempted to obtain cadmium blood level tests only to have the results altered or not released at all. At one point the factory owners even go so far as to conspire with local hospital officials to thwart people attempting to have tests from a third party. read more…