“If the wars of [the 21st] century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” —Ismail Serageldin, former VP, World Bank, Newsweek, 1995. The 5th annual World Water Forum was held in Istanbul this past week to facilitate discussion of international water policy among corporations, NGOs, and international financial institutions in the context of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. Waiting to meet them were throngs of demonstrators holding banners reading “Water for Life, Not for Profit,” looking into the face masks of riot police three deep. Underlying the strain is the contentious issue of water privatization. In the 1990s governments began inviting private corporations to run their water infrastructure for a profit, the idea being that private enterprise would be much more adept and efficient than any government bureaucracy at getting the water to where it had to go. Unfortunately, many of these huge transnational corporations, a major player be...
A blog published by the (now dissolved) Literacy 'n' Poverty Project