Headline, June14, 2013

'''WATER : THE CATASTROPH​IC -

FAILURE- OF HUMAN CONSCIENCE​'''

The rise of these huge Water Management companies, the world over, is very much due in large part to these politicians from wealthy nations, twisting the wrists and arms of poor nations on behalf of influential corporations. More more important though is the miserable failure by the governments around the world to provide services so basic to modern life that some activists regard them as very basic human rights : affordable, potable water and safe sanitation.

So complex can be the problem of water management, that to its dismay, the Argentinian government which took over the water system some years ago,   -then discovered that the utility could not readily be brought back to life. The federal government took a year to approve the enabling legislation, and the city had to recreate the system from scratch.

''This is one of the hidden costs of privatization,'' said Andre Abreu, a water activist at France Libertes, a non-profit organisation run by Danielle Mitterrand, the widow of the French President. ''It's very hard to reverse. If poor cities make mistakes, they are worse off than when they started.''

Water services entail four basic functions: purifying the water that goes into the system. delivering it to households and businesses, cleaning up the water that leaves those homes and businesses, and extending and repairing the network of pipes, pumps and plants. Simple to describe, these tasks are hair-pullingly complex on the ground; the technical challenge of building and operating a water system that can supply the daily onslaught of morning flushes and showers while not overwhelming users at light times is the sort of thing that keeps Engineers in heavy demand.

To make an end run around intractably venal public sectors, institutions like World Bank and International Monetary Fund push forward the private sector. But businesses cannot provide openness and accountability. If the government to which it answers is closed and unaccountable. Indeed, in each circumstances private enterprise can simply become an unwitting instrument of  ''oppression.''  -as in most developing countries, where provisional authorities use it to paper over the environmental havoc of unrestrained industrialization.

In many experts view, the solution to bad government is not the market, but good government. Yet both the activists and their nemesis  in the World Bank and the I.M.F distracted by the decade-long ideological battle over large water management companies, have barely begun to use their diverse sort of leverages to push governments to safeguard their natural resources and operate utilities in a way that actually serve the public.

The prospect of these bitter opponents working together in any way seems very very unlikely. But the crises over water is simply unprecedented in scale that anything can happen. The world will do well to remember that Water is not simply an ordinary consumer good, like lamps or shirts or smoothies. Water is Life. Nothing can be sustained without water.

The stark and bitter truth is that most of the developing world has no systems in place  -zero systems to be exact-  for ''treating waste''  at all. So In the pits of the corporate world, -at this very moment, strategy sessions are going on. Soon, very soon, corporate giants will be scrambling, To Take Over The Water Systems Around The World.

Bad For Humanity Be Damned!! 

The vision is that it should be Good For Business!

With respectful dedication : Environmentology

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless