Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water

In a shocking exposé, Blue Gold shows why, as the vice president of the World Bank has pronounced, "The wars of the next century will be about water."

Increasingly, transnational corporations are plotting to control the world's dwindling water supply. In England and France, where water has already been privatized, rates have soared and water shortages have been severe. The major bottled-water companies—Perrier, Evian, Naya, and now Coca-Cola and PepsiCo—head one of the fastest growing and least regulated industries, buying up fresh water rights and drying up crucial reserves. Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, two of the most active opponents to this trend, show how the corporate giants act in their own interest and how, contrary to received wisdom, water flows uphill to the wealthy who can afford it.

The consumption of water doubles every twenty years—more than twice the rate of the increase in human population. Blue Goldcaptures in striking detail the forces behind the depletion of the world's fresh water, and the human and ecological impacts it entails.

Please read this - water is shaping up to being one of the biggest issues in our world.


6 Star Plus Foundation Work   August 28, 2010
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
I read the authors' more recent Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water yesterday and watched the also more recent Blue Gold: World Water Wars last night, all in the context of raeding 12 books on water I bought for a UNESCO project I had to drop from when I joined the UN in Guatemala (which I am leaving 31 August).

This is a six-star and beyond foundation work, and even though I continue to think that Marq de Villier's Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource is the original tour d'force (published in 2001), and that the The Water Atlas: A Unique Visual Analysis of the World's Most Critical Resource is still the best buy over-all, this book joins with Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit as a foundation contribution. The authors received the Right Livelihood Award, called the Alternative Nobel, for the work that this book represents, so I urge readers to dismiss the ideologically-rooted and intellectually dishonest appraisals of this book as leftist pap.

Published in 2002, this book is more of an overview briefing, and it does that very well. I learn early on:

+ 70% of the water service market has been captured by corporations--I have a note to myself that this parallels what the oil and automobile magnates did to public transport--bought it all up, killed it, and then pushed highways and petrol-guzzling cars as the "only" alternative.

+ Bottled water coast 1,100 times what tap water costs [other studies point out bottle water is by no means safe, and that the water used to create the plastic bottle is much much greater in quantity than the water contained in the bottle.

Three organizations making a difference:

01 Public Service International
02 Global Water Contract
03 Friends of the Earth International

I learn that in 2004 a Peoples' World Water Movement got started, and later on in the book, that fighting back is working.

Other great stuff that made it to my notes:

+ Watersheds come in nested families, difficult to diagnose one watershed removed impact on yours
+ The problem surprised the public because it was left to the experts and not made a matter of PUBLIC discussion
+ Solution, apart from establishing clean water as a human right within a humam commons, to restructure society and our lifestyle, and of course this is addressed to the one billion rich not the five billion poor. Here I want to mention the work of Robert Ackoff of Penn State University and John N. Warfield of George Mason University, I am among their acolytes and a number of us are now "surging" on the need for both collective intelligence and public access to all information in all languages all the time.
+ Need a global treaty initiative to make water a global commons.
+ We have lost touch with indigenous knowledge, for an in-depth treatment of this see 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

The broad challenges are two primary and two secondary (major and minor did not seem right):

PRIMARY: Population explosion AND explosion in use of water per person
SECONDARY: Breaking of hydrolic cycle (losing 1% a year) AND sewage into water raising the stakes

Among the individuals that the authors identify (one reason I read books) are:

01 Michal Kravcik of Slovakia on the hydrological cycle
02 David Suzuki of Canada on "exponential environmental destruction (Club of Rome got it right, and so does the UN High Level Panel on Threats, Challenge, and Change in their report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change but see also the easier to grasp book by J. F. Rischard, High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
03 Sandra Postel with the WorldWatch Institute, whose latest book I just reviewed, State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability (State of the World)
04 Peter Gleik et al of the Pacific Institute, a force in himself, I just reviewed what is "the" reference every two years, The World's Water 2008-2009: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources
05 Emerita Ursula Franklin of Canada, on "standpoints" (see QUOTE at end of review)

Other points that caught my attention:

+ Other species extinctions are 100X to 1000X the "norm" before humans became industrial and predatory
+ Threats to water include toxic run off, deforestation, global warming, invasive species, over-irrigation and unsustainable agriculture, and dams. Here I want to recommend two books, Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy and also High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health--the computer industry, not all the other industries, in the primary creator of "Super Fund" toxic sites.

I like the authors' survey of the nature of the human crisis, and their headings say it all--this is a perfect book for undergraduate study and useful to graduates outside the water domain as well.

+ Lethal Waters
+ Unequal Access (most do not realize that poverty, like disabilities, impairs diversity of thinking coming into the future)
+ Elite Privilege
+ Food Scarcity (diversion of water to biofuels and other needs)
+ Dam fall out (I learn that schistosomiasis and other parasites thrive)
+ Wars Wars
+ Energy drain of water
+ Privatization

Bottom line is that governments no longer represent the public interest, and the "everything for sale" mentality, combined with the unethical and intellectually unsupportable World Bank, WTO, and IMF positions on "international competitiveness," are looting the Third World as well as the Western world of water.

Strangely to me the author does not focus on corruption, which has become a primary focus on my life, not only dishonesty in taking bribes, but dishonesty in allowing data pathologies and information asymmetries to persist against the public interest (e.g. true cost economics not being demanded nor supported by governments).

This is probably the best book treatment of the global conquest by Suez, Viendi, Enron (RIP), RWE-Thames, and E.ON, of the world's water, and I am just blown away by how complacent people--including ostensibly educated people in the USA heartland--are allowing all this to happen. Will companies own the air next? Buy clean air? We have reached a tipping point, and the authors address that at the end of the book.

The author reviews the means by which the water cycle is being corrupted, including pipelines, supertankers, grand canals, water bags (for when whaling is off-season, let's start ripping these up), and bottled water, which combines theft with pollution, but see Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog for the piece on the Japanese invention that now turns plastic back into oil.

Precautionary Principle anyone? I do not see this anywhere, and that is consistent with governments worldwide, from national to local levels, abdicating their responsibility to act in the public interest. Three books recommended here: Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing The Precautionary Principle; Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War; and Corruption and Anti-Corruption: An Applied Philosophical Approach (Basic Ethics in Action).

The chapter on global nexus presents the integrated fashion in which the corporations have "bought" the UN and its new water agencies, the World Bank, WTO, IMF, and also regional trade regimes and regional banks.

The chapter on fighting back is useful and probably needs to be a new book in the near term all on its own, beyond Blue Covenant. Perhaps the authors could take street-fighting lessons from Lori Wollach.... The authors cover movements to regain public control, fight privatization, block water exports (this strikes me as HUGE and under-focused), fighting water contamination (e.g. hog farms), restoring water systems, stopping dams, and--the subject of what I hope will be a new book, the internationalization of the struggle with one big change: use water to build that movement, and then immediately expand it to focus on holistic eradication of the ten high level threats to humanity through the public orchestration of information and spending and behavior across the twelve core policies, water being the twelfth. More on this at Phi beta Iota and originally at the Earth Intelligence Network.

QUOTE (205): "A standpoint, explains Dr. Franklin, is an ethical framework that informs one's purpose and one's work. ... A standpoint brings a sense of priority, a sense of proportion, and a sense of obligation. Having the courage to find a place to stand, and if necessary, fight for what you believe, is required before any person or movement can effect real social change."

In the USA this means to me both the end of the two-party tyranny, and the end of the Federal Reserve/Treasury Congressional looting of the public purse on behalf of Wall Street. The Bush-Obama bail-out of Wall Street instead of freezing foreclosures and evictions can only be understood if one sees that the White House is the servant of Wall Street, and not at all acting in the public interest--regardless of which party is in power. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by non-violent Electoral Reform.

The book concludes with a focus on water as a commons demanding stewardship, equality, and universality, and three lists, two on how to achieve water peace and one with ten steps to water security--buy the book, it is still relevant, still valuable, still a foundation work.

Amazon limits links to ten, so the 12 water books I am reviewing are best accessed directly via Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog. The last three, the most dense, are the severely over-priced and therefore not recommended The Evolution of the Law and Politics of Water, unillustrated but brilliant Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building (Global Environmental Accord: Strategies for Sustainability and Institutional Innovation); and the historical Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization.


Excellent case for public ownership of water services   September 8, 2006
William Podmore (London United Kingdom)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful

This excellent book makes the case for public ownership and control over our water services.
In the past ten years, three giant global corporations, France's Suez and Vivendi Environnement, and Thames, have seized control over the water supplied to almost 300 million people in every continent. Vivendi increased its water revenue from $5 billion in 1990 to over $12 billion by 2002, RWE from $25 million in 1990 to $2.5 billion in 2002.
These companies claim to be `passionate, caring and reliable', yet they push for higher rate increases, frequently fail to meet their commitments and abandon a waterworks if they are not making enough money. As Suez's Chief Executive Officer said, "Water is an efficient product. It is a product which normally would be free, and our job is to sell it." In France, charges for privatised water services are 13% higher than for public services.
For two months in 1998, after privatisation, more than three million residents of Sydney were forced to boil their drinking water to kill parasites. Fifteen months after the city of Adelaide signed a contract turning over its waterworks to Thames Water and Vivendi, the city was engulfed in a powerful sewage smell, `the big pong'.
New Jersey, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Manila and Jakarta have all experienced problems after privatisation. In 1996 Hamilton in Canada experienced its worst-ever sewage spill, when 48 million gallons of untreated human waste, heavy metals and chemicals flooded into Lake Ontario. Atlanta, Georgia, gave control over its water to Suez five years ago, and quality and service dropped. The city returned control to the public utility.
In Cochabamba, Bolivia, after Aguas del Tunari, a Bechtel subsidiary, took control of the city's waterworks in 1999, it raised water bills 100%. The contract allowed the company to close down people's private wells unless they paid Aguas del Tunari for the water. Union leader Oscar Olivera said, "They wanted to privatise the rain." The city's people organised a referendum. Most voted to end the contract and forced Bechtel out of the country. Similarly, in 2000 the people of Grenoble succeeded in returning their water and sewage system to public control.
In Iraq, the US state put Bechtel in charge of rebuilding the water and sewage systems. But, as the U.S. Agency for International Development reported, "Baghdad's three sewage treatment plants, which together comprise three-quarters of the nation's sewage treatment capacity, are inoperable, allowing the waste from 3.8 million people to flow untreated directly into the Tigris River." A UN survey in May 2004 found that 80% of families living in rural areas had no safe water. Only 64 of 249 planned water projects have been completed.
In 1999, South Africa initiated five water privatisation programs, aiming to make people pay the full cost of having running water in their homes. As Nelson Mandela had said, "Privatisation is the fundamental policy of our government. Call me a Thatcherite, if you will." Consequently, ten million South Africans had their water cut off for various periods, forcing people to get water from polluted rivers and lakes, leading to South Africa's worst outbreak of cholera. More than 140,000 people were infected and 265 died.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) says that 98% of whites, but only 27% of blacks, had access to clean water in their homes in March 2001. A smaller proportion of the population has access to water than in 1994. In rural areas, only 2% of blacks had indoor plumbing. Two million people have been evicted for not paying utility bills. Many poor families pay 30% of their income for water. Despite South Africa's rating by the United Nations Development Index as a middle-to-upper-income country, one child in 22 dies before reaching the age of one, often from diarrhoea caused by poor water. The 13% white minority is 18th on the Human Development Index, equal to New Zealand. The black majority is 118th, in line with Bolivia. Of all the countries in the world, only Guatemala has a wider gap between rich and poor.
In 2004, the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation concluded its study of privatisations in sub-Saharan Africa, "profit-maximizing behaviour has led privatised companies to keep investments below the necessary levels, with the result that rural communities and the urban poor were further marginalised."
The European Commission has been driving privatisation of all our utilities, and its new EU-wide water regulations should mean fat new contracts for the water giants. Since 1998, Vivendi and Suez, backed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, have secured water concessions in at least 23 major cities and districts in Eastern Europe.
The big three are also moving into the USA, buying its largest private water utility companies. They have increased their lobbying and federal election campaign spending. In Washington, they have already secured beneficial tax law changes and are now trying to persuade Congress to pass laws that would force cash-strapped municipal governments to privatise their waterworks in exchange for federal grants and loans.
Water, like air, is a necessity of human life. It must not be treated as what Fortune magazine calls, "One of the world's great business opportunities. It promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th: a precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations." By 2002, the six most globally active water companies ran drinking water distribution networks in at least 56 countries, up from 12 in 1990. Yet private companies still run only about 5% of the world's waterworks.
In 1989, Blair wrote, "The major utilities - gas, water, electricity and the oil, postal and telecommunications networks - are uniquely important to the national economy. Their operations underpin the rest of industry. We believe that the great utilities must be treated as public services and should be owned by the public - by the community as a whole."
Public utilities offer better, cheaper and fairer water services than private firms. Countries need to keep water in public hands, under democratic control.





Addresses Threats to Our Most Valuable Global Resource   May 17, 2004
meggin8D (Chicago)
5 out of 9 found this review helpful

This was a great book that highlights the current threats to our global water supply. This book was particularly thorough in the analysis of the privatization of water resources. It explains the international institutions that prop up global water companies. I was very impressed with the extensive research that the authors must have put into this book - they used many examples of water issues from around the world. This book is a great introductory book for someone interested in becoming more knowledgable in water issues. It is also a great book for the general public to help them to understand more about a resource they probably take for granted. Don't buy bottled water! It is environmentally wasteful of resources and economically unjustifiable. It contributes funds to private companies and helps to support global water corporations!