The universal and inalienable right to drinking water isthe only principle on which Professor Riccardo Petrella never compromises. Our societies, he explains, through their abusive and predatory use of this resource, are “assaulting” water and thus they actively contribute to the growing scarcity of a naturally renewable resource. In an interview withEuropolitics, he criticises not only the multinational water companies but also the EU which, by formalising in its Water Framework Directive the commercial exploitation of water, supports what has become a fully-fledged market. Petrella received his doctorate in sociology and political science from the University of Florence in Italy. In 1997, he founded the International Committee for Global Water Contract ⁽¹⁾.

Is water a real problem today?

Yes. Today there are 1.5 billion people who lack access to drinking water, which means lacking access to life. Yet our society is in no hurry to eliminate this non-right to drinking water and has not made this issue a priority on the global political agenda. Coupled with the fact that there are 2.6 billion people without access to sanitation systems, which leads to health problems, this is the most important problem because it concerns the right to life of billions of people.

Furthermore, we have made abusive, predatory and non-sustainable use of water resources across the planet, especially for the last 50 years. We have ‘assaulted’ water. What is becoming scarcer is fresh water (for human use), not water as such, because the quantity of water is and will always be the same on the planet. From that point of view, yes, the lack of water is spreading. Water is a renewable, permanent and secure resource, but through our use of it we have made it non-renewable, just like oil or coal. What is taking place is symptomatic of a society founded on an economy that is predatory towards nature. The water shortage exists in regions that are traditionally poor in terms of precipitation, which are structurally in water stress (less than 1,000 m³ of water a year per capita available for all uses). What is changing is that today water stress is also affecting rich regions. So the trend of destroying this vital resource has to be reversed. Lastly, as a result of our societies’ incapacity to stop or reverse this predatory system, water becomes an object of conflicts related either to how it is divided up among its different uses (agriculture, energy, domestic use) or between states. According to a number of sources, water will be the main source of wars in the 21st century.

What is the impact of climate change?

Climate change is going to heighten this crisis situation. If we zoom forward to 2032, or 40 years after the first Earth Summit, after all these promises, the treaties not signed and/or never implemented, 60% of the world’s population will live in regions with severe water shortages. Man is responsible for climate change. And those who have caused it are also those who can take all the measures necessary to keep its consequences from being more serious.

Are the policies being proposed appropriate?

The first strategy proposed by the international community is a strategy for mitigation of the phenomenon and its consequences and development of the capacities to avoid floods that will be increasing in both intensity and frequency. The second is that of adaptation: the need to live with a higher average temperature, which will result in a 30-60 cm rise in sea level. It is crucial to keep it from rising by more than a metre. These two strategies must be the dominating principles of our reaction. The problem is that the states and the ruling classes remain attached to two principles that prevent them from providing the appropriate responses. The first is national sovereignty over water resources, even though only two of the world’s 263 large hydrological basins are national. All the others are transnational. Yet the states continue to claim the right to the principle of national sovereignty, even though common sense should push them to apply the principle of shared sovereignty and common management. Second, they affirm that they assure national water security. In a crisis situation, ‘every man for himself’ is the rule. That’s a mistake. It is in times of crisis that it is important to assert the necessity of cooperation and the pooling of resources and means so that everyone can come through the crisis in dignity, by virtue of the right to life.

Has there been any evolution?

The solutions proposed are based on the same strategy that lies at the origin of the crisis. For 100 years, the objective of our societies was to produce more and more water, which is considered an element of economic growth: producing more and more and consuming more and more. This meant taking water everywhere, in deep water tables, building dams to contain water and so on. This same erroneous strategy is sill being implemented today. We continue to think that we have to offer more and more water to continue producing goods. This is a supply-side strategy accompanied with a strategy for managing demand, not in the sense of changing the use made of water, but in reducing consumption and waste and using water more efficiently. The starting point is still that demand for water must rise, not due to an increase in the population and its basic needs, but because there will be an increase in economic needs for water (agriculture and industry). That leads to a new wave of building big dams, desalination of sea water and the mushrooming of purification stations, instead of halting pollution upstream. This faith in technology and the construction of major infrastructures remains the dominant policy defended by the groups that founded the World Water Forum.

You are a critic of the forum…

The World Water Forum remains fixed on this strategy: water is going to become rare so supply must be increased. Will there be conflicts? Let’s let the market settle conflicts and ensure optimal allocation of available resources. The forum continues to say that what the states, the public sector and local authorities have done for the last 30 to 40 years is bad and that water management should be handed over to large private companies, the only ones able to ensure efficiency. In Istanbul ⁽²⁾, they are going to continue to preach this economic gospel of water, based on efficiency, productivity and profitability. Personally, I am convinced that all these strategies have demonstrated that they are a total failure. The dominant powers that have grown rich on these principles will try to continue profiting from water because we will always need water. Water is a stable market. There will always be people who will buy water to live, farmers who will need water for irrigation, industries that will need water to make rubber, paper and cars. Profit is stable and guaranteed forever.

So is the forum useless?

Since its meeting in The Hague, in 2000, I have been frankly opposed to the forum, which is dominated by the big industrial, financial and multinational water groups that have succeeded, within the dominant culture of the last 30 years, in winning over most of the public powers to their side. Since then, these public powers have sung the praises of public private partnership. I think the forum has no real legitimacy to be the centre of discussions or to define global water policy. For the last 40 years, the public authorities have constantly proclaimed that the state has to give up this role, that it should simply support the private sector. The public sector has denied its own public function; it has betrayed its function, placing itself at the service of financial and private sector thinking. It has agreed to allow market forces to take precedence over the general interest and res publica laws. I do not think the World Water Forum’s meeting in Istanbul can be considered an important event for solving the problems ahead.

The EU will attend the forum holding up its Water Framework Directive as a model. Rightly or wrongly?

It is right to do so for the ecological dimension of the directive, which represents real progress from the standpoint of regulations governing water as a natural resource. The directive is very good in terms of the definition of the good status of water resources and for taking apart the mechanisms that lead to bad status of resources. It is very good for oversight of processes of water contamination and pollution but it is too weak compared to the measures needed to halt these processes because it gives the states competence for developing intervention policies in this area.

The EU has no legitimate right, on the other hand, to claim to be a model because the directive is the formal recognition by the EU member sates of this economic conception that I have just denounced. Water policy remains the absolute competence of the member states so the EU has no choice but to agree to be indifferent to how they treat water and whether they opt for public, private or joint management. The EU cannot legislate or intervene in this area. In spite of that, the directive makes a clear choice in support of economic and efficient management. It affirms that tariffs must be the main source of financing the costs of water services and that integrated management of water resources must be based on cost-pricing for water determined from the principle of total recovery of production costs, including profit. So the directive de facto formalises the concept of commercial exploitation of water as an economic resource that must be managed by market mechanisms.

The EU is in no position to boast: for at least 15 years, it has been preaching the liberalisation of services and prices at domestic level, which in theory is justified because if a single market is set up, there can’t be any national monopolies, either public or private. But at the same time, the national public monopolies are being dismantled and private monopolies strengthened. It is hypocritical to say that public monopolies have to be dismantled when private monopolies are maintained because, in the latter case, they would result from competition! If there is a common market there must be services at European level. But the EU has chosen the liberalisation of private services of an oligopolistic or even monopolistic nature at the local level instead of creating a European public service.

And what about the international level?

The EU has been bent on defending the liberalisation of water services in the framework of World Trade Organisation negotiations. It is the EU that has repeatedly and insistently asked 72 countries, including African countries and the former French and British colonies, to liberalise their water services to facilitate the globalisation of their national enterprises specialised in water management services. The real water multinationals are French and British firms. No, the EU has no reason to present itself to the world with a certificate of good behaviour, apart from its efforts in the ecological sphere.

⁽¹⁾  Petrella sums up the political, economic and terrirotial challenges in his book ‘The water manifesto: Arguments for a world water contract’
⁽²⁾ Istanbul will host the 5th World Water Forum on 16-22 March