Tuesday, August 25, 2009

When it Comes to Water, Can Corporations and Community Really Coexist?

By Peter Asmus, AlterNet
Posted on August 19, 2009, Printed on August 25, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142030/

When drought brought a critical shortage of water to Kerala, India, anti-globalization activists placed part of the blame on Coca-Cola, which operated a plant there.

Critics contended that Coca-Cola failed to involve the local community in its plans, and the activists began building a substantial global movement against water privatization, employing the tactic of "brand-jacking" of the world's No. 1 brand -- Coke -- to make their point.

Coke's Kerala plant has since ceased operations, making it a casualty of the global pressure placed on the company. But the campaign against privatization of water resources by activist groups has only grown stronger on the campaign front.

Today, the focus is on bottled water, which critics point to as a wasteful, expensive example of water privatization -- companies taking public water, repackaging it and selling it back to us for a profit.

But the water wars have just begun. Bottled water may be today's popular target, but that battle has peaked. Now, activists are beginning to look beyond bottled water, setting their sights on much bigger objectives.

At stake, they believe, is whether water is recognized as a basic human right, or becomes simply another commodity controlled by giant corporations.

While the bottled-water controversy may have helped propel fresh water issues into the limelight internationally, the current hottest buzz phrase among water-policy-reform advocates, and a topic galvanizing the debate over privatization of water, is the wonky phrase "free prior informed consent" (FPIC).

Jonathan Kaledin, director of The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) global freshwater certification program, said: "Water has been so abundant. There has been an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude about it. As the risks of water shortages become more public, corporations that use a lot of water need to become more aware of the concept of FPIC."

In a nutshell, FPIC recognizes that communities have the right to self-determination. They have a right to give or withhold their consent for new production facilities that may impact local water supplies or prices.

From a legal point-of-view, FPIC is an evolving concept that is gaining wider acceptance by nongovernmental organizations, as well as a few private corporations. FPIC is now incorporated in some forms of international treaty law, especially when it comes to indigenous peoples and extractive industries such as oil and mining. What's new is that FPIC is now being applied to water.

In fall 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the principle of FPIC for development projects, and momentum is building globally toward establishing FPIC as a principle of customary international law. The two key challenges for FPIC is an apparent conflict with the sovereign rights of nations to exploit their own natural resources (as they deem fit), and a lack of clarity about how to implement FPIC.

Among the key issues yet to be resolved are:

* How is "the community" defined? Is there a strict geographical limitation to "community," and are elected officials given greater or equal status to local citizens?
* If there is a lack of consensus within the "community," what process validates any decision-making (i.e. majority vote of local governing body; a referendum?)
* Absent a political process, what exactly represents an adequate level of consent?

David Shilling, a water expert with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (IRRC) argued that FPIC is quite important in order for government and companies to make deals, because it is at the community level where water impacts will be felt. He went on to say:

The community involved has to be part of that conversation. The underserved deserve a place at the table, too. And human rights -- not technical issues -- should be the focus. Otherwise, the corporation will not have a social license to operate. Unfortunately, companies and government have a hard time with this sort of thing. Need to put these issues about water into a larger context, a tangible framework to get a buy-in and to help elevate discussions to the level of community consent.

Bridge Over Troubled Water?

Nestle Waters has had its fair share of controversies over siting production plants. In Michigan, for example, private wells were allegedly impacted by withdrawals. In early July, a settlement between Nestle Waters and Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation was reached, reducing the company's per-day pumping limits, with additional restrictions during spring and summer months.

Alex McIntosh, Nestles Water's director of corporate citizenship, doesn't hold back when assessing how critics view his company's products. "Bottled water has become symbolic about the issue of who actually owns water. Is it fair for water to be priced and sold, and then shipped to us in plastic?" is the way he paraphrased how critics see his company's products. Bottled water is "literally a drop in the bucket," he said, pointing to stats that show bottled water represents a fraction of 1 percent of total water consumption.

Nevertheless, Nestle Waters is moving forward on developing and implementing a "Siting and Community Commitment Framework." A key element to be examined is the notion of FPIC.

This move by Nestle was prompted by a public outcry from the community on the McCloud River in Northern California when the County Community Service District invited Nestle to explore a water operation, and some residents were concerned that the deal allegedly gave the firm a 50-year contract and priority rights to water that feeds one of California's premier rainbow trout and steelhead streams.

To its credit, Nestles Waters has withdrawn the deal and is working with the community to come up with something better.

Community concerns typically revolve around fears that "the company will use all of our water, destroy the aquifer and change our way of life," McIntosh said. "The power differential is also an issue, as communities want balanced deals. Many have almost spiritual views of local water supplies and are just opposed to someone bottling local water and selling it."

Mark Hays, senior researcher for Corporate Accountability International (CAI), a 20-year-old organization well experienced with boycotts and a fierce critic of bottled water, is not very sympathetic to beverage companies such as Nestle Waters or Coke.

"We see FPIC as being about democratic control of water," Hays said. "The impacts of bottlers on any local community are a tricky thing to deal with." But he put forth a few principles that could shape a FPIC protocol for water: 1) A full accounting of a project's impacts; 2) No undue influence on the general public's access to water; 3) No secret economic or political agreements with public agencies.

"We have a ways to go before asking for FPIC," Hays said. "Most of the times, the question of whether a facility will have impacts should be simple and clear. Absent good data, some 'stickiness' can occur." Hays's bottom line question on FPIC was this: "Will Nestle Waters or other corporations accept 'no' for an answer?"

A Good Step Forward, But No Panacea

Without the kind of substantive participation that FPIC mandates, the tenured security of rural communities is always at the mercy of decisions made by others with more perceived power. It is well documented that such insecurity perpetuates poverty.

In contrast, with the bargaining power that FPIC provisions bring them, communities can demand direct compensation for damages or a continuing share of the profits of resource extraction. They can even require the backers of development to invest part of the profits from these ventures to meet community needs. In this respect, FPIC is a tool for greater equity and a natural pathway to a co-management role for local communities in large development projects

But FPIC is not a panacea. Consider these comments from Anil Naidoo of the Council of Canadians:

I do think that it is good to bring the community in on the first level of discussions about water. And the notion of water as a human right cannot be disassociated from these discussions. But even if employing democratic means, any consent or decisions should not give away the human right to water or the health of the environment for future generations. How do we respect intergenerational rights?

This whole process is still operating from an anthropomorphic view ... It is very important to have more transparency and to develop a set of guidelines of what is appropriate. But if you still give away all of the water to Nestle Waters, what good is that? I still have reservations about how FPIC will be used and for what.

Other NGOs, such as Amazon Watch, are much more open to making the business case for FPIC. "To give people and communities the fundamental right to have a say about what happens on their lands under FPIC is a good thing," Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch pointed out. "To date, many companies are adhering to ILO 169, so companies are consulting with local communities. But sitting at the table and consulting is not enough, when the choice is 'yes or yes.' The community needs to have the right to say 'no,' they need to be able to have veto power."

Koenig says FPIC just makes good business sense. "If oil companies or other extractive industries do not have a social license to operate, they will experience project delays, bad PR, both of which aren't good for business. So far, no company has been able to say 'no.' "

But FPIC is at the heart of current U.N. declarations on the human right to water, and the new barometer of how companies will be judged in terms of CSR and the human right to water.

Peter Asmus is an environmental writer based in Stinson Beach, Calif. He is the author of a new book, Introduction to Energy in California, published by the University of California Press. His Web site is www.peterasmus.com.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/142030/

A Mean Streak in the US Mainstream

Tuesday 25 August 2009

by: Mary Dejevsky | Visit article original @ The Independent UK

photo
Opponents of President Obama's health care plan rally in Delray Beach, Florida. (Photo: Getty Images)
The US tolerates more inequality, deprivation and suffering than is acceptable here.

When we Europeans - the British included - contemplate the battles President Obama must fight to reform the US health system, our first response tends to be disbelief. How can it be that so obvious a social good as universal health insurance, so humane a solution to common vulnerability, is not sewn deep into the fabric of the United States? How can one of the biggest, richest and most advanced countries in the world tolerate a situation where, at any one time, one in six of the population has to pay for their treatment item by item, or resort to hospital casualty wards?

The second response, as automatic as the first, is to blame heartless and ignorant Republicans. To Europeans, a universal health system is so basic to a civilised society that only the loony right could possibly oppose it: the people who cling to their guns, picket abortion clinics (when they are not trying to shoot the abortionists) and block funding for birth control in the third world. All right, we are saying to ourselves, there are Americans who think like this, but they are out on an ideological limb.

If only this were true. The reason why Obama is finding health reform such a struggle - even though it was central to his election platform - is not because an extreme wing of the Republican Party, mobilised by media shock-jocks, is foaming at the mouth, or because Republicans have more money than Democrats to buy lobbying and advertising power. Nor is it only because so many influential groups, from insurance companies through doctors, have lucrative interests to defend - although this is a big part of it.

It is because very many Americans simply do not agree that it is a good idea. And they include not only mainstream Republicans, but Democrats, too. Indeed, Obama's chief problem in seeking to extend health cover to most Americans is not Republican opposition: he thrashed John McCain to win his presidential mandate; he has majorities in both Houses of Congress. If Democrats were solidly behind reform, victory would already be his.

The unpalatable fact for Europeans who incline to think that Americans are just like us is that Democrats are not solidly behind Obama on this issue. Even many in the party's mainstream must be wooed, cajoled and even - yes - frightened, if they are ever going to agree to change the status quo. Universal healthcare is an article of faith in the US only at what mainstream America would regard as the bleeding- heart liberal end of the spectrum.

As some of Obama's enemies warned through the campaign - and I mean warned, not promised - this is the philosophical terrain where, his voting record suggests, this President is most at home. But many more are not. The absence from the Senate of Edward Kennedy, through illness, and Hillary Clinton, elevated to the State Department, has left his pro-reform advocacy in the legislature sorely depleted.

But there is something else at work here, too, beyond defective advocacy, and it lays bare a profound misunderstanding. Europe hailed Obama's landslide election victory as evidence that America had reclaimed its better self, turned to the left and bade farewell to ingrained racial divisions as well. That was a benevolent, but ultimately idealistic, gloss.

Obama's victory can indeed be seen as a reaction to eight years of conservative Republicanism under George Bush and a turn by US voters to the left. But that left is still quite a bit further right than in most of Europe. Nor was it just a leftward turn that cost John McCain the White House; it was also a rejection of the weaker candidate. Obama's great asset was that he came across as more competent on the economy, at a time of global financial meltdown. From this side of the Atlantic, we convinced ourselves that Americans had voted with their hearts, but there was a considerable element of the wallet as well.

That wallet element helps explain the deep-seated misgivings that have surfaced about Obama's plans for health reform. A majority of Americans believe they have adequate health cover. Their choice of job may be limited by their insurance requirements (and labour mobility reduced). And their calculations may be upset - sometimes disastrously - by accident or illness.

But with most pensioners protected by the state system known as Medicare, an "I'm all right, Jack" attitude prevails. It coexists with the fear that extending the pool of the insured, to the poorer and more illness-prone, will raise premiums for the healthy and bring queuing, or rationing, of care - which is why stories about the NHS inspire such dread. The principle that no one should be penalised financially by illness is trumped by the self-interest of the majority, then rationalised by the argument that health is a matter of personal responsibility.

The point is that, when on "normal", the needle of the US barometer is not only quite a way to the political right of where it would be in Europe, but showing a very different atmospheric level, too. For there is a mean and merciless streak in mainstream US attitudes, which tolerates much more in the way of inequality, deprivation and suffering than is acceptable here, while incorporating a large and often sanctimonious quotient of blame.

This transatlantic difference goes far beyond the healthcare debate. Consider the give-no-quarter statements out of the US on the release of the Lockerbie bomber - or the continued application of the death penalty, or the fact that excessive violence is far more common a cause for censorship of US films in Europe than sex. Or even, in documents emerging from the CIA, a different tolerance threshold where torture and terrorism are concerned.

Some put the divergence down to the ideological rigidity that led Puritans and others to flee to America in the first place; others to the ruthless struggle for survival that marked the early settlement years and the conquest of the West. Still others see it as the price the US pays for its material success. What it means, though, is that if and when Obama gets some form of health reform through, it will reflect America's fears quite as much as its promise. And it is unlikely to be a national service that looks anything like ours.

http://www.truthout.org/082509L?print