Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 08:04:28 -0700
From: "Terry W. Colvin" <fortean1-AT-frontiernet.net>
Subject: FWD (IUFO) [Water:] Our New Resource Crisis
To: "Forteana [Alternate Orphan]" <forteana-AT-egroups.com>,


#1 censored story for 2000: Water, Monsanto and the World bank
Motivating people to abandon public water systems suits industrial
giants just fine, thank you!

>From Annette Riggs:

Our New Resource Crisis

By Peter Phillips

Imagine, that we are beyond the energy crisis-in that we are used to
paying double or triple prices for what in the previous
century was a small part of the family budget. But now we are faced with
a new shortage that taps another precious resource.
Water only comes through the tap four hours a day and we are forced to
pay ten to hundred times what we paid in the 90s.

Welcome to the world of privatized water, where fresh water is treated
like a commodity, traded and sold in the international
market to the highest bidder.

No longer can you assume a God-given right to drink from a mountain
spring, but instead you will have to pay a toll to drink
from Enron Springs, Monsanto Wells or receive tap water from Bechtel
Water Works.

Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years, more than twice
the rate of human population growth. According to
the United Nations, more than one billion people already lack access to
fresh drinking water. If current trends persist, by 2025
the demand for fresh water is expected to rise by 56 percent more than
the amount of water that is currently available.

Multinational corporations recognize these trends and are trying to
monopolize water supplies around the world. Monsanto,
Bechtel, Enron and other global multinationals are seeking control of
world water systems and supplies.

The World Bank recently adopted a policy of water privatization and
full-cost water pricing. This policy is causing great
distress in many Third World countries, which fear that their citizens
will not be able to afford for-profit water.

Last year in a little known case of high scale international water
marketing, a supertanker was reported to have filled up with
water from Lake Erie and after paying the Canadian Government they
shipped the water to Southeast Asia.

Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, Canada's largest public
advocacy group, states, "Governments around the
world must act now to declare water a fundamental human right and
prevent efforts to privatize, export, and sell for profit a
substance essential to all life.

Research has shown that selling water on the open market only delivers
it to wealthy cities and individuals. The finite sources of
freshwater (less than one half of one per cent of the world's total
water stock) are being diverted, depleted, and polluted so fast
that, by the year 2025, two-thirds of the world's population will be
living in a state of serious water deprivation."

Governments are signing away their control over domestic water supplies
by participating in trade treaties such as the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in institutions such as the
World Trade Organization (WTO). These
agreements give transnational corporations the unprecedented right to
the water of signatory companies.

Monsanto plans to earn revenues of $420 million and a net income of  $63
million by 2008 from its water business in India and
Mexico.

Monsanto estimates that water will become a multibillion-dollar market
in the coming decades.

This international water crisis news story was selected by over 150
faculty and student researchers at Sonoma State
University's Project Censored in California as the number one most
censored news story for 2000.

Credit for original reporting goes to: International Forum on
Globalization: Special Report 6/99, The Global Water Crisis and
the Commodification of the World's Water Supply by Maude Barlow

www.ifg.org/bgsummary.html

In These Times, Water Fallout: Bolivians Battle Globalization 5/15/00 by
Jim Shultz www.inthesetimes.com

Canadian Dimension, 2/2000, Monsanto's Billion-Dollar Water Monopoly
Plans by Vandana Shiva
http://www.purefood.org/Monsanto/waterfish.cfm
Canadian Dimension, 2/00, Water Fallout, by Jim Shultz

San Francisco Bay Guardian, 5/31/00, Trouble on Tap, by Daniel Zoll
www.sfbg.com/News/34/35/bech2.html

San Francisco Bay Guardian, 5/31/00, The Earth Wrecker, by Pratap
Chatterjee.

Peter Phillips is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State
University and Director of Project Censored. Research
for this story is from the book Censored 2001, 25th Anniversary Edition,
scheduled for release in March of this year from
Seven Stories Press.

Peter Phillips Ph.D. Sociology Department/Project Censored
http://www.projectcensored.org

Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave.
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
707-664-2588

-- 
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1-AT-frontiernet.net >
     Alternate: < terry_colvin-AT-hotmail.com >
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