The
Sunday Times International
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Poor
still pay for water - to Coke, Pepsi "Water is not for sale," demonstrators chanted at the World Water Forum this week. But they couldn't be more wrong -- private companies make much more money selling bottled water than they ever did developing public water systems. Companies also stand to benefit from a renewed push for big dams in the Third World. So even though just about everybody, from CEOs to aid workers, spoke out against the privatization of water, the apparent victory for anti-corporate forces may prove hollow. "Nobody
is talking about privatizing a resource," said Mexico's Environment
Secretary Jose Luis Luege. "That is something inalienable,
sovereign." Multinationals -- Pepsi, Cadbury, Nestle, Danone and Coca-Cola -- supply most of the bottled water in Mexico, now the world's second-largest consumer. Sales of bottled water in China jumped by more than 250 percent between 1999 and 2004. They tripled in India and almost doubled in Indonesia, according to a study released by the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental group. Worldwide,
the industry is now worth about $100 billion per year. That's especially true in Bolivia, where demonstrations in 2004 in the slum city of El Alto, outside La Paz, forced a subsidiary of French Suez Corp. to cancel a contract to provide water to the slum city. The leader of those protests, Abel Mamani, was recently appointed Bolivia's water minister. France's Suez is now expected to make "an orderly exit" from the country -- under threat of government audits -- by April, said government water adviser Pablo Solon. "Let's be realistic. We don't think any private company is going to invest in Bolivia in the water sector anymore," Solon said flatly. "What's more, it's logical that they shouldn't." Gerard
Payen, who heads an association of private water companies, said
firms are more cautious after being used as scapegoats by local
authorities, who have called them in after rate increases were already
in the works. Activists say corporate interests -- combined with an aggressive lobbying campaign by the World Bank -- are pushing developing countries to build big dams and hydroelectric projects. Thus
Bechtel -- forced out of public water management in Bolivia -- stands
to make much more money building dams. The company might be one
of the bidders for the La Parota project near the Mexican Pacific
resort of Acapulco. Despite strong opposition in some towns near the proposed dam, the La Parota project is scheduled to start construction by 2007. The push for dams is on. Hardly a presentation went by at the summit without the World Bank touting its campaign for a "minimum platform of water infrastructure" for every country. Bank officials invoked a powerful, if frightening, argument: climate change and global warming are going to make dams necessary for flood control and drought protection. Noting
the growing unpredictability of rainfall and rivers in Africa, Jamal
Shagir, the World Bank's director of water and energy, said "investment
in hydroelectric infrastructure is not a choice anymore for Africa.
It is a must." Even if activists still have to battle private interests at the next water summit, scheduled for 2009, they can at least hope that such ideas will still be in vogue.-AP Water
is a Right says Bolivia South America's poorest country, increasingly vocal on the world stage since the election of leftist President Evo Morales, is holding out against other nations and international bodies at the World Water Forum being held in Mexico City. Bolivian Water Minister Abel Mamani told Reuters that La Paz wants to explicitly call supplies of clean water a human right in a document to be signed at the meeting this week. "It's very clear that we all have a right to life and health," Mamani said. "The right to life and right to health without water is contradictory." A draft of the declaration calls water important to the poor and to people's health but does not describe it as a human right. Mamani said privatization of water services in Bolivia led to soaring prices that left clean water out of reach of the country's poorest people. "You can't use a thing as important as water, which is synonymous with life, to make money," Mamani said. "We're talking about something that unfortunately is necessary for survival." Anger
at Bin Laden niece's reality TV show The as yet unnamed series, being offered at auction to US television networks, will follow the California-born Wafah Dufour as she follows her "dream to make it in the music business", according to Regan Media, which is producing it. Ms Dufour, a 27-year-old graduate of Columbia University law school, was born Wafah bin Ladin, the daughter of Carmen bin Ladin, former wife of the al-Qaida leader's half-brother Yeslam. "I understand that when people hear my last name, they have preconceived notions," Ms Dufour said in a statement. "But I was born in America and I love my country." She has never met her uncle, she said, but Regan Media made no effort to deny that she owes her fame to the connection. "Her history and her quest for stardom will make a compelling television series: she is a musician, a young woman, and, most important, a human being," said the company's founder, Judith Regan."She is a young woman who falls in love, has her heart broken, worries about her looks, doesn't always listen to her mother, and hasn't spoken to her father in years." A spokeswoman for the September 11th Families Association called the show "an absolute disgrace ... we urge every TV network and channel planning to run this series to think again. The very idea that the family of a man with so much blood on his hands should profit from some sort of instant celebrity is an outrage." In fact, the series will not be Ms Dufour's first brush with celebrity. Last year, she posed for a photoshoot reclining in a bubble bath, wearing only a necklace. -The Guardian India’s
little ‘criminal’ "When the police lodged the case, they claimed Rani was 10 years old, when she was actually four years old. How could a four-year-old girl have attacked three policemen and freed me?" asks a distraught Bir Bahadur Pandey, the girl's father. Rani had to put her thumb impression as her signature on the bail application as she cannot write. She has been out on bail for the past two years. Interestingly, all the witnesses of Rani's "crime", barring one, in case number 453/04 with the police station in Ara are policemen. The police are finally investigating how little Rani could be charged with a crime. "We are investigating the matter how and why a four-year-old girl child was made accused in the case by the policemen," Ara police chief Ajitabh Kumar told the BBC. "We are looking into whether it was a case of mistaken identity or deliberate negligence from the policemen. Necessary action will be taken against those found guilty." Rani father's, Bir Bahadur, who works as a part-time driver earning a little more than $1 a day, says the local police filed a "false case" against him, his wife Manju Devi, Rani and other family members. Ironically, Bir Bahadur used to drive a local police jeep, and was also a police informer. He says he quit being an informer after being targeted by some criminals and decided to buy a goods truck after taking a loan of 350,000 rupees ($7,866). When
he defaulted on his loan payments, the finance company confiscated
the truck. Bir Bahadur says after he got a letter from the finance
company absolving him as a defaulter, the local government motor
transport department - a party to the vehicle purchase - inexplicably
refused to accept it. Rani's mother Manju Devi says the police ransacked their home in December 2004 and took away many things including 11,000 rupees ($244). Soon after, the police brought criminal charges against Rani and other members of the family for allegedly attacking them and releasing Bir Bahadur from their custody. Back at her derelict home, Rani spends her time learning nursery rhymes and playing with her three brothers when she is not attending court with her father. She is the eldest among Bir Bahadur's children - the youngest, Ganesh, is just 18 months old. The
family is scared of letting Rani continue attending school fearing
reprisals by the policemen, after an investigation was launched
into her arrest. "I
am scared to go to school. I fear the police and the courts,"
she says. -BBC Strip-cheese! As Tunick shouted commands through a megaphone, nude people of every shape, size and skin tone gathered on the avenue and stairs in front of the statue just before dawn. "There are some people over there with clothes, get them out of there!" said Tunick, an artist from Brooklyn, N.Y., who has been documenting groups of nude people in public places around the world since 1992. For the volunteers, being part of Tunick's art meant letting go of inhibitions and enduring a two-hour series of sometimes uncomfortable positions on the pavement. Harold Velasquez, a thin 23-year-old university student, said he was nervous before the 4:30 a.m. event but felt free while posing. "I put the lightest clothes I had on this morning because I knew I wouldn't have them on for long," a smiling Velasquez said. "There were good vibrations, a good positive energy among all the people involved. I felt liberated." The nude subjects posed standing, lying down and on their knees as the warm Caribbean sun emerged on the eastern horizon. Occasional cheers and movements in the enthusiastic crowd made shooting tough at times, Tunick said. "It
was difficult to work because the people were so exuberant, so it
took a little bit longer, but I got what I wanted," he said
after the session. Tunick took photographs from opposing angles, using buildings with large outside columns as a backdrop on one side and a fork in the wide, palm tree-lined avenue on the other. The artist, who has been arrested multiple times while shooting in the United States, said he was happy to have darker-skinned subjects. Most
Venezuelans are considered mestizo, a mix of Spanish, African and
indigenous bloodlines that gives many a brown skin tone. "I
want people of color to pose and come out and participate in my
work, so I was very lucky," the artist said. |
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