Common good or commodity, the contradiction emerges in Water Forum

• By  Mario Osava ,  www.ipsnoticias.net
• View Original
• March 22nd, 2018
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- "Take your hands off our waters," protested some 350 activists resource as a common good, by occupying the plant of Coca Cola in Tabatinga, satellite city of the Brazilian capital, hosting the eighth in the early hours of Thursday 22 World Water Forum (WWF-8).

Then, thousands of them marched through some streets of Brasilia, chanting against the privatization of water resources by large companies, the "illegitimate" FMA-8, which hosts Brasilia between Sunday 18 and Friday 23, for treating water as merchandise, and against the current Brazilian government.

Participants, more than 3,000 registered, gathered from 17 and Thursday 22 in a pavilion of the Park City at the  Alternative World Water Forum  (FAME), which mainly discussed the damage caused by large companies such as pollution agricultural and appropriation of the sources of the resource to the detriment of the population

On World Water Day, Thursday 22 and in earlier days, women staged protests against companies whose water use affects the population, such as transnational Nestlé.

The company had occupied for a few hours its plant in São Lourenço, known for its mineral waters Brazilian southeastern city, and the same happened with Suzano Celulose, whose eucalyptus plantations are targeted as a cause of water shortage in Imperatriz, in-central Brazil.

The parallel forum FMA-8 brought together participants from 34 nationalities, according to its organizers, and a great social and ethnic diversity.

Odair Manoki, indigenous northwestern state of Mato Grosso, came to denounce the threats facing Cravari rivers and Sangue, where the government is studying the construction of hydroelectric plants, after its waters are already contaminated by agrochemicals used without control the farmers.

Pollution directly affects its group of 600 people, because it occurs upstream, with soybean expansion. Mato Grosso, in midwestern Brazil in the southeastern foothills of the Amazon, is from the beginning of this century the state that produces more soybeans in Brazil, as well as big producer of corn and cotton by large-scale monocultures.

Celeste Brazilian fisherwoman de Souza traveled for two days to participate in the Alternative World Water Forum in Brasilia, to defend the rights of artisanal fishermen affected by government decisions and companies that take over the territories where they operate. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

"The impact more sense for now are agrochemicals, since the plants are still only plans, but also suffer the effects of illegal logging," Manoki told IPS.

Manoki village, whose name surname become its members, and has an Indigenous Land (reserved territory, shelter), but fighting for a second that is already approved, but lack the presidential approval.

"Artisanal fishermen are the people most affected by major projects and economic activities that use a lot of water," said Celeste de Souza, who traveled two and half days by bus to participate in FAMA along with 10 other colleagues from Delta Paranaiba in the state of Piauí, in the northeast of the country.

The Paranaiba is one of the few perennial rivers in the ecoregion Northeast, which do not dry during the long and severe drought in the area.

Traditional agriculture, mining, pulp and other industries, ports and bridges, many businesses that alter water conditions, obliterating preventing fish or fishing, where fishermen access always worked.

"We depend on all invade a territory", complained to IPS this woman of 62 years and fishing since childhood, when "accompanied my mother." Now coordinates the Movement of Fishermen in Piauí, which advocates the creation of the Territories Fisheries, for that protection allows the survival of an activity in decline across the country.

Join thousands of activists by water as a right and a public good, who participated in the Alternative World Water Forum, marched through the streets of Brasilia to protest the official World Water Forum, which accused him of defending the interests of large companies that privatize the resource. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Your people still do not have the right to reserve land, as occurs with quilombolas, descendants of African slaves who live in communities created by their ancestors to escape from slavery.

"Where water is produced live, not spend but we protect, preserve," said Oriel Rodrigues, a lawyer for the National Coordinating Committee of Quilombo Rural Black Communities.

"We were invisible until 1988" when the Constitution recognized their territorial rights, Rodrigues, a stranger in college, where people of African descent did not study when he was young, much less law, as did he recalled.

The testimonies of foreign participants brought to the knowledge of those attending the FAMA some emblematic cases of the struggle for water as indigenous mobilization that stopped in 2000 the privatization of water in the Bolivian department of Cochabamba, in the "water war" .

remote cases, like the Palestinians, subject to shortages and "68 percent having to drink contaminated water" and private African water almost absolute, were counted almost always from the point of conflict with big business , hoarders of natural resources.

"Water as a right, a common good that should be under the sovereignty of the people, never a commodity", is the focus of FAMA, he stressed one of its organizers, Jackson Dias, member of the coordination of the  Movement of People Affected by dams  (MAB).

"Large companies are trying to privatize rivers, aquifers, lakes. Dams are a form of privatization and private appropriation of natural resources always generates conflicts. On one hand large corporations, otherwise I put those affected, "said IPS.

The indigenous Odair Manoki came from the Amazon western Brazil to the capital to denounce the Alternative World Water Forum that his people are victims of pollution of rivers by intensive agriculture and dams to build hydroelectric plants that alter watercourses. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Days was born and lives in Altamira, a city in the eastern Amazon who lives a raucous decade controversies and disputes due to the damming of the bordering river Xingu, construction of the hydroelectric plant of Belo Monte, the world's largest capacity third one.

Dias said Altamira became the city with the highest relative amount of homicides and a high deterioration despite large investments of the company in environmental and social compensation.

FAMA was organized by social movements, such as MAB and the Landless Workers' Movement, and unions such as the Central Workers Union and the National Federation of Urban Public Servants.

FAMA organizers, as opposed to the official FMA-8, organized by the World Water Council, in partnership with the Brazilian government, believe that their vision is irreconcilable with what they define as "the other side".

In his view, in the official forum an exhibition and an exhibition make clear that their goal is to do business, sell technology and business solutions.

Water as a commodity, "source of profit and no source of life" for social movements is what is sought in the triennial editions of the World Water Forum, which will have its ninth meeting in Senegal in 2021.

However, the official slogan adopted by the FMA-8 Brasilia, is "sharing water" and its sessions with the need to advance concrete projects in sustainability and corporate responsibility with the vital natural resource is emphasized

But the antagonism between social movements and companies in the water issue as feed accidents as happened this year with the release of chemical wastes in the rivers of Barcarena, in northern Brazil, for the Norwegian company Hydro Aluminum producer.

Edition: Estrella Gutierrez