(from Vocabulary of Commons, article 25)

by C R Neelakantan

Water as commons

The concept of water as commons can be explained through a simple analogy. Water for the Earth (as a continuous single life system—interconnected and interdependent) is analogous to blood in the human body. Both are essential for the survival of life. Both are limited in quantity. Both flow continuously. If blocked, both get polluted. Blood flows from one organ to the next. It cannot stop there. Similarly for water, no single user has the right to hold it for more time. The flow of blood (and water) is necessary for many biological functions in the body (Earth). No user has priority over the other since all parts are interconnected and interdependent. Since both are limited in quantity, and a minimum is required to sustain life, any loss above a threshold will be disastrous. The shortage has to be replenished in the shortest possible time.

Blood has to flow through its natural paths as far as possible, otherwise it is considered a malfunction or a disease. Similarly, allowing water to follow its natural path is the most sustainable method. Unnecessary diversions of water from its natural path may lead to many disasters. Human understanding is very limited regarding the complexity of the biological functions of the network of water and blood flow. In a healthy ecosystem, water flow should be in consonance with the biological requirements of the system. Otherwise it will affect some other life forms. It may take time to get information regarding the damage, but it is taking place. There will be slow damage though we are unable to recognise it. Any irreversible damage to the water flow paths may lead to disastrous consequences. Since water is so essential for the survival of life, all life forms have the right to water, for the right to life is the birthright of any organism. If they are denied water in sufficient quantity and quality, their basic right to life is denied.

Basic principles

The basic principles¹ regarding water as commons were listed in the consultation document ‘Key Principles for an International Treaty on Right to Water’² and then elaborated further.

Water is a fundamental human right and states must be willing and able to implement their respective obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to adequate water and sanitation.
As part of their obligations to fulfil the right to water, states have obligations to provide adequate, safe, accessible and affordable water and sanitation for all people within their jurisdiction who currently do not have such access, with preferential treatment and positive action for the poor and marginalised.
States must ensure that water is allocated in a manner that prioritises people’s basic needs and livelihoods.
Water is a public trust and not a commodity and belongs to all humanity and the earth. As such, water should remain in the public domain.
States have the responsibility to ensure the conservation of freshwater ecosystems, to prevent over consumption of water, the degradation of water systems and to protect watersheds.
Sufficient clean water is necessary to protect ecosystems and all kinds of species. Healthy ecosystems will ensure the right to water for future generations.
States have obligations to guarantee the human rights principles of participation and transparency, including that water services must be under democratic public control, in which members of the public fully participate in decisions on water management and the allocation of water resources.

These principles are accepted by everybody. In practice they are being violated everywhere. These bare facts say it all:³

3.575 million people die every year from water-related diseases.
1.4 million children die every year from diarrhoea.
A typical five-minute shower in a developed country or a bath consumes more water than the average person living in a third world marginalised community uses in a week.
Discrepancies in the consumption of water between different sections and strata of society is very high, for instance between rural and urban or between rich and poor.
Many poor people from marginalised communities pay five to ten times more per litre of water than wealthy people living nearby.
Less than two thirds of the world has improved sanitation—a sanitation facility that ensures hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact.
Worldwide, 2.5 billion people lack improved sanitation, including 1.2 billion people with no facilities at all.
At any point of time, more than half of the poor in the third world are ill from causes related to hygiene, sanitation and water supply.
Millions of women and children spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted, sources.

This situation is getting worse by the moment. In contrast, if the sanitation condition is improved and the availability of drinking water is ensured multiple advantages will be there all among the world countries. Some benefits are shown below:

272 million more school attendance days a year.
1.5 billion more healthy days for children under five years of age.
Health-care savings of billions of Rupees a year for the government health agencies and for individuals.

Functions of water

In addition to basic domestic functions (like cooking food, sanitation etc), water is used on a large scale for irrigation, industries, ecological functions and entertainment. The requirements are increasing day by day. Water is becoming a serious issue mainly because of its scarcity. Why is this resource so scarce? The general theory is that any item will become scarce if its availability is less than the requirement. Increase in the number of consumers or increase in per capita consumption will definitely lead to scarcity. Drastic changes in lifestyle will increase consumption. The skewed distribution of water across regions (North to South of the globe, city to village, rich to poor) is obvious. Pollution of fresh water (slow or no purification of the system) including salination is a major problem. Diversion of water for different purposes also lead to scarcity at some point. Multiple requirements compete among themselves and the priority in the system will decide the distribution pattern. As Mahatma Gandhi opined, priority is the politics of a system. What are the major factors which decide the priorities? In normal conditions, the state has the authority to decide. But at present in our capitalist society it is the market that controls even the state.

Development: What is it?

What are the basic principles of a capitalist market? With the advent of modern capitalism, things have changed drastically. Now capital can acquire and utilise any amount of the natural resources for amassing wealth and profit. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is the principle. The growth of science and technology had enhanced the rates of production, consumption, and hence acquisition. The efficiency of a system is measured by the rate at which it can exploit the natural resources and process the same to sell in the market. Hence natural resources themselves became a tradable commodity in the market. The faster and competitive exploitation lead to their depletion. This is because the rate of exploitation of these resources is much higher than their replenishment rates. Natural cycles of renewables and perennials can no longer keep up with consumption rates. The key word ‘development’ has only a unidimensional meaning.

The issues related to “development” were not considered as crises mainly because of the paradigm created by science and technology in the society, which assumed that:

Natural resources such as land, water, air, forest, sea, minerals, petroleum are unlimited.
The faster the exploitation, better the system.
They are ‘freely’ available.

People began to think that science and technology has a magic wand to solve all problems. In the ‘unlikely case’ of any resource becoming limited or scarce, science and technology held out the promise that it would be able to find alternatives. This was attempted and explained in many ways. In the case of fuel, the replacements developed by science were from firewood to coal to petroleum to nuclear energy. Similarly, in place of wood we ‘found’ alternatives like plastics. For increasing fertility of land due to scarcity of micronutrients, chemical fertilisers, pesticides etc were invented.

After decades of experience, we now realise that none of the above was sustainable and most of them had created more problems than those which they were meant to solve. They affected many other apparently unconnected natural systems like air, land and water. This is by no means an exhaustive list. There can be many more such examples. But the real crisis came later. Those resources which were thought to be unending or infinite, such as air, water, sea, forests etc., were also affected badly. The destruction of these resources had affected a large section of people who did not at all benefit by industrialisation or by the so-called ‘development’. Nobody could predict in 1980 that water will be sold for a price which is comparable to that of milk. But within 20 years everybody had to accept it as a truth. Similarly air (oxygen), the most abundant natural resource, is becoming a tradable commodity slowly.

The basis of the conflict is the concept of ‘development’ which is already iniquitous, aggravating the existing gap between the haves and have-nots. This development paradigm is acceptable even for the have-nots. We all agree to the classification of societies as developed, developing and underdeveloped. We consider our country India is developing and countries like USA, Western Europe etc. are developed. What indices are generated for development by the above definition? In short, India has to be like USA if it is to be considered as a developed country and hence the target and direction of development of India is already fixed by this. That means India has to increase its production and consumption to the level of USA. Is this possible—physically, economically, politically, socially, culturally and above all ecologically? In 1970 itself the so-called technical experts from these developed countries realised that there are some limits of growth. The discussions held at Copenhagen on climate change advised ‘growth reduction’.

Can the market solve this problem by itself?

The above path of development had created various conflicts in the society. The major reasons for these conflicts are scarcity and commercialisation of these natural commons in the name of (economic) growth and (industrial) development. With the advent of the neo-liberal regimes, the crisis deepened manifold. LPG (liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation) policies of the national, provincial and local governments based on the diktats from international financial institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, World Trade Organisation etc is not a point of dispute. Almost all the governments are competing to become more ‘investor friendly’. This policy had led to GDP (economic growth) oriented development. Investors or capital can amass any resources to any extent. If these resources are essential for the survival of some sections of the society then the conflict starts. Those who are powerful get the upper hand and their requirement get priority. The government will have to take a stand in this issue.

Then comes the political question. It is not a situation of scarcity in the real sense. More money can buy more natural resources like water. More water to somebody necessarily means that much less to some others. This is what Mahatma Gandhi had explained when he was washing his hands in the river Yamuna. All others were consuming large amount of water and Gandhi was measuring the water he used. The others asked him why he couldn’t use more water since the river was full. In reply Gandhi explained that as a human being there was an amount entitled to him by the nature. If he took more, that would reduce the water availability for some life forms downstream. That, he believed, is violence. This is the correct understanding of the interconnectivity of Nature. But the competitive market can never understand this. Hence the market cannot sustainably control a biological system.

This is why the privatisation of water is a failure and is leading to many conflicts all over the world. If water can be considered as a commodity in the market, there is every possibility that capital will try to amass and control as much water as possible. If a major chunk of fresh water is controlled by humans (whatever may be the technology and however democratic the authority may be) what will be the priority in which it is released or distributed? The general tendency will be to utilise the resource in the most ‘efficient’ and ‘profitable’ way. Avoiding waste is one prerequisite. Any water flow should be prioritised based on its benefit. Hence supplying water to many plants, birds, animals etc will be a ‘waste’ because it may not give any tangible ‘benefit’. But even a primary school child knows that these ‘unwanted’ life systems are necessary for our survival. But market forces will never allow ‘sacrificing’ their profit for this type of public cause. This was seen in the issue of global warming and climate change. This is the basic political question regarding water. It should be seen within the political framework and principles under which it operates. It is not just the selling of water. It is not just ecological. Ecology, like economics and culture, is just one tool to understand the politics. Hence to deal with this biological or ecological crisis, we need a totally different paradigm including the one about development itself.

Paradigm shift

There are many examples of human interference with the water flow and water cycle leading to unforeseen and unintended consequences. Building a dam for diverting water from a river for irrigation, power generation and destroying the river affects the humans, flora and fauna in the basin for many kilometres—sometimes even the backwaters and the sea itself. This may affect the drinking water and irrigation systems downstream. Power generation is always given priority by many governments and even by the public because power is considered the basis of development. But if it is affecting drinking water and livelihoods of many underprivileged sections then the conflict sharpens. This is applicable to industries where water is the major raw material or where water is polluted by them. Mining, real estate development, water theme parks, golf clubs, ports and many other infrastructure and construction work come in the list. In these cases the used water, often polluted, will not come back to the hydrological cycle.

For the resolution of these conflicts, the political, economic and ecological paradigms needs to be changed. Old economics never considered the cost of water, air or similar natural resources in their accounting. They considered them as a freely available commodity, or as an ‘externality’. A company extracting one million litres of water and polluting it should be held accountable for the loss occurring to the ecological system and to the human beings downstream. The loss should be ascertained, and compensation paid to those whose life and livelihood are affected. Humans are buying water at very high prices. If the company has to pay the same rates for the water they use, then that industry will not be economically viable. Similarly the general concept that hydropower is the cheapest can be exposed if the damages caused by it is added to its cost. That is, the profit of a factory or the power generation firm is the loss of the public. This type of new organic economics needs to be developed.

But the most important issue in the present situation is that the states are highly undemocratic. As explained earlier, since the policies are designed and decided outside the democratic systems, most parts of the states are only implementing agencies. This is the reason why our political parties are becoming apolitical. They do not need to take any policy decision. The struggling people are at a loss because they are not able to influence the policy decisions of their democratic governments. We think that the right to information (RTI) is a powerful tool. But nowadays we can get information regarding the implementation of the policies but not the policy making process itself. Transparency is only in the implementation. In the present system we don’t have citizens in the real sense that can intervene in the democratic system. But all are only consumers who have no choice in the production systems. They can choose from the products available in the market. All rulers support the market system or privatisation.

Effects of privatisation of water systems

The tall claims that privatisation will increase efficiency, reduce losses and prices need to be re-examined and challenged from the experiences all over the world.⁴

High rates. Private water costs upto 80% more than public water. Private sewer service costs up to twice as much as public service.
Bad service. Many multinational water corporations cut corners to increase profits at the public’s expense.
Expensive financing. Private financing is more expensive than public financing. Even the best-rated corporate bonds are 25% costlier than municipal bonds and 2.5 times costlier than State Revolving Fund loans.
Inefficiency. Private utilities are not more efficient than public utilities, according to several academic studies.
Profits and taxes. In total, corporate profits, dividends and income taxes add 20% to 30% to operation and maintenance costs.
Cost inflation. The profit motive can further drive up costs. A study of the construction of 35 wastewater treatment plants found that ‘choosing the privatisation option is more costly than going with the traditional municipally owned and operated facility’.
Contracting expenses. In total, contract monitoring and administration, conversion costs, charges for extra work and the contractor’s use of public equipment and facilities can add up to 25% to the price of a contract.
Limited competition and consolidation. The public has little room to negotiate with private water suppliers and can get stuck with bad and expensive contracts.
Lost public benefits. Municipal operations often have several additional benefits that cities lose when they privatise.
Lack of accountability. Multinational water corporations are primarily accountable to their stockholders, not to the people they serve.

The business of bottled water

In addition to controlling water distribution systems, corporations make huge profits through the sale of bottled water. Coca Cola drains water from some of the poorest communities in India. In places like Mehdiganj, water levels have dropped by as much as 40 feet, leaving families and farmers without enough water to meet their basic needs.

Bottled water corporations are changing the way people think about water.⁵ Today, three of four Americans drink bottled water, and one in five drink only bottled water, believing the market principle that the costlier product will be better in quality. Bottled water is one of the least regulated industries in the most of the countries. Tap water and bottled water use similar standards, but tap water is tested far more frequently and its standards are more rigorously monitored and enforced in many countries.

Scientific studies have shown that bottled water is no safer than tap water. Sometimes it is less safe, containing elevated levels of pesticides, bromate, arsenic, bacteria, and other contaminants. Yet, more than one-quarter of bottled water is basically tap water. Leading brands like Coke’s Dasani, Pepsi’s Aquafina and Nestlé’s Pure Life are basically tap water, but they are often sold for more than the cost of petroleum.

Worldwide, people spent $100 billion on bottled water in 2005. That’s almost enough to fund the $110 billion annual investment—approximately one-fifth of the world’s annual military expenditure—needed to assure that everyone on earth has access to water and adequate sanitation.

UN interventions

Human rights have been a powerful platform for advancing the agenda of social justice and ecological sustainability throughout the world. However, intentions and declarations are continually compromised by the lack of political will, grassroots power to force that will, and the underdeveloped capacity to enforce and realise the rights as described on paper. This is aggravated by the willingness of would-be water privatisers to co-opt the discourse of human rights for their own ends. Some have suggested that focusing on water as a human right is an error, while others see it at least as a stepping stone to working toward access and sustainability for all. They would like to change the words human rights to human needs. This is tricky suggestion. In a market based society need is not just the physical need but it is linked with the buying capacity. Hence for those who have no buying capacity, their needs are not counted. Many organisations had worked hard in past years to advance the idea of a binding, new covenant enshrining water as a fundamental human right. Despite its challenges—including the compromise with corporations over voluntary statements of social and environmental standards in the Global Compact and the lack of a consistent means of enforcing and realising human rights—the UN remains the sole international political organisation with the capability to bring a new force of international law, deriving from custom and practice rather than written treaty law, into being. Such mechanisms can and have been integrated into national legal frameworks, though not consistently.

Since the players in the water trade are trans-national corporations and institutions like World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), the British Department for International Development (DfID) and WTO who are above the nation states, the struggle for protecting the commons has acquired an international dimension. Struggles erupted in many countries and the United Nations was forced to intervene in the debate by passing a resolution, after spirited lobbying and grassroots mobilisation. After more than a decade of grassroots organising and lobbying, the global water justice movement achieved a significant victory when the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to affirm ‘the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights’. David Moss elaborates on the dilemma faced by the governments in balancing what is right, with their obeisance to the corporate lobby.⁶

The resolution—put forward by Bolivia and co-sponsored by 35 countries—passed overwhelmingly with 122 states voting in favour and 41 abstaining. It is a non-binding statement, meaning that no nation will be forced to follow it, but nonetheless marks a significant advance for human and environmental rights. The decision by the UN General Assembly supports current organising effort for a future resolution recognising water as a common resource, to be creatively managed for the needs of future generations—of all species.
Embarrassed to go on record against the right to a life-giving resource, not one country voted against it. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights, approved in 1948, did not specifically recognise a right to water. But in recent decades, worsening water scarcity and contamination, aggravated by global climate change made a resolution on water rights more urgent.
Though the resolution was non-binding, some country delegations said they abstained because they did not get instructions from their capitals in time to confirm their positions. Others said they were afraid of the resolution’s implications for water they share with other nations, known as trans-boundary water.
Pressures to weaken the resolution were considerable. One proposal was to insert the word ‘access’ to water and sanitation so that the resolution would read, ‘right to access to water and sanitation’. For UN delegates, this would mean their governments need only guarantee access, not the water itself. It would be adequate in that case to merely assure water for purchase, rather than guaranteeing that it is a fundamental right, even for those who can’t afford it.
That the resolution did not stop at ‘access’ makes it more powerful. It means governments have to provide the water even if people cannot pay for it. It is an important distinction. The final resolution ‘calls upon states and international organisations to provide financial resources, capacity-building and technology transfer, through international assistance and cooperation, in particular to developing countries, in order to scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all’.

A new management order

A UN declaration alone will not be enough to solve the complex problems or unravel the web of vested interests created by powerful corporations. The last decade had shown us that only peoples struggles can protect their rights over commons. The case of Cochabamba is path-breaking, and is a case study for all those who wish to keep water as commons.⁷

This is how Our Water Commons describes the campaign.

In April 2000, thousands of citizens of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city, blocked roads to protest the privatisation of the city’s local water system, rallying around the central battle cry, ‘water is life!’ The government cancelled the concession contract and returned water to municipal control under the watchful eye of the La Coordinadora, the Coalition in Defence of Water and Life, the social movement that emerged to coordinate the protests. Community leaders set about the task of elaborating a new way to provide water services that would build upon the experiences with non-hierarchical forms of decision making that emerged during, what was often described as, a ‘water war’. One thing was clear: while privatisation was not the answer, no one wanted to return to the former model of ‘public’ utility, which was widely considered to be inefficient and corrupt.
Based on experiences with previous episodes of nationalisation in Bolivian history, water justice activists in Bolivia insist that public (read state) forms of management are not a true alternative to privatisation because they simply replace one form of hierarchical management with another. Instead, the opposite of privatisation is the ‘social re-appropriation of wealth’, which entails the collectivisation of property and the self-organisation of water users. As Oscar Olivera, a spokesperson from La Coordinadora explains, this difference between water justice activists in Bolivia and elsewhere is crucial: ‘Activists in the North tend to focus on issues related to management, while we (in Bolivia) are primarily concerned with the struggle for property rights’.
The notions of collective property that have emerged in the struggle for water are inspired by the experiences with communal water management of two key participants in the Cochabamba ‘water war’: small irrigating farmers’ associations, and community-run water systems.
Utterly neglected by state authorities and lacking basic services, most of the communities in the poor barrios of the southern zone of the city of Cochabamba have built their own independent water systems provisioned by wells that are managed by independent cooperatives, informal committees, or neighbourhood councils elected by the residents. Since 2004, many of these community-run water systems have been organised in the Association of Community Water Systems of the South (ASICA-Sur), which has given a collective voice to the citizens who lack public water services.
More recently, ASICA-Sur has secured financing from the European Union to build independent water systems in Districts 7 and 14. These independent systems will buy water in bulk from the public water company, but will be managed by the users. As the President of ASICA-Sur Abraham Grendydier explains, it has taken the public water company too long to respond to their demands so they have decided to take matters into their own hands. While the construction of independent water systems risks further fracturing the urban water network, in the long term it may be the only way to meet the goal of ‘water for all’.
Demands for communal ownership and management have also translated into the demand for ‘social control’ within the re-municipalised water company, SEMAPA. While former boards of directors were staffed exclusively by professionals and politicians, between April 2002 and October 2005, three members of the seven-member board have been elected from the macro-districts of the city. Many of the problems that have historically plagued the public utility, however, have remained unresolved by the limited degree of social control. While the public water company has performed better than would have been expected under private control, coverage rates remain low (46% in 2005), and services are intermittent. Opinion is divided on the reasons for the perceived failure of social control to improve the utility’s performance. For some, it is the fact that the mayor controls the budget. Others highlight the lack of capacity of the citizen directors, the over-politicisation of the public utility, or the problem of corruption. Yet others blame the conditions attached to a loan by the Inter-American Development Bank that have stymied attempts to democratise the utility because they prioritised administrative reform and repairs to the existing network instead of making visible improvements to water services. Nearly all agree, however, that Cochabamba’s water problems are linked to the lack of public investment. Efforts to outline alternatives and debate the future of the local water company continue.

Defending our water

The need for water to be a common is recognised as a right from the UN to the village. People all over the world are mobilising to defend their water. Struggles similar to Cochabamba have been, and are still being, fought all over the world—from Argentina, Bolivia (El Alto), Brazil (Porto Alegre) to Colombia, France (Paris and Grenoble), Ghana (Savelugu), Italy (Abruzzo), Peru (Huancayo), South Africa, Spain (Córdoba), Ukraine and Uruguay.

In India too there are many examples right from the capital Delhi to Kaladera in Rajasthan to Kerala in the south. In the Plachimada struggle, a totally illiterate tribal community taught the totally literate people of Kerala about water and the commons principle. The struggle against the privatisation of river or other water bodies are going on everywhere. People’s struggles to protect the watersheds and wetlands against the polluting firms and urban councils are also part of this. Societies should recognise the commons and try to protect them. That is the only solution to the crisis. The people who are directly affected need to be in the forefront of the struggle.

Endnotes

1 Water Solutions Case 1: The Push for a UN Covenant on the Right to Water http://www.ourwatercommons.org/water-solutions/case-1-push-un-covenant-right-water

2 The Friends of the Right to Water http://www.blueplanetproject.net/documents/ Key_Principls_Treaty_RTW_140405.pdf

3 http://www.ourwatercommons.org/statistical-glimpse-global-water-crisis

4 Money down the drain. How private control of water wastes public resources. Food and Water Watch, 2009.

5 Bottled Water and Corporate Control of Water. Adapted from Corporate Accountability International http://www.ourwatercommons.org/statistical-glimpse-global-water-crisis

6 The rest of this section is an edited version of Historic Expansion of Human Rights: The UN declares the right to clean drinking water and sanitation by Daniel Moss (http://onthecommons.org/historic-expansion-human- rights)

7 This section draws from Water Solutions: Case 5: “Social Control” and Public-Collective Partnerships with Community-Run Systems in Cochabamba Bolivia http://www.ourwatercommons.org/water-solutions/case-5-%E2%80%9Csocial-control%E2%80%9D-and-public-collective-partnerships-community-run-systems-coc

Discussion

Sajay Samuel & Jean Robert:

"This dual dynamic of attempting to solve a problem with the same thought style that contributes to it, is painfully obvious in the case of the growing concern with ‘water scarcity.’ In the context of this discourse, water is considered a resource. Caught in the conceptual web of demand and supply, policymakers can only think of ways to increase the quantity or decrease the consumption of water resources. And, unsurprisingly, they focus on the price mechanism as a panacea. They want to price water so that the gifts of nature can be converted into private property. They want to price water to spur increases in supply by, for example, turning seawater into fresh water. They want to price water to restrict the effective demand for it. They propagate the reign of prices to transmute the needs of all into the wants of the few who can pay.28 In their rush to find efficient solutions to the problem of water scarcity, they have conveniently forgotten that commodities necessarily introduce scarcity into market society. For where cash is king, self-sufficiency and the commons are cast into exile. Under the rule of prices, the abundant can also be unaffordable. Moreover, prices may reduce the effective demand for Perrier and flush toilets but can also spark the envious desire for them it.29 Unlike their predecessors, modern economists who propagate the price mechanism forget what Adam Smith knew: that vanity fuels the engine of commercial society.

That the unfettered spread of commodity-intensive society has led to the despoliation of the air, soil and water is obvious enough. That commodity-intensive society has produced a cornucopia of things the majority cannot afford is equally obvious. However, that commodity-intensive society induces scarcity by fuelling acquisitiveness is not sufficiently obvious. From its inception, economics has been chained to the ball of market exchange. Its proponents can only tout more markets as solutions to the very problems created by market society, that is, to create more scarcity pretending in order to eradicate scarcity.

The question of scarcity today cannot be divorced from the question of the needs and wants of man. Addressing the question of needs and wants is pre-eminently a process of judging when something is too much or too little; of judging if and when needless wants have replaced useful needs. Is industrial farming counter-productive? Do dams damage? Are flush toilets and green lawns necessary? Are desalination technologies appropriate? These are questions of ethics and politics. They cannot be comprehended in the terms of an economic science, which was consciously established beyond ethics and politics. Blind to use-values while celebrating acquisitiveness, mainstream economics is of little help in thinking about the proposition that ‘water is scarce’. What it pretends to solve with one hand, it contributes to with the other. A discourse based on thinking about water as a resource, caught within the conceptual pincers of demand and supply, rife with ‘allocation’, ‘distribution’, ‘production’ and ‘consumption’ only obfuscates the modern experience of scarcity.

A way out of the mental prison of water as a resource is to recall that water was, until very recently, a commons. The contrast between water as a commons and as a resource was well exposed over the turn of the XIXth century. Aqua currit et debet currere; ‘water runs and ought to run’ ruled the judge in the Merritt v Parker case (1795, New Jersey). He thus recalled that well-worn maxim of common law which prohibited interference to water-course flows. As William Blackstone noted, “water is a moving, wandering think thing, and must of necessity continue to be common by the law of nature so I can only have a temporary, transient, usufructuary property therein”(cited in Shiva, 2002, p. 20). Historically, diverting or significantly obstructing the natural course of water was always judged illegal unless agreed to by all parties affected. Yet, a scarce hardly ten years later, the judges in the case of Palmer v Mulligan (1805, New York) ruled legitimate the damming of water for the purpose of a mill. The difference between the two rulings defined the XIXth century transformation in the legal conception of property. Law would no longer protect the liberty to the quiet enjoyment of property that was once honoured by the common law maxim sic utere tuo, ut alienum non laedas, “so use yours that others be not harmed”. Instead, the liberty to quiet and harmless enjoyment was legally destroyed when the rights of ownership were recast to permit the commercial development of property, even if to the detriment of another’s use. To legalize economic growth and commodity-intensive society, judges began to use a brand new economic and utilitarian criterion to assess legal damages: the economic efficiency gained from restricting liberty. Accordingly, the commons could be exploited for private commercial purposes as long as the cash value to the one owner outweighed the loss of another’s liberty. Law was thus wielded as an instrument of commercialism to separate what was kept together by common law for centuries: the coincidence of injurious misuse and legally determined damages. It did so by comparing what could only be contrasted: legal rights and civil liberties. Instrumental law not only defanged neighbourly conflict by reducing politics to the economic calculus of cost and benefit but also legally transformed water into a privately exploitable resource. Indeed, as Horowitz (1977) argues, economic growth in the US during the first half of the XIXth century went hand in hand with privatizing the water commons.

To see water as a commons, again, requires attending to those who, like contemporaries in the Thar desert of Rajasthan, live well without imagining that water is scarce (Shiva 2002). It requires being free of the debilitating effects of attached to economic styles of thinking. capable of producing sentences such as this ‘…and there were some mystical references to the infinite utility of subsistence’ (1950, p373). It calls for a revaluation of self-sufficiency and of living within natural thresholds, which for the Nobel Laureate, Herbert Simon, occurs only in fast-disappearing black zones of ‘autarky’ (1991, pp25–44)."

(http://red-ecomunidades.blogspot.com/2009/06/articulo-de-jean-robert-sobre-la-nocion.html)

Water as Commons

Contents