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THE WATER CRISIS: Reality and Ideology
Our planet has 70% of its surface covered by water- therefore, from a poetic and scientific point of view, it is the "Water Planet": 97% is salt water; 2.4% is fresh water. The hydraulic cycle, however, establishes a perfect relation between salt and fresh water. It is the phenomenon of evaporation that salt water from the oceans is transformed in fresh water and falls upon the continents.
The natural disparity, therefore, cannot form the basis for any argument in favor of the scarcity of fresh water. Nature is wise: the volume of fresh water and the volume of salt water always have been sufficient to satisfy all forms of life existent on the planet.
Suddenly, however, humanity has begun to hear a new and fiightening discourse. Today, we speak of the "water crisis" - and it effectively exists. The United Nations affirms that 40% of humanity will not have drinkable water in 2050. Specialists anticipate that time as 2025.
It is not only a lack of quantity, but also of quality. The destruction of the sources (springs, wells), principally by cutting down the forests, the contamination of the sources by agricultural chemicals, industrial wastes, mining metals, city and hospital sewerage, besides the use of water for agricultural irrigation, cattle/equine raising, industries, and for human consumption, project an image of the "progressive scarcity" of water.
In this "water crisis', reality and ideology combine to cover different interests, making it difficult to arrive at a sure discernment. "Tasteless, odorless, colorless" water has become "blue gold", the object of international covetousness and one of the principal causes of conflicts and wars in the third millennium. In this sense, we speak of the "petroleumnization' of water and of water as merchandise.
In face of the "scarcity", the "economic value" of water is enhanced, which had resulted in its being bought by private firms and commercialized. Brazilian legislation speaks of "grants" and "Committees of Hydrological Basins', and has a specialized agency for water control. Such new ideas and concepts, until recently unknown, are under discussion. A certain lack of confidence in all of this is caused by the fact that such new ideas/concepts are systemized with the precepts of the World Bank and other international agencies, which, in general, view world problems only in the perspective of the rich countries.
They can help us, however, to understand why a an abundant benefit without economic value has become an object of economic avarice and political conflict, forcing the State - in favor of the common good - to assume a regulation role to invert the situation.
Many proposals have surfaced to confront the water crisis. Although running the risk of simplification, we can put them all together under two headings: one that sees a threat to all forms of life and seeks ways to preserve water in favor of life, the other, that sees in the crisis an "opportunity for big business".
Big capital wishes to control the sources of fresh water and make them a source of monetary profits, while the world ecological movement seeks the rationalization of the use of water, without permitting that it become a commercial object.
Without control, it is a certainty that many sources of water will progressively be contaminated and/or extinct. The natural cycle of water satisfactorily replaces part of the water but not in the same rhythm as its destruction. Therefore, when we say that 40% of humanity will lack drinkable water, one third of the countries of the world will have a permanent scarcity of water, but it is necessary to know that this will not affect everyone equally.
If the control is made according to the mechanisms of the market, those with monetary power will be guaranteed access to water. But if the control is done by a public and democratic agency, it will be possible to rationalize its use and avoid making the poorest be those who suffer the most.
Confronted by such enormous and dramatic challenges, it is interesting to look at a table that portrays the distribution of water on the Planet Earth. Although with small differences, all the indices point in the same direction.
| Locality | Volume (km3) | % | Renewal |
| Oceans | 1,464,000.0 | 97.6000 | 37,000 years |
| Polar masses | 31,290.0 | 2.0860 | 16,000 years |
| Sedimentary Rocks | 4,371.0 | 0.291 0 | 300 years |
| Lakes | 255.0 | 0.0170 | 1 to 1000 years |
| Soil and subsoil | 67.0 | 0.0040 | 280 days |
| Atmosphere | 15.0 | 0.0010 | 9 days |
| Rivers | 1.5 | 0.0001 | 6 to 20 days |
Scarcity
At this point we must make a fundamental discernment. The volume of fresh water on the Planet is the same as it has been for millions of years. This volume of water - fresh water as well as salt Water - always was sufficient to provide for all forms of life. The volume of water in the lakes and rivers is most accessible to humanity. If that volume of water were not to be replaced by the hydrological cycle, 5 to 6 billion inhabitants would use up that volume of water in thirty or forty years, based on the minimum demand per inhabitant/year of one thousand cubic meters per person, according to the United Nations.
Meanwhile, the hydrological cycle replaces in circulation in the rivers a volume of 41 thousand cubic meters each year. This means that, in the year 2000, each inhabitant of the earth still had available, in the rivers, between 6 and 7 thousand cubic meters of water, or five to six times more than the minimum demand per person. Therefore , the problem of water scarcity does not exist on a global level.
If there exists a progressive scarcity, it is the fruit of the depredation made by the human hand. As a United Nations document affirms: "The problem of water is more a question of management than of scarcity". To correctly state the question, it must be said that it regards good or bad rnanagement of the water supply and does and not its scarcity.
Of course, there are regions where water is naturally scarce, as is the case of the maritime islands, deserts, and semi-arid regions. Where the scarcity is due to depredation or contamination of the water sources, this is not natural, but done by human action. Also a fruit of human action is the scarcity of water caused by the growth of population in the metropolitan areas. Therefore, the good management of the water supply passes necessarily through the regional and local dimensions. A theoretic question, however, must be clarified. The classic economic theory comes from the principle that human desires are infinite, while goods/benefits are finite: therefore, "scarcity" is the economic value of the goods/benefits. Abundant goods/benefits - today air is the abundant natural benefit - do not have economic value. Only "scarce" goods awaken the interest of the economic market, which proposes to increase their use more and more in accordance with the law of offer and demand.
The use of the term "scarcity" in the water question has therefore, an ideological side, for it opens the path for large businesses to manage the world's water supply in accordance with the money-market laws.
Economic Value
One of the most controversial concepts in the new discourse about water is its economic value, for this did not enter in the classic theories that considered water as a natural and abundant recourse. Its value for use in the production of goods (by industry, agriculture and cattle raising) was not expressed in monetary terms, because water was appropriated by the producer without payment for it as a factor of production.
The economic value of water functions as a mechanism for managing the hydraulic recourses. The reasoning is simple: having to pay, the use of water will be carefully rationed. The heavier the economic weight, the more its use will be rationed. But this does not signify that water can be incorporated to the category of merchandise and, therefore, ruled by the laws of the market.
That argument has its share of the truth - expensive goods receive more care - and for this reason, the argument is accepted as connnon sense. The consequences, however, can be serious, if that means considering water as merchandise ruled by the law of supply and demand. The cost for the use of water can be a mechanism of management provided it establishes different prices in accordance with the use.
Today, a brewery takes from an artesian well all the water it uses without paying for it, and afterward dumps part of that water, now contaminated by detergent and waste material, in the nearest river. The profits from the sale of the beer belong to the brewery; the loss of the subterranean water and the pollution of the river are inherited by the local community. A good gesture would be for the local government to charge a low price for the water used as raw material, and a high price for the industrial sewerage, so that the industry would be encouraged to filter waste materials before dumping them into the river.
Thus, it is necessary to charge different prices in accordance with the use of the water: human consumption, sewerage, electric power, industrial production, agricultural irrigation, pleasure, etc. To define the quantity and the price to be paid for water, the Brazilian Law No. 9433, of Hydraulic Recourses, establishes the "Committees of Hydraulic Basin" with the power to define the criteria of the "grants", that is, quantity, finality (urban, industrial, hydroelectric, irrigation, etc., services) and the price to be paid for each service from that basin.
The Committee also decides the ways of using the money received from the users of a water basin. It is obligatory that the money be spent for the recuperation, maintenance or sustainable development of the basin in accordance with an established plan.
In order that this cost for the use of a water basin not exclude some people from the use of the water, the Law No. 9433 includes the concept of "insignificant outflow", i.e., water used by small users who live on the banks of rivers or lakes and from them take their life's sustenance, do not need to request a grant or pay. The "grant", therefore, cannot be confused with a "concession" that opens the way to the commercialization of water.
Indeed, in the urban zones we pay for water - or better, we pay for the services of canalization, treatment and distribution of the water and not for the water itself. But, besides paying for these services, we must pay for the use of each. But, if this additional price excludes anyone from access to water, such a measure would be ethically unacceptable. But, if prices are different according to quantity and use, resulting in better management, all of us stand to gain.
The principle that reads 'the one who uses, pays" cannot be read in the contrary as "who does n--t pay, does not use" or "who cannot pay, cannot use". Since water is not merchandise to be bought and sold, but a benefit of public domain, the principle is applied as a norm to regulate use, which may be quantitative (who uses more water, pays more) or qualitative (who uses more water to gain profits, pays more than the one who uses water for personal consumption). If not controlled in this way, water would cease to be a right of all living beings, creating an ethical dilemma and a tragedy for those excluded from the use of water.
Correlative to the principle of 'the one who uses, pays", is the principle of "the one who contaminates, pays", which forces the polluter to treat the polluting effluent effectively or pay the equivalent of the cost of treating the water to be unpolluted. At the present time in Brazil, pollution is combated by findng the polluting agencies, but this has not been successful, for the fines are low and the polluters continue to contaminate our waterways. In this way the fines give the right to "pollute by paying".
It is clear that, better than a fine, is the politic of payment of a high price for the polluting water so that it becomes economically compensating to avoid all pollution.
The Transformation of Water into Merchandise
The point most serious in the present debate about water is its transformation into merchandise. In this sense, we speak of the "petroleumization' of water or of "blue gold". Water therefore, has become an object of interest to the World Organization of Commerce, although resistance has come from all sides. The classification of water as merchandise represents the triumph of the market logic and the transformation of water into an object of profit for the large capitalist businesses.
To accomplish their objective, transnational businesses seek to imprint on world public opinion a restrictive concept of water as merchandise of great economic value, capable of becoming a special force of revenue for a country such as Brazil. This implies taking from water its dimension as a human right, its vital character, its sacred dimension.
As we see, those who oppose that ideology, defending the sacred and vital value of water, are easily labeled as "antiquated", "against progress", or "romantic". But in that defense rests the possibility of saving from desolation the Planet Earth --- our "Water Planet" --- and of guaranteeing life for future generations
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