Some reflections and clues for the struggle to keep life in the global water crisis

Elizabeth Peredo Beltrán

31/10/2012

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Once again the Blue October Campaign is taking place in Bolivia, a popular initiative to defend water with more than a hundred social organizations, institutions, NGOs, and activists that promote public events to reflect on water rights. This mobilization is inspired in the historical Referendum in Uruguay that in 2004 included in their Constitution the concept of water as a human right, and the prohibition for transnational companies to sue the state for sovereign decisions on public policy to ensure the human right to water. That change in Uruguay, inspired by the water mobilizations in Bolivia, Argentina and other countries between 2000 and 2003 during the first years of this century, was the first constitutional precedent in Latin America in the way to strength a social vision of water. Later, the constitutional changes of Bolivia and Ecuador made substantial progress in the way to build a social governance of water emerging from below.

Certainly this is a time for celebration, but also a time for a balance, a needed evaluation to look with some objectivity at the progress we have made in these years, and what we need to do to make our words and triumphs achieved not remain in mere rhetoric. A lesson we have learnt in this time… not without pain.

Bolivian official reports are saying that our country is fulfilling one of the Millennium Development Goals related to water, reducing by more than a half the people without access to drinking water and sanitation. That is a great achievement to develop redistribution policies. Specially after being a country that promoted in coordination with others an historical Resolution in the General Assembly of the United Nations in July 2010 declaring the human right to water and sanitation.

However, despite being a privileged country in terms of water resources, water of bad quality and the lack of access to clean water in strips of poverty of the population are alarming. Access to water varies from region to region; our territory is characterized by an unequal distribution of water depending on the regions of our territory: there are very arid and vulnerable regions driven to droughts and water scarcity phenomena due to climate change, meanwhile other regions are wet, with so many water resources and prone to flooding. This past month the Bolivian Civil Defense Department has reported that more than 300,000 families are severely affected by droughts in El Chaco where crops and livestock are killed by the alarming lack of water. We are victims of climate change provoked by developed countries that reinforce the way of producing and consuming without the awareness that we are getting on a suicide path, a model that cannot find how to stop the greed for eternal economic growth.

But climate change is not the only challenge we need to face. In our country more and more there is clear evidence of the over consumption and terrible pollution of water due the mining centers. The rural communities that live in those territories are suffering more than our imagination can conceive. The extractive industry operated by international corporations, which is increasingly taking shape in the country, is exploiting and polluting waters in the West and in the East, where mining and energy exploitation is widely increased.

Moreover, sugar, corn and soybean crops for export and the use of genetically modified seeds (GMOs) have also started to grow exponentially in Bolivia –as all over the world- with the consequent use of more and more extensions of land–with the official promise to legalize the growth of the agricultural frontier- and the consequent overuse and virtual water export that this kind of crops implies. More than the 90% of the soy produced in our country is now transgenic.

The discussion of a "new model" is unavoidable in our country and in the world. Extreme weather events, produced by the system under this development model, extractivism and economic activities that are focusing on more and more profits, require major changes to avoid death and danger. We not only need to stop devastation, but also to keep up the hope of the people in their conquests, in their quest for justice, fairness and care of the planet.

Activists and even some governors are talking a lot about "new development models" and about a "paradigm shift". We even thought we had found the clues in a real progressive narrative for changing the system, which is an important step forward, but experience shows that without any real intention of "doing", without replacing it by just "saying", we will not be able to keep on the right track.

The crisis of the Commons is driven by a cruel system of the rule of capital on land, on water, seeds, labor, subjectivity ... This creates a chain of alienating consequences difficult to change if things are not done, beyond the rhetoric.

Perhaps, instead of keeping on talking about new “development models" we should seek for a "Restoration model", looking for where life is still there to keep it, to help Nature and Mankind to survive the devastating culture of capital and greed. Looking for how to sustain life and the environmental balances on the planet, but also the possibility of restoring Hope in the future.

La Paz in October 2012

* Elizabeth Peredo is a social psychologist, researcher and activist, one of the promoters of Blue October campaign in Bolivia.

More information:

http://www.facebook.com/octubreazulbolivia.bolivia

http://www.octubreazulbolivia.blogspot.com/

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/162278