Assalam-o-Alaikum-Warahmat-ULLAH ALL,
ThirdWorldTraveler Article: World Bank, WTO,
and corporate control over waterstrong
by Vandana Shiva
International Socialist Review,
Aug/Sep 2001
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Giant water projects have always benefited the powerful and dispossessed the weak. Even when built by government and paid for by public money, the beneficiaries have been construction companies, industry, and large commercial farming interests. Donald Worster has called this the "contrived market of the state"-the capitalist state working to facilitate the unlimited accumulation of private wealth.
While privatization and globalization have been accompanied by the rhetoric of the disappearing role of the state, what we see instead is the state increasingly intervening through policies, rules, laws, investment, and technology in shifting control over water from communities and the public to commercial, corporate interest.
The policies of privatization imposed through the World Bank and rules of trade liberalization being negotiated in the World Trade Organization (WTO) under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) are rules and conditionalities that create corporate states-states that usurp resources from people for meeting vital needs and put them in the hands of private corporations for making profits through the privatization of essential services.
The World Bank An instrument for corporate control over water
Having created scarcity and pollution through the promotion of nonsustainable water use, the World Bank is now transforming the scarcity it has created into a market opportunity for water corporations. The World Bank estimates the potential water market at $800 billion.
Monsanto, the biotech giant, has also been planning entry into the water business. Monsanto is seeing a new business opportunity in water because of the emerging water crisis and the funding available to make this vital resource available to people. As a Monsanto strategy paper states:
First, we believe that dlsconunuities (either major policy changes or major trendline breaks in resource quality or quantity) are likely, particularly in the area of water and we will be well-positioned via these businesses to profit even more significantly when these discontinuities occur. Second, we are exploring the potential of non-conventional financing (NGOs, World Bank, USDA, etc.) that may lower our investment or provide local country business-building resources.
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This was happening back in 2001.
This is just the first few "bred crumbs" leading to the "big picture". I encourage ALL to do your own independent research into this matter.
Posted 1 year ago on 23 Jan 2011 11:50
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