The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource - by Stephen Lendman
In her 2002 book titled, "Water Wars," noted author, social activist, and ecologist Vandana Shiva called privatizing water:
-- ecological terrorism;
-- a global water crisis;
-- along with overuse, waste and pollution, it can cause "the most pervasive, most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth;"
-- the road to "an ecological crisis with commercial causes but no market solutions; (they) destroy the earth and aggravate inequality; the solution to an ecological crisis is ecological, and the solution for injustice is democracy;" and
-- water rights are natural and "usufructuary....water can be used but not owned;" it belongs to everyone as part of the commons as an essential "basis of all life....under customary laws, the right to water has been accepted as a natural, social fact."
Shiva lists nine water democracy principles:
(1) it's nature's gift;
(2) it's essential to life;
(3) "life is interconnected through water;"
(4) it must be free "for sustenance needs;"
(5) it's limited and exhaustible;
(6) it must be conserved;
(7) it's a commons;
(8) "no one has a right to overuse, abuse, waste, pollute," or own it; it belongs to everyone; it can't be treated as a commodity; and
