Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Water is in the hands of large producers who have dried out our territory and compromised the lives of our communities. Ours is an extreme case: Chile has entirely privatised water, which means that theft is institutionalised. Chile has clearly prioritised extractive industries over the rights of communities to water.
A Blue Community is an act of hope. Instead of being against the many threats to water, a Blue Community offers a vision for the future based on the belief that water is a human right and a public trust. It also tackles the growing crisis of plastic pollution by committing a municipality (or university or place to worship, etc.) to phasing out bottled water on its premises.
As climate change intensifies weather events like the rainstorms that keep hitting New Orleans, the burden on cities’ infrastructure gets heavier. At the same time, the backlog of deferred maintenance in most of the country has weakened these systems’ resilience. Most municipal governments are ill-equipped to handle the increasingly urgent overhauls, especially if they’ve just been hit with a major disaster. That opens a window for private companies — so-called “disaster capitalists” — to make their pitch.
Private companies have been working to make a profit from water since the 1600s, when the first water companies were established in England and Wales.
Important lessons can and should be learned in our struggles to defend the land and commons from what took place and continues to take place in Bolivia.
Despite explicit opposition from hundreds of thousands of European citizens, the sovereign debt crisis has given new momentum to the privatisation of water services in many European countries.
When it comes to a person’s fundamental needs being met – nothing is more basic and human, than to share.
Greece knows a thing or two about democracy. And as an increasingly arid nation, good water management is fundamental to its future, both political and physical. The recent financial crisis hasn’t only tested Greek democracy, but its water as well.
