This is exactly JakartaThames Water bought half of London’s water rights and began charging the highest water tariffs in the Southeast.
The same thing happened in Tanzania: under pressure from the World Bank, the capital, Dar es Salaam, leased its water supply to a consortium of British, German and Tanzanian companies on a six-year deal that included tax breaks.
The British government has given about half a million pounds to “free market” lobby group Adam Smith International to promote the project, according to one research organisation. report by Guardian.
The PR campaign was not enough to drown out the high prices, water outages, and shortages that followed: Two years later, authorities in Deir es Salaam terminated the contract early and expelled the company’s executives.
private
The government continues to use public funds to buy water infrastructure overseas. It was awarded Adam Smith International invested £400 million between 2012 and 2017.
Today, the lobbying group proudly promotes a “market-based approach” to water supply in 17 countries, mainly Southern Africa.
Moreover, Liz Truss, during her short and infamous tenure as UK Prime Minister, rebranded international aid as a publicly owned company, UK International Investment (BII).
at that time, NGO predictions The BII predicted that the country will “focus solely on private investment and profit generation.” Their prediction has come true. In 2023, the BII The deal was announced Promote private investment in water infrastructure across Africa.
Another publicly funded scheme, the UK Sustainable Infrastructure Programme, aims to foster private sector partnerships in the Caribbean and South America.
violence
Mid-term evaluation of the project report A successful collaboration with Lima’s municipal water company, Sedapal, to develop a “strong stakeholder engagement strategy” with the private sector.
In 2019, as Extinction Rebellion “flowed like water” and paralysed central London, a river of protest also flowed in Lima.
News Source People have reportedly gathered in the streets chanting “water is a right, not a privilege” in protest at a government decree that could allow private investors to buy up shares in Sedapal.
The protests are part of a long history of resistance to water privatization in South America. Water RebellionA large-scale movement organized blockades, roadblocks, and general strikes against Bechtel, the Californian multinational corporation that had bought the city’s water utility.
A cross-class alliance of students, farmers and street vendors fought privatisation in the face of brutal police violence and won.
Destroyed
Signs of resistance are visible on water meter screens across the country. Researchers Loftus, Marsh and Nash write: 2016 PaperJust as hitting the snooze button on an alarm clock causes people to rebel against being exposed to an abstract world of clock-time, people who are “disciplined by the water meter” can also find ways to resist a financialized water system.
That’s what Caroline O’Reilly was doing, sitting in a pothole one day in the summer of 2013. Southern Water had begun mandating the installation of water meters in her neighbourhood, and the Israeli company Arad was supplying them.
Mobilized by the Palestine Solidarity Movement, people like O’Reilly rejected the meter in solidarity with Palestinian calls to boycott Israeli apartheid.
Water is key in this story. Arad also supplies water to Israel’s national water company, Mekorot. As protesters pointed out at the time,supplies water to illegally occupied territories in the West Bank.
Mekorot denies Palestinians access to watera tactic to drive them out of their land. Israel This violence has intensified In an ongoing massacre, Israeli forces have systematically destroyed Gaza’s water infrastructure and cut off water supply through the Mekorot water pipe.
Incentives
The 500,000 Arado water meters installed in homes across the south of England quietly tell us how much water we use each day, but they are a reminder that the country’s water has never been pure or immoral.
Thames Water plans to install mandatory smart meters across the country by 2030 in response to water stress.
London is steeped in myths of exceptionalism and stereotypes about rain. The 15th most water-scarce city in the world.
Smart meters are being touted as a way to regain control over personal water usage, but they are also another site of inequity.
People with less wealth or access to credit are unable to benefit from these incentives to conserve water if, for example, they live in large families or cannot afford water-saving technologies.
Exciting
Buying the latest water-saving washing machines costs money, and we are not all equally water-deprived.
When Steve Reed talks about “protecting our rivers, lakes and oceans,” he is touching upon a desire for sovereignty.
But asking, “Whose water is our water?” helps us see how water injustices circulate and flow across borders and along lines of oppression.
Every time we turn on a tap, we encounter a moment of water in an infinite and far-reaching cycle. Similarly, our everyday encounters with water meters and the pungent smells of polluted rivers offer glimpses of the water system’s failure.
This author
Laurie Hancock is a youth work assistant, researcher and organizer.
