Today, Students worked on active reading strategies. These included highlighting main points, paraphrasing and numbering. They read the article below in preparation for the documentary about water.
Should Water Utilities be Privatized?
Experts who support the privatization of water resources believe that private industry has the financial resources to upgrade infrastructures and deliver safe drinking water. Those who oppose privatization argue that it leads to higher prices and violates human rights. As you read the following perspectives, think about the possible impacts of commercial development of water resources.
Privatization ... allows for the de-politicization of environmental and health regulations. Governments that own, operate, and finance water and wastewater utilities cannot properly regulate them. All too often, conflicts of interest prevent them from enforcing compliance with laws and regulations. Privatization reduces these conflicts, freeing regulators to regulate and increasing the accountability of all parties....
Across the country, thousands of facilities fail to comply with laws and standards. Many are inefficiently run: Some are grossly overstaffed; others are staffed by insufficiently trained operators. Many are in need of costly upgrades. Water charges are insufficient to cover these costs. Clearly, many
systems could benefit from the capital investment, expertise, efficiency, and accountability that privatization can bring.
-Elizabeth Brubaker, "A Thirst for Privatization," Financial Post, •
• January 9, 2003; excerpted from "Liquid Assets : Privatizing and
Regulating Canada's Water Utilities," The Centre for Public •
• Management, University of Toronto , 2002.
The private sector was the first to notice: the planet is running out of fresh water at such a rate that soon it will be the most valuable commodity on earth.... Water for profit takes several forms. Backed by the World Bank
and the IMF, a handful of transnational corporations are seeking to cartelize [combine forces to control] the world's water delivery and wastewater systems. Already, Vivendi and Suez of France deliver private water services to more than 200 million customers in 150 countries. Now they are moving into new markets in the [less developed] world, where debt-struck governments are forced to abandon public water services and hand over control of water supplies to for-profit interests.
These companies have huge profits, charge higher prices for water, and cut off customers who cannot pay.... Based on the policy known as full-cost recovery (charging for the full cost of water, including profits for shareholders), the water companies are able to impose rate hikes that are devastating to millions of poor people who are forced to use cholera-laced water systems instead....
-Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians, "The Tide Is High,"
The Guardian , February 26, 2003,
http://www.canadians.org/display document.htm? •
COCtoken =&id=561&isdoc = l&catid=313.
These GATS [General Agreement on Trade in Services] agreements and the ideology that everything should be for sale to the highest bidder not only threaten our rights but deny the sacred nature of water-that it is given to us by the creator and the earth. This is the basis of our traditions and beliefs. ... Together we must oppose the unsustainable belief in unlimited growth and irresponsible development that will eventually destroy the rights of all human beings. Without a new way, one in which our traditions can play a leading role, the earth will not survive.
-The Interior Alliance , BC First Nations and the Council of Canadians , do you think so? •
" Nothing Sacred: The Growing Threat to Water and Indigenous •
Peoples," July 2001, http://www.canadians.org/display_
document.htm?COC_token=&id=237&isdoc = l&catid=78.
Questions: (you don't have to do these, just consider them).
1. What are the main arguments for and against water privatization?
2. Which perspective do you agree with? Support your position with direct quotations from the excerpts in this feature.
3. Do you think the commercial development of water resources would have a positive or negative impact on individuals and communities in Canada?
4. What impact do you think it might have on individuals and communities in countries with shortages of fresh water?
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