#4 - Commodifying Water: Disregarding Rights A
Recently, this blog has argued for reducing the time poverties between men and women across many areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. It was found that women suffer from a variety of structural and gender-based inequalities which force upon them the responsibilities of economically unproductive work, such as managing the household overhead and procuring water. It was discussed that it could be more viable to reduce these time burdens through advancing infrastructures, easing the lives of women completing these tasks, than it would be to change the societal structures and cultural norms which engender these roles in the first place. Across the next two posts, this blog focuses on how approaches in contemporary African societies look to achieve this, with particular attention paid to the overriding policies of privatising water resources and their resulting efficacy.
The privatisation of water resources across Africa marks a significant change in how traditionally public services are managed and provided. The term itself encompasses a variety of contractural agreements which determine the characteristics of asset ownership, investment responsibilities, incomes and risk with each approach. These approaches can range from a management contract for menial tasks to full divestiture of the service from the government to the private owner (Bayliss,2003), however, the overriding task is to reduce the role and financial commitment of government in provisioning this service. There was a significant wave of privatisations across Africa following the Structural Adjustment Programs and Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiatives of the 1980s and it is clear privatising water is the dominant policy in managing a nations water. This series of posts focuses on this wave of privatisation, employing examples from Tanzania, Namibia and South Africa to elucidate the impacts that privatisation can have on the men and women of a population. Underpinned with a human rights perspective on this matter, the effectiveness of commercialising the commodity that is water will be drawn into question.
If one were to take a general approach to understanding the costs and benefits of privatising the water industry of a country, the well-worn phrase 'if it's not broke, don't fix it' is apt and applicable. In countries with a well function government budget, low levels of corruption and suitable resources for investment in public infrastructure, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are viable solutions to shoulder some of the burden of public service provision to the private sector; most of the UK, the Netherlands and France stand as testament to this. Unfortunately, as aforementioned, many countries in Africa were forced into privatising their water industry out of necessity following a lack of investment capability, high levels of government debt and certain lending conditions imposed by multinational organisations, such as the IMF and WB, which worked to promote this privatisation behaviour. These Africa countries were seen to follow a certain normative economic model involving privatisation, liberalisation, expenditure and fiscal discipline which has manifested itself through numerous PPPs (Chirwa,2008. With the benefit of hindsight, many public discourses exist denigrating these sort of partnerships.
It appears that PPPs work to misalign the incentives of corporations into producing and commodifying for profit, at the expense of service expansion and access improvement. It was understood that the multinational water companies who invested in these PPPs did so with the intention of producing for profit, fostering economic efficiency, then expanding existing networks and improving services (UN WWW). This does not appear to be the case, more commonly, privatised water industries lack adequate infrastructure investments, are susceptible to tariff hikes, environmental hazards and water supply detachments leading communities to be completely cut-off from the mains water (Guardian WWW). These actions then draw into question arguments surrounding morality, ethics and human rights for the men and women who are most at risk to the agenda of these water companies. Two examples are particularly pertinent when answering these questions: Tanzania and Namibia.
Tanzania suffers significantly when it comes to water infrastructures. Preceding privatisation, less than 59% of their population had access to a safe and close water supply, well below the levels of the surrounding East African countries. In 2000, a consortium of British, German and Tanzanian investors formed the company City Water who would be responsible for orchestrating and managing the supply of water for the whole of the capital city of Dar Es Salaam. The decision to commercialise their water industry was stimulated by fiscal austerity, however, with City Water at the helm it was destined to fail given that they only committed to investing 10% of the estimated $164.6m to achieve complete provision. In fact, the commercialisation of water over the years has only acted to the detriment of the population that the company intended to serve. At one point, in a capital city of 3.5 million people, fewer than 100,000 had access to running water. Consequence of prioritising water based on an ability to pay, industrial use and income-generating activities were supported by City Water, to the extent that it marginalised and restricted access of water for individuals that needed it for survival (Chetty and Luiz,2014).
A similar narrative can be seen in Namibia, with Namwater helming not just the municipal, but the national water industry. Formed in 1997, the Namibia approach sees this company responsible for the facilitation and distribution of water to all municipalities and individuals. This ring-fenced company pursues a similar cost-recovery approach to the Tanzania business model, and in lieu of approximately $250m government subsidies for water, has forced a reorganisation of municipal spending plans to account for the higher charges in this new era of water supply management. Clearly the stance taken by the government is one of strict austerity, with the minister of Regional and Local Governance and Housing stating that 'we are not in a position to bail them out [and] we hope that they will work hard to pay their accounts' (Namibian, 2003).
So, having established these two prominent examples, the following post will now look to elucidate the relations between these privatisations and the impeaching of individuals rights, freedoms, and ultimately, capabilities.
The privatisation of water resources across Africa marks a significant change in how traditionally public services are managed and provided. The term itself encompasses a variety of contractural agreements which determine the characteristics of asset ownership, investment responsibilities, incomes and risk with each approach. These approaches can range from a management contract for menial tasks to full divestiture of the service from the government to the private owner (Bayliss,2003), however, the overriding task is to reduce the role and financial commitment of government in provisioning this service. There was a significant wave of privatisations across Africa following the Structural Adjustment Programs and Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiatives of the 1980s and it is clear privatising water is the dominant policy in managing a nations water. This series of posts focuses on this wave of privatisation, employing examples from Tanzania, Namibia and South Africa to elucidate the impacts that privatisation can have on the men and women of a population. Underpinned with a human rights perspective on this matter, the effectiveness of commercialising the commodity that is water will be drawn into question.
If one were to take a general approach to understanding the costs and benefits of privatising the water industry of a country, the well-worn phrase 'if it's not broke, don't fix it' is apt and applicable. In countries with a well function government budget, low levels of corruption and suitable resources for investment in public infrastructure, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are viable solutions to shoulder some of the burden of public service provision to the private sector; most of the UK, the Netherlands and France stand as testament to this. Unfortunately, as aforementioned, many countries in Africa were forced into privatising their water industry out of necessity following a lack of investment capability, high levels of government debt and certain lending conditions imposed by multinational organisations, such as the IMF and WB, which worked to promote this privatisation behaviour. These Africa countries were seen to follow a certain normative economic model involving privatisation, liberalisation, expenditure and fiscal discipline which has manifested itself through numerous PPPs (Chirwa,2008. With the benefit of hindsight, many public discourses exist denigrating these sort of partnerships.
It appears that PPPs work to misalign the incentives of corporations into producing and commodifying for profit, at the expense of service expansion and access improvement. It was understood that the multinational water companies who invested in these PPPs did so with the intention of producing for profit, fostering economic efficiency, then expanding existing networks and improving services (UN WWW). This does not appear to be the case, more commonly, privatised water industries lack adequate infrastructure investments, are susceptible to tariff hikes, environmental hazards and water supply detachments leading communities to be completely cut-off from the mains water (Guardian WWW). These actions then draw into question arguments surrounding morality, ethics and human rights for the men and women who are most at risk to the agenda of these water companies. Two examples are particularly pertinent when answering these questions: Tanzania and Namibia.
Tanzania suffers significantly when it comes to water infrastructures. Preceding privatisation, less than 59% of their population had access to a safe and close water supply, well below the levels of the surrounding East African countries. In 2000, a consortium of British, German and Tanzanian investors formed the company City Water who would be responsible for orchestrating and managing the supply of water for the whole of the capital city of Dar Es Salaam. The decision to commercialise their water industry was stimulated by fiscal austerity, however, with City Water at the helm it was destined to fail given that they only committed to investing 10% of the estimated $164.6m to achieve complete provision. In fact, the commercialisation of water over the years has only acted to the detriment of the population that the company intended to serve. At one point, in a capital city of 3.5 million people, fewer than 100,000 had access to running water. Consequence of prioritising water based on an ability to pay, industrial use and income-generating activities were supported by City Water, to the extent that it marginalised and restricted access of water for individuals that needed it for survival (Chetty and Luiz,2014).
A similar narrative can be seen in Namibia, with Namwater helming not just the municipal, but the national water industry. Formed in 1997, the Namibia approach sees this company responsible for the facilitation and distribution of water to all municipalities and individuals. This ring-fenced company pursues a similar cost-recovery approach to the Tanzania business model, and in lieu of approximately $250m government subsidies for water, has forced a reorganisation of municipal spending plans to account for the higher charges in this new era of water supply management. Clearly the stance taken by the government is one of strict austerity, with the minister of Regional and Local Governance and Housing stating that 'we are not in a position to bail them out [and] we hope that they will work hard to pay their accounts' (Namibian, 2003).
So, having established these two prominent examples, the following post will now look to elucidate the relations between these privatisations and the impeaching of individuals rights, freedoms, and ultimately, capabilities.