In March, 2000, the IFG organized a group of NGOs to participate in the World Water Forum to present a Citizens' Water Charter as an alternative to industry-led privatization policies currently being developed.

In December 2000, members of the IFG Committee on Water and Globalization were invited to Bolivia's third largest city, Cochabamba. We were invited to participate in an international conference on the privatization and globalization of water and to create a partnership between the citizens of Cochabamba and the international movement against corporate globalization. While there, we met with Cochabambans from all walks of life who had taken part in a citizen uprising to take back their water from those who had put it in the global market place: their government, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and U.S. corporate interests. In so doing, we learned once again that alternatives to corporate globalization exist and can be replicated around the world. We continue to work with our colleagues in Cochabamba with La Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida (the Committee in Defense of Water and Life) to ensure that their citizen's alternative of water provision - neither private nor fully government-run - thrives and acts as a model for people everywhere.( For more information on Bolivia's Water struggle, click here.)

This June, the IFG hosted several meetings in Washington DC to discuss the impact of globalization on the provision and protection of water. Speakers from the IFG, Council of Canadians, and Cochabamba, Bolivia, met with consumer groups, environmentalists, workers, water system administrators, representatives of professional associations, elected officials and citizens who work daily on these issues. Under discussion were the ways in which globalization, particularly trade agreements such as the General Agreement on Trade in Services at the World Trade Organization and the Free Trade Area of the Americas, threaten drinking, agricultural and waste water services. The goal of these meetings was to increase awareness of the threats to water posed by globalization, to spur a dialogue and connections among groups that rarely interact and to lay the groundwork for a water protection network that will, among other things, help enact the water policy recommendations that emerge from the International Conference on Water for People and Nature, July 5-8, organized by IFG Committee on the Globalization of Water Chairperson, Maude Barlow. Please check our website in July for a report on this conference.

In June, the IFG also organized a congressional briefing on the globalizatioin and privatization of water attended by 20 congressional staff people representing both water-rich (Michigan) and water-poor (California) states.

Check here regularly for updates on the Water and Globalization Program.

For information on the July 5-8 International Conference on Water for People and Nature, and information on water and globalization, visit The Council of Canadians.

For materials relating to the Cochabamba, Bolivia "water wars," visit The Democracy Center

A subsidiary of the Bechtel Corporation based in San Francisco, CA privatized the water in Cochabamba, Bolivia. There is a chance that Bechtel may do the same in San Francisco, CA. To learn more, please read the articles from the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle:

Cochabamba's Water Rebellion - and Beyond, February 11, 2001

Trouble on Tap, May 31, 2000

The earth wrecker; the company that won the contract to oversee the rebuilding of S.F.'s water system has a disastrous record worldwide, May 31, 2000

Don't Privatize Our Water, September 13, 2000

Stealing Hetch Hetchy Water, September 13, 2000

Read an unpublished article written by IFG Program Director, Antonia Juhasz, After the Energy Debacle, is Water Next?

A recent report titled Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), a group that reports to the Central Intelligence Agency, concluded that in the year 2015, the world's greatest resource problem will be access to water. The NIC argues that the instability created by shortages of water "will increasingly affect the national security of the U.S."

Globalization Challenge Initiative for information on World Bank (IBRD) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Water Privatization Policies.

Public Services International for information on how public employees around the world are responding to the privatization of water services.

Cities are turning to privatization plans largely because of the enormous financial shortfall nearly all U.S. cities are currently facing to upgrade their aging drinking and waste water pipes. To learn more about the problems facing the domestic provision of clean drinking water and safe waste water services in the United States, read the Water Infrastructure Network's report: Water Infrastructure Now: Recommendations for Clean and Safe Water in the 21st Century. The report points to tens of billions of dollars in necessary funding to upgrade and repair the nation's aging water pipes. The report recommends federal funding rather than privatization to meet this need.

However, cities and towns across the United States are already turning towards varying forms of privatization to meet these financial short falls. They are doing so without knowledge of the regulatory straightjacket that international trade and investment agreements such as the World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) will place them in. These agreements force governments to move towards full privatization of public services and restrict the ways in which governments can regulate the privatizers. For an overview of those cities that have privatized, please visit the United States Conference of Mayors web site.

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy maintains several e-mail list serves related to water and globalization issues. To learn more and join these lists, visit their web site.

To receive regular updates on water and globalization issues, send your e-mail address to Antonia Juhasz at ajuhasz@ifg.org