Liberalisation: Criticism can also be objective

Maude Barlow, Tony Clarke:
Blue Gold. The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water,
New York, New Press 2003,
296 pp., Dollar 16.95, ISBN 1-56584-813-6

Thomas Fritz:
Die letzte Grenze. GATS. Die Dienstleistungsverhandlungen in der WTO. Sachstand, Probleme und Alternativen. (The Last Frontier. GATS: The WTO Service Talks. State of Affairs, Problems and Alternatives.)
Berlin, WEED 2003, 61 pp.,
Euro 7.50, ISBN 3-9808227-2-9

The book and the pamphlet have a great deal in common. Both deal with the commercialisation and liberalisation of public services and both are written by critics of globalisation: Barlow and Clarke are Canadian NGO theorists, Fritz is a member of the executive committee of the Berlin Working Group on Environment and Development (Blue 21) and also works for Attac.

The calibre of the publications differs enormously, however. Barlow and Clarke present their arguments in a way thought to have been relegated to the past. They use water shortage and pollution statistics predominantly as a means of causing alarm, for example, rather than pre-senting them in a context needed to make clear what they signify. As evidence of dwindling water resources, for instance, the authors cite the fact that 22 African countries – among them Eritrea, Mali, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone – “cannot supply enough clean water to meet the needs of their populations”. The first three countries do indeed lack water reserves but the last two do not; the problem there is infrastructure.

So the list is totally misleading. Bald statements like the one that governments “all over the world” have failed to protect common property are also annoying, especially when one discovers a little later in the book that parts of Europe and North America have managed to reduce water consumption. Causal relationships are treated in a similarly offhand manner.

Yet many of the theses put forward in the book are not wrong. The criticism of IMF and World Bank programmes in the water sector is as understandable as the concern that investment protection agreements undermine a country's ability to reach democratic decisions on water provision. So, too, is the claim that profligate industrial lifestyles need to change. Sadly, though, what the book gets right is poorly substantiated.

And that includes its core demand: access to clean drinking water is a human right, so water should be regarded as a public good, not as a commodity. But what does that mean for regions where water is scarce? Should it be free or should public providers also charge for it? What kind of public supply models are available? And what kind of natural, institutional and cultural conditions need to be met? In this book, the reader looks for answers to such questions in vain.

Barlow and Clarke expect salvation from a global civic movement. There is “ubiquitous” re-sistance forming against the plans of corporate groups and governments, they say. The protest against dams is “a spearhead in the fight for the right to water everywhere”. Here, their book adopts a line of thinking that is as simple as it is irritating: governments and big business are the problem, local communities and civic initiatives the solution. Who could be so petty as to expect from the goodies – whom Barlow and Clarke no doubt think they are championing – a platform of good clear arguments?

Readers unwilling to lower their expectations are better served by Thomas Fritz’s pamphlet. Fritz not only claims that the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) serves the interests of certain corporate groups, he also presents evidence, pointing to the way the agreement came into being. When Fritz complains of problems arising from the GATS for education, medicine and the water sector he reaches similar conclusions to Barlow and Clarke. However, unlike the Canadians, he also addresses the arguments put forward by the advocates of liberalisation. He points out, for example, that the liberalisation of labour migration, in particular, could benefit poor countries.

Fritz also pins his hopes on grass-roots movements, but he is more realistic. His introduction as a whole is differentiated and comprehensible and, despite all the polemic, presents a well-founded case. This style seems a better vehicle for spreading criticism of the GATS than the scare-mongering tone of Barlow and Clarke's book. They have done their cause a disservice.

Bernd Ludermann