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Community
Building Meeting II |
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Community
Building Meeting II |
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WATER The Cochabamba saga is rooted in the early 1990's, with the World Bank's structural adjustment policies pressuring the world's poorest countries, including Bolivia, to privatize publicly owned industries, usually resulting in ownership by large foreign investors. Through private deals, the details of which have never been fully disclosed, Bolivia sold its airline, its electric utilities and the national train service. The public benefit from this privatization seems to have been minimal with increased unemployment, more expensive services, and an erosion of working conditions. In 1999, World Bank economists told Bolivian officials that "no public subsidies" should be allowed to keep water rates affordable and the government subsequently put its water utilities up for sale. In Cochabamba, Bolivia's third largest city, government officials conducted closed-door negotiations with Aguas de Tunari and secretly signed a 40-year lease granting this private consortium, led by Italian-owned International Water Limited and US-based Bechtel Enterprise Holdings, the exclusive right to distribute water in the region. The newly privatized water company immediately raised prices, a move that resulted in household water bills equal to 20-30% of a family's monthly income. Water prices were set in dollars and annual rate increases were to be measured against the consumer price index of the United States, an economic structure impossible for the population to bear. Furthermore, the lease contract and attendant legislation to enforce it prohibited many of the traditional means of distributing water, including community water tanks that collected rain, personal family wells, and right of townships to determine where water wells could be located.
Amidst the chaos and with repeated threats to his life, Oscar Olivera emerged as the principal spokesperson for La Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida (the Coalition in Defense of Water and Life), the citizen body that negotiated with the government and the private water company. Parallel to the pitched demonstrations and blockades against the Bolivian army, with many civilians arrested and injured and one death, Olivera led the negotiations with the Bolivian government that resulted in the cancellation of the contract with Aguas de Tunari and the reform of legislation that regulates the water services in the region.
Today the people of Cochbamba are working diligently to develop a water services solution that is a successful alternative to privatization. Representatives from La Coordinadora have formed an uneasy alliance with the local government in the reconstruction and management of the local water company, SEMAPA. Currently the SEMAPA Board of Directors is comprised of two members chosen by the Cochabamba Municipal Council, one member elected by the union of SEMAPA workers, and two members chosen by La Coordinadora. While public sentiment is still very strongly in favor of La Coordinadora, opposition continues in certain government circles and business elites. SEMAPA and La Coordinadora have created an important opportunity to demonstrate a workable alternative to privatization as the only rescue from debt and inefficiency. In the transition to public management, La Coordinadora is guided by three principles: popular participation in key decisions; transparency in the administration of the new water enterprise; and social equity, including subsidies to keep water prices affordable for the poorest water users. As a first project, consistent with the commitment to social equity, SEMAPA implemented a policy of attending first to the neediest. They did this by expanding water connections into the poor southern neighborhoods of the area and by bringing back into operation a number of pumps that were abandoned by Aguas del Tunari. Secondly, La Coordinadora and SEMAPA have instituted regular community meetings throughout the city and rural areas to identify pressing needs and find shared solutions to pressing problems. This has resulted in the activation of hundreds of new water connections and hundreds of meters of new sewage lines, all with existing SEMAPA resources. How well SEMAPA continues to serve its people and its government will not only shape its future but provide an essential model for a more equitable approach to economic globalization. The Cochabamba story has made Olivera a popular figure among civil society activists and within other communities where similar situations exist. For example, The IMF, backed by the World Bank, currently has loan conditions on twelve of the poorest, debt-ridden African nations which include water privatization. The loan conditions are part of the IMF's recent Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, which was designed to help pay off the debt of the world's most inflicted countries. As in the case of Bolivia, local civil society leaders are rising to challenge these policies with Cochabamba as a reminder of the potential for abuse of such loan terms and free trade policies. Olivera receives regular email and phone contact from such leaders in various parts of the world seeking advice and counsel on the way forward. |
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