Spoiler Alert

Back in the good old days of the Cold War, everybody’s favorite secret agent, James Bond, fought villains like Dr. No, an evil scientist out to sabotage U.S. missile tests, and Mr. Big, a Soviet agent using pirate treasure to finance espionage in America. But as Bond’s friend Mathis tells him in Quantum of Solace, “When one is young, it’s easy to tell the difference between right and wrong. As one gets older, the villains and heroes get all mixed up.”

The reference is to a shady new Bond villain, agent of the Quantum organization – Dominic Greene. In public, Greene is a leading environmentalist whose organization, Greene Planet, buys up large tracts of land for ecological preserves. But behind the scenes, Greene has another agenda. As he says to his co-conspirators, “This is the most valuable resource in the world and we need to control as much of it as we can.”

The film makes a number of plays on the assumption that the resource in question is oil – but oil is so…twentieth century.

By the time Bond has pursued Greene from Italy to Haiti, from Haiti to Austria, and crash-landed his plane in a sink-hole in the high, barren desert of Bolivia, we make the discovery that this vital resource is – surprise! – water.

Colluding with Greene is a cast of evil characters taken straight from the history books. We have General Medrano, the ex-dictator of Bolivia, to whom Greene says, “You want your country back? My organization can give it to you.” We have the U.S. Ambassador, myopically sticking to the familiar program: “Okay, we do nothing to stop a coup, and you give us a lease to any oil you find.” And we have the British foreign office, continually wrangling with M15, Bond’s spy agency. When Bond’s boss, M, tells him that Greene is not an environmentalist but a villain, the foreign Minister says, “If we refused to do business with villains, we’d have almost no one to trade with.”  Ain’t it the truth.

The fact that Quantum of Solace makes water the villain’s object of greed, replacing oil, gold, diamonds, and mutually assured destruction, is telling of the point we’ve reached. More telling still is the fact that our villain’s cover has him acting as an environmentalist, the ultimate corporate greenwasher. The fact that the action winds up in Bolivia – the country where, in real life, both Bechtel and Suez have tried and failed to take control of community water resources during and shortly after the reign of former-dictator-turned-neoliberal President Hugo Banzer – brings the plot frighteningly close to reality.

If only the water movement had a few organizers with the physique, the gadgets, and the, er, style of Bond. While we have many great documentaries telling the story of the global water wars, including this year’s Flow and Blue Gold, one is forced to wonder if 007 does a greater service to the water movement than even our most highly talented documentarians. After all, who better than Hollywood to characterize the greenwashing corporate water profiteers as straight up evil, sans the need to justify the hyperbole?

Matieu Amalric, the actor who played Dominic Greene, wanted to wear make-up for the role, but director Marc Forster “wanted Greene not to look grotesque, but to symbolize the hidden evils in society.” Similarly, the original screenplay had Greene having some “hidden power.” But in the final cut, the director seems to have decided that corporate power was power enough.

One wonders if Dominic Greene – had he not died drinking motor oil to quench his thirst in the Bolivian desert – might give the keynote speech at the upcoming World Water Forum in Istanbul. After all, the World Water Council that puts on the forum is presided over by Loïc Fauchon, a former executive at one of the French subsidiaries of Suez, the world’s largest private water corporation.

As we learn from the WWF website, “One of the benefits of joining the WWC is the Council's ability to influence decisions related to world water management that affect organizations, business, and communities.” Perhaps their secret meetings will also be attended by executives of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, whose recent partnership with Coca-Cola aims to help the global soft-drink giant become “the most efficient company in the world in terms of water use,” with “every drop of water it uses…returned to the earth or compensated for through conservation and recycling programs.” And, with this blending of fact and fiction, it would hardly be surprising to find Greene’s signature on the CEO Water Mandate, which has companies with such devastating environmental track records as Dow Chemical, Shell Oil, Unilever, and Nestle pledging to “help address the water challenge faced by the world today.”

When M, Bond’s overweening boss at M15, finds out about Quantum, she demands, “What the hell is this organization, Bond? How can they be everywhere and we know nothing about them?”

Well, my darling M, the answer is simple: like transnational corporations, and like the large NGO’s that work with the private sector to reform its practices and green its reputation, and like the International Finance Institutions whose interests are increasingly endangering the United Nations’ mandate to defend and protect human rights, they can be everywhere because their particular form of villainy works best when hidden in plain sight.

Thankfully, the world’s water is safe, because, behind the scenes, secret agent 007 is on the job.

-Jeff Conant
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"a last-minute assault on the public happening on multiple fronts," is how Matthew Madia, a regulatory expert at OMB Watch, referred to the administration's final deregulation efforts.

During their last days in power, President Bush and his administration are  evidently uninterested in improving their image or even maintaining it. It seemed fathomable, after multiple indications of failure, that the administration would acknowledge the incompetence of its deregulatory doctrine and, like the public, accept the need for regulation.

Unfortunately, that's nowhere near the case. Instead, they've decided to blatantly ignore consumer interest and have one last push at passing rules to further weaken our health, safety, and environmental protections.

Like frat boys ending a party at full drunken force, it looks like they are rushing to do as much as damage in as little time as they can. Perhaps they have learned something in the course of their eight years of experience – they’re attempting to set these policies up in a way that will make it difficult for the incoming administration to reverse them. If they pass a rule by December 22nd and it takes effect before Inauguration Day, the new administration will not be able to revoke it without creating a new rule, which often takes months.

In the coming weeks, Food & Water Watch will be working hard to minimize the damage the administration is expected to inflict on the public and the environment. Stay tuned for opportunities to help and take action on one important issue now: urge the USDA to protect our food labels.

–Elissar Khalek
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Global financial markets are in peril. Panic is gripping Wall Street. The Dow has taken huge dives and continues to stagger. September job loss was the highest in five years and nearly one in six homeowners are under water – owing more on their mortgages than their houses are worth. Times are tough.

Several state and local governments are drowning in these rough waters. They can’t make payroll or raise money for vital public works projects. With revenues running dry and municipal bonds becoming a hard sell, city officials have thrown their hands up in exasperation. A few are even thinking about turning to the private sector and the very financial institutions that helped get us in this mess.

Milwaukee's comptroller has proposed privatizing its water system, hawking it off to the highest bidder, to raise funds to keep city operations running. This is a classic example of taxing through the tap. The city would lease off the utility for 75 to 99 years in exchange for a one-time payment of $500 million. Then whatever corporation gets the deal will invariably hike water prices not only to recover the city’s payout but also to pad their stockholders’ wallets. Leases are an absurdly expensive way to raise money – even in this tight municipal bond market.

Milwaukee is not alone. Akron, Ohio, will vote on a similar lease of their sewers this November. Morgan Stanley is advising the deal, which comes as no surprise. They are eyeing water investment, as have Goldman Sachs, the now-defunct Lehman Brothers and AIG.

For more than a decade, the global water barons have been going into cash-strapped communities to push them to privatize their water. They have paraded around as if they were the saviors of these struggling governments, claiming to have the capital to make needed improvements and upgrades. In the last few years, investment banks joined this charade, expecting big payouts.

Ah, but time did tell another story. The investment bank era is over. The government forced the last two big independent investment banks – Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley – to become commercial banks. The problem? Not enough capital.

The irony is too great. These were the very banks that had pranced into communities proclaiming their wealth and bad-mouthing government finance. Then – bam! Stocks plummet as bad decisions catch up with greedy speculators. Now the federal government has to use our tax dollars to bail out the crumbling institutions. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley stand to be two of the biggest beneficiaries of the $700 billion bailout. AIG already got its cushion. 

We trusted Wall Street with our homes, and look what happened – subprime lending, speculation, foreclosure crisis, doors boarded up, tent cities across the nation. Can we afford to trust it with our water?

Instead of corporate handouts and golden parachutes, our tax dollars should support projects that benefit the public good and protect the wellbeing of communities across the country. The federal government should ensure the safe and sound operation of our nation's water systems, so that something as precious and necessary as water is never subject to the whims of speculators and the fleeting fancies of the fat cats on Wall Street. 
 

Act now and tell Congress to support a trust fund for clean and safe water. Tell them we need public money for public utilities.

For more information about how corporations could seek heady profits from the water funding crisis, check out our report Costly Returns.

[Image from Candor]

This is your chance to voice your opposition to water profiteering. You can vote against the privatization and commodification of water by participating in an online "Cambridge style" debate hosted by The Economist magazine.

The debate proposition is: "Water is both an industrial input and a prerequisite of life. Roughly a billion people do not have a constant supply of clean and safe water. Would water supplies be better managed if it were treated as a commodity, and priced accordingly? Or is water a basic human right that governments should secure for their citizens?" 

We know that water is a vital resource, critical for all of us. The provision of such an essential public good cannot be left in the hands of corporations, who will raise prices in the search for greater profit.

Join the debate and tell the moderator that allowing the market to determine the price of water will severely impact the world's poorest people, subjugate environmental conservation and trade public control for private profit.

Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter commented:

The U.S. government and its corporate allies clearly believe that water is a new profit center. They are promoting markets and privatization as the solution to providing water to the world's poor -- 1.4 billion people without access to drinking water and 2.5 billion without sanitation services. International finance institutions, funded by the U.S. and other developed nations, provide loans to developing nations on the condition that they privatize services and charge steep user fees. Indeed, the very institutions that are charged with alleviating poverty, like the World Bank, are implementing policies that force people who make $1 or $2 a day to choose between food, housing or water.

Communities all over the world have suffered from the empty promises of water-privatization profiteers. Whether in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, or Guayaquil, Ecuador, or Atlanta, GA, the results have been devastating. They include cost-cutting measures that jeopardize public safety, job cuts to essential staff, maintenance and water quality problems, lack of infrastructure investment, sewage spills, corruption, environmental degradation, outrageous rate hikes and political meddling.

Almost across the board, private corporations deliver poorer service at a higher cost than do most public utilities. Surveys of U.S. utilities show that privately owned water utilities charge customers significantly higher water rates than their publicly owned counterparts charge -- anywhere from 13 percent to almost 50 percent more, according to an analysis by Food & Water Watch, the advocacy group I direct.

To cite just one example, in 2005, the government of Tanzania canceled its 10-year contract with the British-based firm Biwater after two years of poor management and unmet obligations left people without water and the government short about $3.25 million. The East African country enjoyed some measure of justice in early 2008 when an international tribunal ruled that Biwater must pay almost $8 million in damages and fees to the state water utility in Dar es Salaam. Not coincidentally, the company had taken control of the city's water supply in a controversial, noncompetitive privatization process favored by the British government and the World Bank.

The answer to providing safe, affordable drinking water and sewer services to developing nations is not giant corporations. The World Bank and other IFIs should stop predicating their loans on privatization. These powerful institutions must stop forcing poor countries to structure their economies in a way meant to benefit multinational corporations, and instead prioritize public health and increased access to clean and affordable water for all people. Because water is, after all, a human right.

Join her in saying no to the water barons who seek profit at the expense of clean, safe and affordable water for all.

For more information about the water debate, check out our Private vs. Public page and other reports on our website. 

– Mary Grant