Water is not only essential for life, but for growing food as well.  But while the global demand for water is on the rise, the supply is shrinking.  Water-intensive industrial agriculture, urban and industrial pollution, breakneck industrial development and other ecological threats are depleting freshwater supplies.

 

Policies driven by institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have left little room for local decisions and instead have forced privatization of water on poor countries. These international finance institutions make loans contingent on privatization and increased cost recovery—which often requires charging high fees for water even for people living in extreme poverty. The results in numerous countries have been disastrous – less access to water for the poor, extremely high rates, and poor water quality.

 

There is a growing struggle against corporations growing water-thirsty cash crops destined for export, while millions of people still go thirsty or fall sick from polluted water.  And it’s not just the agribusiness giants like Cargill, Bunge, and ADM who are hijacking Latin America’s water.  Bottling companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestlé and Danone are going after underground water resources, including one of the world´s biggest, the Guaraní Acuifer, located beneath Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.  

 

To make matters worse, some of the biggest food companies in the world are now modifying rivers to transport cheap agricultural commodities from inland areas out to coastal ports to be exported. Not only are these companies shipping massive quantities of cash crops – and the water used to grow them – from the heartland of South America to be used somewhere else, they are getting public funding to do it.

 

But Latin America is also rich in social movements that are fighting back against the abuses of their land and water! The “water war” waged by Cochabamba residents in Bolivia in 2000, led by trade unions and campesino organizations against private water giant Bechtel, inaugurated a decade of resistance against corporate control over water in Latin America.  This movement has has already resulted constitutional reforms to prevent water privatization and ensure public control of water resources in Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia and a successful constitutional plebiscite in Uruguay.

 

Food & Water Watch Latin America works with peasant and small-scale farmers’ organizations, environmental groups and water activists, trade unions, women, youth, and student groups, and indigenous peoples’ organizations to push back the assault of private water corporations, bottling companies and corporate agriculture and agribusiness, and to promote food and water sovereignty for healthy food systems and safe, affordable water for all. Food & Water Watch provides support through the citizens organizations network Red VIDA – Vigilancia Interamericana para la Defensa y el Derecho al Agua (the Inter American Network for the Defense and Right to Water).

 

For information in Spanish on communities and organizations defending public water, check out La Red Vida.

ARGENTINA

Argentina has suffered for more than a decade as the global guinea pig for water privatization experiments. Read more...

BOLIVIA

The movements to defend water, and all natural resources and public services, have grown stronger and bolder in recent years. Read more...

CHILE

Chile has been one of the most privatization-friendly countries in Latin America, privatizing its water sector in the 1990s. However with the new center-left president, Michelle Bachelet, elected in January 2006, there may be a shift in the neo-liberal policies of corporate privatization that have governed Chile and allowed the distribution of its most precious resource to be governed by corporations for private profit. Read more...

 

ECUADOR

In October 2000, just months after the people of Bolivia threw Bechtel out of Cochabamba, this very same company signed a water privatization contract in Guayaquil, Ecuador a city of almost 2 million inhabitants. After years of poor service, water cut-offs, flooding, and unsafe drinking water the residents of Guayaquil are organizing to demand their human rights – which include the right to clean and affordable water. Read more...
 

EL SALVADOR

El Salvador is a country in crisis. Ninety percent of the country’s natural water is contaminated, and half the population drinks untreated water. The people of El Salvador struggle to attend to the most basic necessities while the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank continue pushing the disastrous recipes of privatization. Read more...

HONDURAS

In August 2003 thousands of protestors demonstrated against the policies imposed by the IMF, including water privatization policies. Read more...

MEXICO

Communities across the country are organizing to defend their rivers, streams, aquifers and lakes. Read more...

NICARAGUA

In Nicaragua, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) are promoting a policy of water privatization which will make it more difficult for citizens to obtain clean water at affordable rates. Read more...

PERU

Reforms for the public water sector designed by the international financial institutions in the 1990s caused water utilities to collapse into economic crisis. Now these same institutions argue that the public water sector has failed and privatization is the answer. Read more...

PUERTO RICO

Puerto Rico too often serves as the guinea pig for corporate privatization policies. Read more...

URUGUAY

Uruguay has gained a landmark victory in the struggle to defend water as a public good and a human right. Read more...