Ecuador: one dead and dozens injured in water protests

One protester has been killed and many more are injured following clashes between indigenous tribal people and Ecuadorian police over proposed water and land rights laws.

The demonstrations near to Macas in Ecuador saw the indigenous protesters blockade a bridge linking two key provinces.

Actions around the country began on 27 September 2009 over indigenous fears the government’s new water laws would privatise water sources, give priority access to water to [the mining] industry and slash regulations for water contamination.

According to the protesters local police, backed by a helicopter, opened fire on demonstrators armed only with ‘ceremonial’ spears.

The attack has left at least one confirmed dead, Bosco Wisum, a teacher and member of the Shuar nation, and some 49 civilians and police injured.

President of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon [CONFENIAE], Tito Puenchir, called the attack the start of a ‘civil war’ and called on the United Nations to intervene.

President Rafael Correa appealed for calm on national radio calling for ‘dialogue’ with the protesters. ["The problem is not the water law, or the mining, or the autonomy of the region," he said. "I fear that, deeper, there are motives of destabilization", Correa said]

On Monday 5 October, Correa and indigenous leaders met and were able to hammer out an agreement to address their concerns. The meeting produced a six-point agreement, which the President is expected to sign on 13 Ocrober 2009.

Firstly, the parties have agreed to institutionalise a permanent dialogue between the government and the native communities.

There will also be a commission set up to work on the Water bill and try to reach an intermediate agreement between the government’s plans and the indigenous groups.

A thorough analysis of possible modifications to the mining law, will be conducted and, finally, a commission, comprising two delegates each from the government the indigenous groups, will investigate the death last week of protester Bosco Wisum.

Indigenous groups had a leading role in overthrowing two previous Ecuadorian presidents.

A BBC article comments that, even though they are not as powerful as they used to be, native communities have grown stronger from this conflict.

Source: Luke Walsh, ediie, 02 Oct 2009 ; Francisca Pouiller, Mining Weekly, 08 Oct 2009

Chile: town withers in free market for water

During the past four decades here in Quillagua, a town in the record books as the driest place on earth, residents have sometimes seen glimpses of raindrops above the foothills in the distance. They never reach the ground, evaporating like a mirage while still in the air.

What the town did have was a river, feeding an oasis in the Atacama desert. But mining companies have polluted and bought up so much of the water, residents say, that for months each year the river is little more than a trickle — and an unusable one at that.

Quillagua is among many small towns that are being swallowed up in the country’s intensifying water wars. Nowhere is the system for buying and selling water more permissive than here in Chile, experts say, where water rights are private property, not a public resource, and can be traded like commodities with little government oversight or safeguards for the environment.

Private ownership is so concentrated in some areas that a single electricity company from Spain, Endesa, has bought up 80 percent of the water rights in a huge region in the south, causing an uproar. In the north, agricultural producers are competing with mining companies to siphon off rivers and tap scarce water supplies, leaving towns like this one bone dry and withering.

Read more: Alexei Barrionuevo, New York Times, 15 Mar 2009

Jamaica: Minister suspends licensing of privately operated water suppliers

Jamaica’s water and housing ministry will not be issuing any more licenses to private companies looking to provide potable water until the national water policy is revised. Ministry head Horace Chang said that when the policy was formulated in 2002, legislators rushed to involve the private sector and shift the responsibility for investments to provide potable water access from the government.

Dr. Chang was addressing the Rural Water Programme Workshop on the Sustainability of Community Managed Water Supply Systems Project, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), held on 3 June 2009, at the Knutsford Court Hotel, New Kingston.

The ministry’s permanent secretary Genefa Hibbert has been instructed to lead a review of the water sector policy, which has contradictions and unreasonable proposals, Chang said. He added that the impracticality of private suppliers charging water rates competitive with the rate charged by the National Water Commission (NWC) was also posing a problem. “Until the issues are resolved, I’m not signing anymore licenses,” Chang said.

Jamaica’s water sector policy was passed to facilitate development and assist the process of meeting the national goal of universal access by 2010.

Source: JIS, 04 Jun 2009

Venezuela: Government expects to reach 100% potable water coverage by 2010

Venezuelan government authorities expect potable water services to reach 100% of the population by 2010, said foreign relations deputy minister for Europe Alejandro Fleming said in a speech at Expo Zaragoza 2008.

Currently, 93% of the country’s population has access to potable water and has already reached the Millennium Development Goal for potable water coverage.

Venezuela is currently working on a desalination project to provide water to isolated communities on the country’s coast.

Fleming called on the rest of the world to follow his country’s example by making water part of the public domain that “can never be privatized”.

Source: BNamericas [subscription site], 27 Aug 2008

Ecuador, Guayaquil: campaign “Don’t Let History Repeat Itself” aimed at Bechtel

Activist NGO Food and Water Watch has launched a campaign  to force Bechtel to pay all debts and fulfill its contractual obligations before selling off it concession for the management of Guayaquil city’s water supply service. Bechtel was involved in the failed privatisation of Cochabamba’s water supply in Bolivia which lead to the infamous “Water Wars” in 2000.

Read more