Sign up to E-News
Dirty aid, dirty water explained
If we are to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people without access to water by 2015, we need to get clean water to an extra 150,000 people a day, every day, for the next ten years. This represents a major challenge to the global community. UK aid money is meant to help deliver this goal, but over the years our government has wasted millions of pounds in pushing a failed solution to the global water crisis – privatisation.
The World Development Movement’s (WDM) Dirty Aid, Dirty Water campaign calls on the UK government to stop misusing aid money to push a corporate takeover of the world’s water and to support public solutions to the global water crisis.
Privatisation a failed solution
For over a decade go
vernments and donors have forced water privatisation on developing countries as a condition of debt relief and aid. This ideological faith in the free market combined with a lack of understanding about alternative solutions has been a disaster for the world’s poor. From Bolivia to Argentina, the Philippines to Trinidad and Tobago, Tanzania to Guinea, case after case shows that privatisation does not work.
Big business is:
- siphoning off profits to shareholders overseas
- failing to invest
- driving up prices
Critically, private companies have not significantly boosted the number of people connected to water.
Companies are now starting to withdraw from these projects, and the international debate is finally starting to shift away from privatisation, but where is it shifting to?
UK ’s role in water privatisation
The UK has spent millions of pounds of aid money on:
- Consultants that have an ideological bias towards pushing privatisation
- Public relations exercises to try to convince communities that privatisation is in their best interests
- Directly funding privatisation by subsidising private water companies in developing countries.
- Conditions of aid by supporting World Bank and IMF loans and debt relief conditional on privatisation.
- Promoting privatisation internationally by supporting international initiatives to promote private sector involvement in projects, including water. Read more about the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF)
Public sector reform
With over 90 per cent of piped water already in public hands, the private sector is not in a position to make a major contribution to solving the global water crisis. The absolute priority for political and financial support has to be improving existing public water services. There are weak public water utilities, but there is also a growing number of strong, successful public water companies. Public providers in Brazil, Cambodia, India, and Uganda are successfully providing clean affordable water, reinvesting profits and involving local communities. In each country, city or region the appropriate model will differ, but they all share the common principles of efficiency, accountability and transparency. Public utilities around the world need the UK government’s political and financial backing.
Campaign Success: Benn’s support for public water sector aid welcomed
Read more about public sector reform
Read more about the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF)
Download or order more in depth information about WDM's water campaign
Print this page
