Private water supply

The debate about a private water supply deals with the political and economic efforts to organize the water supply in the private sector and not to run it (further) as state or municipal institutions. There is z. B. the possibility of transferring the water supply infrastructure such as wells , water storage tanks and pipeline systems into private ownership (e.g. in Great Britain ) or simply organizing the management of the water supply in the private sector, usually through temporary operating concessions (e.g. . in France ).

overview

The justification for privatization is the conviction that private companies operate more economically than state monopolies . In addition to savings for the state, it is hoped that there will be qualitative improvements in the water supply. A higher efficiency of the private water supply compared with municipal facilities could not be empirically proven, at least for industrialized countries.

One of the criticisms of privatization is that private companies are often unwilling to make long-term, capital-intensive investments in infrastructure . The fully privatized London water supply suffered from numerous leaks because the renovation of the outdated pipe network was delayed by the water supplier, contrary to an agreement with the regulatory authority. The documentary Water Makes Money - How private companies make money from water, based on the French companies Veolia Water and Suez, pointed out the dangers of a privately organized water supply or a specially balanced community system of public-municipal and private providers .

In Germany, the Greens , CDU , CSU , Die Linke and SPD rejected the privatization of the drinking water supply.

Critics also fear that, due to privatization, poorer sections of the population could be denied access to water and that ecological limits of use would not be observed: Poor people would be particularly affected by a possible price increase, who could then no longer afford the costs for drinking water . The United Nations recognized in its General Assembly on 28 July 2010, the right to water as a human right on; In their development policy recommendations for the privatization of water supplies, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) suggest the establishment of a regulatory authority to monitor the activities of companies.

In France , the management of the water supply by the private sector has a long tradition: As early as the 19th century , the water supply of many municipalities was placed in the hands of listed companies as a result of the Industrial Revolution . After the Second World War , during the reconstruction of many communities in the 1950s, the responsibility for maintaining and expanding the water supply infrastructure was transferred to private companies, which can set the water price for it. As a result of this development, corporations supported by banks were formed, which today operate worldwide. While the contracts were very long-term back then and lasted up to 99 years, their validity is now limited to 12 to 30 years. In Italy the French water and garbage collector "Veolia", which is also active in Italy, is referred to as a kind of "black hole" due to its high level of debt and its withdrawal from many projects. As part of the Italian-French anti-mafia campaign by special forces from both countries ("Rifiuti spa 2"), reference was made to the relationship between the Calabrian Alampi clan and the Veolia branch operating there: “VEOLIA SERVIZI AMBIENTALI TECNITALIA SPA”.

As far as an international water market has been established, it is dominated by a few French and British companies such as Veolia Water (formerly Vivendi ), Suez and Thames Water . The German RWE had been involved in the international water market since the end of the 1990s, but after the sale of Thames Water in 2006 it focused again on electricity and gas.

Other large water companies are Aguas de Barcelona , SAUR , United Utilities and the Bechtel Corporation .

The internationally operating groups are mostly mixed companies that also have subsidiaries and holdings in the areas of water treatment and water disposal, waste disposal , energy supply , the chemical industry , etc. Vivendi, for example, was also the owner of Universal Studios through Vivendi Universal Entertainment and today still holds a fifth of the stakes in this media group .

According to the journalist Frank Kürschner-Pelkmann , the efforts to privatize water supplies in poor countries as part of globalization, some of which are also “ideologically motivated”, have largely failed. According to a documentation from Hessischer Rundfunk, there are also positive examples in which privatization in African countries led to lower prices and better supply.

Debate in the European Union

In the past it could be observed in many European cities that after a municipality's decision to privatize its water supply, it was often sold to the local, monopoly (often also state) energy suppliers, which led to accusations of mismanagement and nepotism . In 2013, the EU commissioner responsible for the internal market and services, Michel Barnier , proposed a so-called “ concession directive ” to counteract this tendency. It stipulated that in the event of such a (voluntary, made within the scope of its autonomy ) decision by a municipality to privatize its utilities, a Europe-wide, transparent tender should take place (as is already mandatory for all other state contracts). Several lobby organizations, such as the Association of Municipal Enterprises , and a public petition with more than 1.8 million signatories opposed this project . According to their own statement, they feared “forced privatization through the back door”. Despite information from the EU Commission that this is not the case in the proposed directive, the submission was finally changed due to public pressure so that the water supply is still excluded from the corresponding regulation.

Water supply in the global south

The water supply is particularly difficult in the Global South . The availability of sources of water supply and the decision to invest in infrastructure have become politically important factors.

According to the Ghanaian geographer Ian Yeboah , the privatization of the water supply is characterized by the strategic concentration on particularly profitable areas (so-called cherry-picking ). Although around 93% of the urban population in Ghana but only 40% of the rural population had access to clean drinking water, privatization with the support of the World Bank should be limited to urban areas. In his view, privatization was therefore mainly pursued by the “ Eurocentric ” urban elites in Ghana.

The Ghanaian economist Franklin Cudjoe believes that governments have mostly shown their incompetence in making the necessary investments. Many people have a water pipe, but that does not guarantee a water supply. Private investors could at least connect more people to the water supply. Cudjoe therefore hopes for a privatization of the water supply and criticizes the mentality of Western NGOs , which are interested in the backwardness of Africa.

In addition to state and private forms of water supply, in rural areas of poorer countries there is often a functioning water supply on the basis of cooperatives or village communities.

GATS

The obligation to open markets through the GATS agreement, the international general agreement on trade in services , which also promotes the privatization of the water industry, could result in local and cooperative water supply initiatives being exposed to predatory competition and no longer being subsidized by the state allowed to.

Similar discussions about privatization are also taking place for other areas of services of general interest that are to be progressively liberalized within the framework of the GATS.

See also

• Referendum on the partial privatization agreements with the Berliner Wasserbetriebe
• Water Makes Money - a documentary about the mechanisms and effects of water privatization
• Bottled
• Bottled Life - Nestlé's business with water

literature

• Maude Barlow / Tony Clarke: Blue Gold. The global business with water. Verlag Antje Kunstmann, ISBN 3-88897-327-9 .
• Fredrik Segerfeldt Water for Sale: How Business and the Market Can Resolve the World's Water Crisis. Cato Institute, ISBN 1-930865-76-7 .

Web links

• Thomas Fritz: Creeping privatization. Criticism of German and international development aid in the water sector (PDF; 567 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See the assessment on Africa that privatization has room for improvement there, but so far there has been no clear evidence of better performance by private providers, Colin Kirkpatrick, David Parker and Yin-Fang Zhang: State versus Private Sector Provision of Water Services in Africa : an empirical analysis. In: The World Bank Economic Review. Washington: 2006. Vol. 20, Issue 1. p. 143.
2. ↑ Christian von Hirschhausen, Matthias Walter and Michael Zschille: Efficiency Analysis in Water Supply - International Experiences and Conclusions for Germany. In: GWF March 2009, p. 5.
3. ^ Erik Swyngedouw: Privatizing H2O - Turning Local Waters into Global Money. In: Journal für Entwicklungspolitik 2003. P. 34 ff.
4. ↑ Drought in London troubles Thames Water , in Handelsblatt, June 22, 2006.
5. ↑ csu.de ( Memento of the original from July 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ die-linke.de
7. ↑ spd.de .
8. ↑ faz.net  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ↑ Vandana Shiva: The fight for blue gold: causes and consequences of water shortage , 2nd edition, Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2005.
10. ↑ freitag.de , February 18, 2006: The drop on the hot market .
11. ↑ Blue gold  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. TV documentary by Damien de Pierpont (Belgium, France 2007) for Arte .  
12. ↑ [1]
13. ↑ http://www.pianainforma.it/cronaca/operazione-rifiuti-spa-2-dettagli-foto-e-video-intercettazioni
14. ↑ Handelsblatt , October 16, 2006: RWE sells Thames Water to Macquarie .
15. ↑ Frank Kürschner-Pelkmann: The dream of quick water money , From politics and contemporary history 25/2006.
16. ↑ Storming the water glass - the privatization of the elixir of life  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
17. ↑ zeit.de
18. ↑ right2water.eu
19. ↑ tagesschau.de
20. ↑ Ian Yeboah: "Subaltern strategies and development practice: urban water privatization in Ghana", The Geographical Journal , Vol. 172, No. 1, March 2006, pp. 50, 53 f.
21. ↑ Network disruption - A Ghanaian is waiting for his water ( memento of the original from October 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in fluter , magazine of the Federal Agency for Civic Education , July 2, 2007. 
22. ↑ Diana Mitlin / David Vivas Eugui: "Water, Development and the GATS" Policy Views on Trade and Natural Resource Management September of 2003.