Arrivederci Water Profiteers; Italians Claim Water as a Common Good.

Daniel Moss
Yes! Magazine /News Analysis
Published Monday 25th July, 2011

"96 percent of Italian voters rejected their government’s push for water privatization."

“Water - whether we treat it as a pub­lic good or as a com­mod­ity that can be bought and sold - will in large part de­ter­mine whether our fu­ture is peace­ful or per­ilous,” wrote the scholar Maude Bar­low.

In Italy last month, an over­whelm­ing num­ber of peo­ple (96 per­cent of the 57 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion that voted) cast their bal­lots for a peace­ful fu­ture based on shared own­er­ship of water.

The ref­er­en­dum over­turned a law passed by Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlus­coni’s gov­ern­ment, which would have en­cour­aged pri­vate com­pa­nies to buy up pub­lic water util­i­ties and guar­an­teed them a profit on their in­vest­ment, open­ing the door to rate hikes.

The ref­er­en­dum also stripped Berlus­coni gov­ern­ment min­is­ters of spe­cial court priv­i­leges and reaf­firmed pub­lic op­po­si­tion to nu­clear power.

An in­ter­na­tional grass­roots move­ment is work­ing to make sure that water, that basic build­ing block of life, is treated not as a com­mod­ity to be bought and sold but a com­mon her­itage to be shared by all.

With the ref­er­en­dum vic­tory be­hind them, or­ga­niz­ers have now fixed their sights on pass­ing a gen­eral water law to guide pub­lic man­age­ment of the com­mon good.

“Beat­ing back pri­va­ti­za­tion is a crit­i­cal first step to­wards re­spon­si­ble stew­ard­ship of water,” said Daniela Del Bene, an or­ga­nizer with the NGO Cevi, a mem­ber of the Ital­ian Forum of Water Move­ments. “Not to di­min­ish the im­por­tance of the vic­tory but in some ways, now comes the harder part - strength­en­ing a pub­lic man­age­ment sys­tem that sat­is­fies both peo­ple and na­ture’s water needs in a sus­tain­able and eq­ui­table way.”

The vote was closely watched around the world. “The suc­cess of the ref­er­en­dum in Italy is a true dis­play of the power and po­ten­tial of grass­roots ac­tivism,” said Wenonah Hauter, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Food and Water Watch. “The Ital­ian Forum of Water Move­ments and Ital­ian cit­i­zens man­aged to mo­bi­lize an en­tire na­tion and raise aware­ness around the human right to water and de­fend­ing water as a com­mon good."

Water pri­va­ti­za­tion, of course, is a con­tentious issue the world over. In many places, cor­po­ra­tions are an­gling to con­trol scarce water re­sources; where they have suc­ceeded, rates often in­crease dra­mat­i­cally. The World Bank and other in­ter­na­tional donors often ob­lig­ate coun­tries to pri­va­tize their water sys­tems - or, at a min­i­mum, enter into pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships - as a pre­req­ui­site for in­vest­ments.

But, as in Italy, an in­ter­na­tional grass­roots move­ment is push­ing back, work­ing to make sure that water, that basic build­ing block of life, is treated not as a com­mod­ity to be bought and sold but a com­mon her­itage to be shared by all. Last sum­mer, in a land­mark de­ci­sion, the United Na­tions af­firmed the human right to ac­cess clean drink­ing water and san­i­ta­tion.

“In­deed,” said Del Bene, “our vic­tory is not only for Italy, but in favor of a new dis­course on water man­age­ment and on other com­mons all over the world.” Re­nato Di Nicola, an Ital­ian water ac­tivist with the Abruzzo So­cial Forum, praised the Ital­ian move­ment’s pre­de­ces­sors, those who have fought and won some of the first bat­tles for water jus­tice: “We don’t for­get that our teach­ers were the in­dige­nous peo­ple of Cochabamba with their Water War and the Uruguayan com­rades that won a ref­er­en­dum as we have.”

Ital­ian tac­tics were col­or­ful and var­ied—from sym­pa­thetic mu­si­cians singing at metro stops to flash mobs run­ning naked through the streets. Most of all, there were long days of neigh­bor-to-neigh­bor or­ga­niz­ing. “This has been a vic­tory of, by and for the peo­ple, under no party ban­ner,” said Del Bene.

No doubt the Ital­ian case will be much dis­cussed this com­ing March in Mar­seilles, where two vi­sions of the fu­ture of the world’s water will com­pete. The World Water Coun­cil, with a Board of Di­rec­tors weighted with pri­vate water in­dus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives, will or­ga­nize the Sixth World Water Forum. The self-de­scribed water jus­tice move­ment, of which the Ital­ian Forum of Water Move­ments con­sid­ers it­self part, is or­ga­niz­ing an al­ter­na­tive forum at the same time to fea­ture ways water can be man­aged for the com­mon good—such as in Paris, one of a grow­ing num­ber of cities end­ing their con­tracts with pri­vate water op­er­a­tors to re­turn water own­er­ship to the pub­lic.

Who owns and con­trols water is cru­cially im­por­tant and be­com­ing more so. But for Daniela del Bene and other water jus­tice ac­tivists, the de­bate is big­ger than water: it’s about how we man­age the re­sources which we all own, and on which we all de­pend. We have en­tered “a new path dis­cus­sion on the com­mons, on com­mu­nity-based ways of man­ag­ing them, and on a new form of par­tic­i­pa­tion in our democ­racy,” she ex­plained.

ABOUT Daniel Moss

Daniel Moss wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Daniel is coordinator of Our Water Commons. He organizes and writes to ensure that our shared abundance is wisely managed. He served on the media team for the Peoples' Water Forum held in Istanbul.