☔️ Water series: Future extreme dynamics of water use: Difference between revisions

==Tap water and Bottled water==

On the municipality level, when the public sector fails to answer the public demand for water, governments often take the slippery slope of water privatisation. 30 years ago the British water sector was privatised to Margaret Tatcher’s initiative. Massive water cuts followed, when people were not able to pay their bill. The situation was so catastrophic in the United Kingdom, that 10 years later this sort of cuts were forbidden by the law. Despite the regulation, London water company Thames Water was acquired by an Australian fund in 2006 and kept being criticised for its leakage issues and poor maintenance, year after year, while being notorious for “making” millionaires. After numerous trials, a fine of 20.3M £ was imposed to the company in 2017<ref>source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/22/thames-water-hit-with-record-fine-for-huge-sewage-leaks</ref> for the leakage of 1.4B litre of untreated sewage in nature.<ref name="lordsofwater" />

Keeping private interests away from the tap-water network while increasing its quality worldwide is more urgent than ever, considering that 2.1B humans have no access to safe tap-water while 4B have been confronted to tap-water scarcity in 2019 (UNESCO). The most scandalous aspect of this is that rural poor populations confronted to water shortage have to rely on bottled water. Bottled water is 10 to 20 times more expensive than tap-water. Thus, they allocate even more money than rich citizens for water, while financing the unsustainable market of bottled water.<ref name="courrier">source: (FR) «Atlas de l’eau», <i>Courrier International</i> hors-série, septembre-octobre 2020. See «Droit universel, mais accès inégal» p.32.

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4 companies are sharing this growing market: Swiss Nestlé, French Danone, and US Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Not only are plastic bottles and their transport a waste of energy and resource, but the water extraction management of these companies sometimes happen to be detrimental to local communities. Nestlé has often been targeted by citizens groups across North America for its bottling activities in Canada and the US, until the company announced that it would leave this market early in 2021.<ref name="courrier" /> Nevertheless, activist Franklin Frederick argues that this strategy is the same Nestlé used in Brazil to protect its reputation in Switzerland. Indeed, Nestlé must ensure the support of the Swiss Agency of Development and Cooperation (SDC) when it comes to business in Southern countries. F. Frederick criticises the collusion between the public and private sector in his home country: 23% of the SDC public aids, financed by Swiss citizens, are given to projects directed by multinationals like Nestlé. For instance, 5.6M of Swiss Francs will be allocated to the Water Stewardship 2030 project. The project involves associations with friendly names like “Water Resources Group 2030”, gathering 3 of the bottled water giants, including Nestlé. As long as the brand’s activities in foreign countries doesn’t stains the prestige of Swiss institutions, the multinational stands its ground. Since 15 years, Brazilian citizens movements were fighting against Nestlé’s water bottling plants. In 2018, the company was displayed in the Swiss Pavillon of the World Water Forum in Brasilia, alongside Swiss NGOs and the SDC. 20 Brazilian NGOs, trade-unions and social movements sent a public letter about this public-private collusion to the Ambassador Manuel Sager, director of the SDC, asking for public-public partnership that would help countries to develop their own public water companies — as in Switzerland. As soon as the SDC was publicly involved, Nestlé announced the selling of its plants to a Brazilian company that keeps bottling water… Today, the “incestuous” relationship between Nestlé and the SDC is becoming a scandal in Switzerland, and the coalition between Canadian and Swiss NGOs might have motivate Nestlé’s sell of its bottled water brands in North America.<ref>People Dispatch web article by Franklin Frederick, 2020, and its sources from Public Eye Swiss NGO.

source: https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/06/23/nestle-may-sell-its-bottled-water-brands-in-the-us-and-canada-what-is-behind-this-maneuver/