Privatising Water as an Effective Route Towards Development?

In June 2010, the UN declared safe access to ‘clean drinking water and sanitation’ a human right. For many this highlighted the importance of water as the world’s most important natural resource for human life. Nevertheless, today many homes lack direct access to safe drinking water and rely on external, purified sources. This situation is all too common throughout the global south. By contrast, for the overwhelming majority in developed societies, access to safe water and sanitation is commonplace. Therefore, improving access to water is a global development issue. Accordingly, a central aim of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals was to halve ‘the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation’. In this guest post, Carlos Kassman assesses the possibilities of private water companies to assist in this respect by investigating cases of water privatisation in France, Argentina and West Africa.

The Struggle for Development: CSSGJ Annual Lecture 2017.

On Monday, 27 November Ben Selwyn from Sussex University gave the Annual Lecture 2017 of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ). In his excellent lecture, Selwyn drew heavily on his new book The Struggle for Development (Polity, 2017). I will reflect on some of the key themes in this blog post including labour-centred development and the possibility of system transformation through democratisation of the economy.

Trade unions, free trade and the problem of transnational solidarity

Tensions between European trade unions and unions from the Global South over international free trade developed into an open confrontation during the talks over the revival of the WTO Doha round in 2008. On the one hand, the European Metal Workers Federation (EMF) joined forces with the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) in the publication of two joint press releases demanding reciprocal market access in developed, emerging and developing countries. On the other, this led to an angry response by trade unions in the Global South and here especially the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The EMF was accused of undermining workers’ solidarity, since their co-operation with European employers in demanding equal market access would imply job losses in the Global South and undermine the internal unity of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) (Bieler 2012: 9).

The WTO Doha negotiations have stalled for years. And yet, free trade agreements (FTA) continue to be pushed in bilateral negotiations by the USA and the EU with developing countries and emerging markets. Importantly, these FTAs no longer only concern trade in manufactured goods, but as part of an expanded trade agenda now also include issues of intellectual property rights, trade in services and investment. Unsurprisingly, the tensions within the international labour movement persist. In this contribution, I will discuss the obstacles but also possibilities for establishing transnational solidarity in relation to tensions over trade liberalization.

Can Chinese Workers Eat Apple?

On 24 September, the iPhone 5 was launched in the first nine countries/areas, America, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong. It was then launched in 22 more countries in the week beginning 1 October. The first weekend’s sales were very impressive, reaching 5 million. This number already broke Apple’s previous record for first-weekend sales of all previous models of iPhone. In this guest post, Chun-Yi Lee wonders whether any of those Apple fans, who were camping outside to be ‘the first customer’ or at least ‘first group of customers’ to buy the iPhone 5, had thought about the making of this most advanced, light, cool gadget? This paper links the hot-selling phenomenon of the iPhone 5 to Chinese workers, for the very reason that most of Apple’s iProducts are manufactured in China.

Samir Amin, Global Capitalism and the impossibility of developmental catch-up – Part II.

Is developmental catch-up within the global capitalist system possible? ‘The current success of emerging countries in terms of accelerated growth within globalized capitalism and with capitalist means reinforces the illusion that catching-up is possible’ (Amin 2011: 12). In this post, I will critically engage with (neo-) liberal promises of catch-up by looking more closely at Samir Amin’s book The Law of Worldwide Value (2010).

Samir Amin, free trade in agriculture and the impossibility of developmental catch-up.

Free trade in agriculture has increasingly become a focus for discussions about a potential path of development for countries in the Global South as well as a solution to the problem of how to feed the ever expanding global population. Drawing on the contribution by Samir Amin to the workshop ‘Trade unions, free trade and the problem of transnational solidarity’, held at Nottingham University on 2 and 3 December 2011, I will critically engage with this argument.