Conceptualising struggles over water grabbing!

Capital has identified water as an important opportunity for profitable investment. Whether it is the privatisation of public water infrastructure, the expansion of the bottled water industry, the construction of dams for energy generation or the free expropriation of water for mineral extractivism or large-scale agriculture, private capital has poured into water in large quantities. And yet, water is also an area where resistance to capitalist exploitation has been most successful as reflected in a wave of re-municipalizations of water services across the world (Kishimoto,  Lobina and Petitjean 2015). How can we make sense of these struggles against water commodification? In our recent article Water Grabbing, Capitalist Accumulation and Resistance in the Global Labour Journal, we develop a conceptual-methodological approach to this question.

 

Transforming capitalism? The role of the commons and direct democracy in struggles against water privatisation in Europe.

In my new book Fighting for Water: Resisting Privatization in Europe (Zed Books/Bloomsbury, 2021), I analyse a number of struggles against water privatization in Europe since the early 1990s. In this post, I will explore to what extent these struggles point towards a potential future beyond capitalism through a focus on the commons and an emphasis on direct, participatory forms of democracy. 

Water privatisation? Finland says no!

In early January 2020, the municipality of Jyväskylä, located in the Central Finland Region, announced its intention to part-privatise between 30 and 40 per cent of its multi-utility company Alva, including water, energy and heating. Bringing in expertise from the private sector would better equip the company to tackle current market challenges, the municipality stated. Moreover, mirroring water privatisation arguments elsewhere, privatisation was said to promise increased efficiency and lower consumer prices. However, the announcement led to an immediate public outcry. Several critical opinion pieces appeared in various Finnish daily newspapers, and activists from the Left Alliance party launched a public petition to push the Finnish parliament into action. On 10 February, Jyväskylä announced that it had withdrawn its proposal. In this post, Dominika Baczynska Kimberley and Andreas Bieler trace the dynamics underlying this quick turnaround.

Wellsprings of resistance – struggles over water in Europe

The question of who controls water and for what purpose makes water inherently political. Whether it’s water sources, water production such as desalination plants and waste treatment, or water services, private industry and financial markets are approaching water as the “it” commodity of the coming decade. Water grabbing is a form of accumulation by dispossession. Risk is shifted from private investors to the public whilst profits are siphoned off in the opposite direction. In this guest post, Madelaine Moore draws on her recent Rosa Luxemburg publication Wellsprings of Resistance.

European integration and the Global Crisis: What prospects for a social Europe?

How does the project of European integration relate to globalization? Is a revival of the project of social Europe still possible and what role can social movements and class based movements play in these struggles? I met Cat Moir (CM) from the University of Sydney on the fringe of this year’s Historical Materialism Sydney conference in December 2018. In this post, I re-publish the interview she conducted with me during that meeting. It was originally published on the Progress in Political Economy blog on 10 January 2019. We talked about class, social reproduction, and the crisis in the European project, thereby also drawing on my recently published, co-authored book with Adam D. Morton Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis (CUP, 2018).

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.

Greece under the Troika: colonialism and resistance in the 21st century - the struggle for public water.

When in May 2014 98 per cent of Thessaloniki’s citizens voted against the privatisation of their municipal water company EYATH and the Greek constitutional court, the Council of State, ruled out the privatisation of Athens’ water company EYDAP as unconstitutional shortly afterwards, the public ownership of these two companies seemed to have been secured (see Resisting water privatisation in Greece and Portugal). And yet, when the Syriza government signed the third bailout agreement of Greece in July 2015, the privatisation of water was back on the agenda. In this blog post, I will report on the struggle over public water since July 2015, based on a set of semi-structured interviews with water activists in Thessaloniki and Athens in April 2018. 

‘We shall strike, we shall fight, water is a human right!’ Defending public water in Ireland.

When the Irish government decided in 2013 first to establish the company Irish Water and then introduce water charges for users in order to comply with obligations of the Memorandum of Understanding with the EU over its bailout agreement, resistance erupted across the Republic. While resistance against austerity had been isolated and sporadic in Ireland until then, a large, national level movement emerged in 2014. Water had been the straw, which broke the camel’s neck. In this blog post, based on interviews conducted during field research in Ireland between 25 February and 2 March 2018, I will analyse the broad alliance underpinning this movement as well as the specific strategies employed.

How to ensure the Human Right to Water in the EU: A new study by EPSU.

The European Commission published its proposals for a Recast of the Drinking Water Directive, 1 February 2018. They include amendments to guarantee vulnerable groups access to safe and affordable water. The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) has welcomed these suggestions as a step towards realizing the Human Right to Water in the EU regretting that the Commission stopped short of recognizing the UN right in EU legislation. This guest post summarises the findings of a new study commissioned by EPSU, which goes into more detail on what the European Commission can do to build the frame in which the Human Right2Water can be realized (see PSIRU 2018). The main recommendation is that the Commission should cease all actions that endanger this right.

Fighting for Public Water in Europe.

The first European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’ was an enormous success. Between May 2012 and September 2013, an alliance of trade unions, social movements and NGOs succeeded in collecting close to 1.9 million signatures across the European Union (EU), thereby reaching the required quota in 13 EU member states. In my open access article ‘Fighting for public water: the first successful European Citizens’ Initiative, “Water and Sanitation are a Human Right”’, recently published in the journal Interface: a journal for and about social movements, I analyse the underlying dynamics of this struggle and its impact on EU policy-making in detail. 

In this blog post, I will discuss the main factors underlying this success: 1) the long history of water struggles; 2) the unique quality of water; and 3) the broad alliance of participating actors.

The Labour Party Manifesto 2017 – a clear alternative, worth fighting for!

While many in the press still wonder about the leaking of some parts of the Manifesto and others focus narrowly on the detailed costings, there is no doubt that this Labour Party Manifesto represents a clear alternative to the austerity policies of the Conservative government. Abolition of university tuition fees, nationalisation of rail, water and postal services, more money for the NHS and all paid for by higher taxes on the rich, this is a radical programme for social justice.

The Future of UK-China Relations post-Brexit - China as a Hope Project

With Brexit on the horizon, the UK is currently in search for alternative trade agreements, not only with European countries, but also other economies around the world. The emerging market of China plays a key role in this strategy. In this blog post, I will assess the potential and implications of future UK – China relations.

Photo by Sergeant Paul Shaw LBIPP/MOD

“Sic Vos Non Vobis” (For You, But Not Yours): The Struggle for Public Water in Italy.

Resistance against water privatisation is one of the success stories in the struggle against neo-liberal globalisation. And where privatisation has already taken place, there is a tendency towards re-municipalisation (see Lobina, Kishimoto and Petitjean 2014). It has become clear that the private sector can simply not deliver on its promises of higher quality, lower consumer charges and universal access. In my recently published, openly accessible article “Sic Vos Non Vobis” (For You, But Not Yours): TheStruggle for Public Water in Italy in Monthly Review, I analyse the dynamics underlying the successful mobilisation for a referendum against water privatisation in Italy in 2011. It is based on a series of interviews with members of the Italian water movement between 25 March and 8 April 2014.

Resisting Privatisation: Assessing the impact of the ECI 'Water is a Human Right'.

The first European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’ was an enormous success. Between May 2012 and September 2013, an alliance of trade unions, social movements and NGOs succeeded in collecting close to 1.9 million signatures across the European Union (EU), thereby reaching the required quota in 13 EU member states (see Against the grain: The European Citizens’ Initiative on ‘Water is a Human Right’). In this post, I want to evaluate the outcomes, the concrete impact this campaign has had on EU policy-making drawing on interviews with key activists as well as documentary research from November 2014 to July 2015.

Against the grain: The European Citizens’ Initiative on ‘Water is a Human Right’.

Between May 2012 and September 2013, close to 1.9 million signatures were collected throughout the European Union (EU) and formally submitted to the Commission for the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’. While impressive in itself, it is not only the large number of signatures, which is a sign of success. The ECI, based on a broad alliance of trade unions and social movements, was successful at a time, when austerity policies were enforced across the EU. It, therefore, went completely against the grain and in opposition to dominant forces pushing for further neo-liberal restructuring. In this blog post, I will discuss the main factors underlying this success: (1) the long history of water struggles; (2) the unique quality of water; and (3) the broad alliance of participating actors.  

The Struggle for Public Water in Italy

On 9 October, I gave the paper ‘Sic Vos Non Vobis’ – ‘For You, But Not Yours’: The struggle for public water in Italy at the Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney . The paper is about the Italian Water Movements Forum (Forum), a broad alliance of trade unions, social movements, development NGOs and environmental groups, and its successful mobilisation for a referendum against the privatisation of water in June 2011 (see also Road to Victory). Trade unions and other social movements find it often difficult to co-operate due to their different histories and institutional structures, as argued in an article on the European Social Forum. In this blog post, I will analyse how the Italian Water Movements Forum was able to bring together such a wide range of different groups into a successful campaign.

Transnational solidarity? The European working class in the Eurozone crisis.

European labour movements are under severe pressure as a result of the global financial and Eurozone crises, which have been used by capital to attack unions and workers’ rights. In our recently published essay in the Socialist Register 2015, Roland Erne and I assess the response of European labour movements to this attack and discuss to what extent relations of transnational solidarity have been established in this process. As Germany plays a central role in the European political economy, particular attention is placed on the role of German trade unions. In this blog post, we draw out some key points of our argument.

The global financial crisis and service provision: The public sector in difficult times.

Public sector restructuring is generally justified with reference to the need to save money in view of large public debt resulting from the global financial crisis. In this post, I want to investigate this claim and unravel the real motivations behind current attacks on the public sector.

National Demo against Sussex University Privatisation - Serena Cheung

The struggle against water privatisation: Victory for Greek union and social movements.

Proposals to privatise the water company in Thessaloniki/Greece were overwhelmingly rejected in a referendum on 18 May 2014 with 98 per cent of votes against. In this guest post, his third contribution focusing on the privatisation of water, EPSU's Jan Willem Goudriaan gives an update of the struggle of Greek workers against the austerity policies imposed upon them.

Catholics in the Italian water movement!

Last week the Italian Water Movements Forum (Forum) celebrated the anniversary of the victory in the 2011 referenda against water privatisation by giving great emphasis to news coming from Chile: the halt by the Chilean government to the Hydro Aysen hydropower project. The project consists of five big dams to be built along two rivers in the Patagonia region by an international consortium led by the Italian government owned company Enel. This emphasis on foreign policy issues does not arise from the fact that in contemporary Italy there has been nothing to celebrate after and beyond the 2011 referendum. On the contrary “la lotta continua” and is still very active both at national and local level, with the struggle for “water as human right and commons” becoming a paradigmatic battle for democracy and against the commodification of human life, inspiring also other social mobilisations around the commons. In this guest post, Emanuele Fantini discusses the struggles of the Italian water movement with a particular emphasis on the role played by Catholic groups.