Source:
David Hall, Jane Lethbridge and Emanuele Lobina (2005) ‘Public-public partnerships in health and essential services’, Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), London.
Public protest against water privatisation increased dramatically in El Salvador from 2006, when former President Tony Saca’s ARENA party proposed a new General Water Law. The law, not yet passed, would decentralise water administration from the national to municipal levels where local governments would have to contract private firms to manage water for up to 50 years. Civil society groups in the country continue to argue that this is tantamount to privatisation.
In September 2006, residents of Santa Eduviges – a small community of 300 near the San Salvador suburb of Soyapango – blocked the Gold Highway that leads into the capital. Protesters were demanding the de-privatisation of the town’s water supply system with its management to be taken over by the national water agency, ANDA.[1] They occupied the road from morning until evening when police fired tear gas to dislodge the crowd and arrested five people.[2] They were later released.
Then in March 2007, on World Water Day, approximately 5,000 people took to the streets of San Salvador to protest against the high cost of water and its unjust distribution.
On July 2, 2007 another anti-privatisation demonstration took place in the town of Suchitoto. El Salvadoran police used rubber bullets and tear gas and arrested 14 protestors. Thirteen were charged with acts of terrorism and became known as the ‘Suchitoto 13’. Jason Wallach, writing on the Upside Down World website, said that after six months of deliberation, all charges were eventually dropped. On 2 May, 2008, however, the youngest protestor – 19 year old Hector Antonio Ventura – was murdered by unknown assailants in a house in Valle Verde, Suchitoto.[3]
His death is thought to have been politically motivated considering that just days earlier, he had agreed to speak at the Day Against Impunity to be held on July 2, the first anniversary of the arrest of the Suchitoto 13.[4]
Human rights groups including Amnesty International accused the government of unjustly using anti-terrorism legislation in order to quell future public protest.[5]
[1] Jason Wallach (27 September 2006) ‘El Salvador’s Water: Not for Sale’, Upside Down World, http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1276/68/ (Accessed 21/07/09)
[2] North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) website https://nacla.org/node/1499 (Accessed 21/07/09)
[3] Op.cit. (Jason Wallach)
[4] UNHCR website, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4a6452bc8.html (Accessed 21/07/09)
[5] Amnesty International website, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR29/002/2007/en/a09ac5c1-5055-47ff-b2fa-7ba042d9e6ab/amr290022007en.html (Accessed 21/07/09)
Reproduced from ENCA 38, June 2005, by Martin Mowforth
The Marina Puesta Del Sol is located in the Pacific coastal community of Aserradores in the Cosigüina Peninsula of Nicaragua. The Cosigüina Peninsula is an agricultural area characterised by extreme rural poverty surrounded by coastal communities such as Aserradores in which most families have traditionally made their living by artisanal fishing and small-scale shrimp farming. Few of the 143 communities in the area have electricity and outside the main town of El Viejo the water supply is from wells or rivers and the most common sanitation system is a sump latrine. The village of Aserradores has a population of approximately 500.
Roberto Membreño (left) and Max Garay
The Marina Puesta Del Sol is the project of Roberto Membreño, a millionaire US businessman who was born in Nicaragua. Begun in the year 2001, the marina and hotel complex has around 120 berths and a hotel offering 33 luxury suites, a driving range, swimming pools, tennis courts, air strip, helipad, restaurants, shops and many other smaller facilities for guests.
Although the development has other investors, Mexican and North American, it is closely and personally identified with Señor Membreño, a personal friend of Enrique Bolaños, Nicaraguan president at the time of construction of the marina. It is believed that the development involved an investment of at least US$100 million on the part of Sr. Membreño. The whole environment exudes wealth and opulence and is clearly for the ultra-rich only. As Membreño himself says, “Look at this. It’s superb. My carpenters from Corinto have taught the local workers to do things like this. They have skills now that they could not have dreamed of before.”[1]
Membreño recognises that few of the locals will be able to provide the services he requires for his guests in Marina Puesta Del Sol without training. He argues forcefully, however, that the benefits of his seafaring tourism development trickle down to the locals through the construction phase of the project in which some of them were hired as labourers and trainees for positions such as service providers and attendants. He also believes that the development could give rise to a range of other related businesses in the vicinity. The potential for trickle-down benefit in the community exists, and it is hard to find anyone in Aserradores who does not acknowledge that some local people have benefited through employment in the development.
It is not difficult, however, to find local opposition to the marina – the story of Marina Puesta Del Sol2005 mpds piscina y yate is not as clear-cut and as widely beneficial as the developer’s publicity claims. The development has necessitated the purchase of a considerable amount of land in Aserradores, most of which is now policed by private guards and protected by barbed wire and ‘Private Property’ notices. The fishermen of the community have been left with only one narrow access point to the estuary, now crowded with boats; access to the estuary and the sea is prohibited in all but a few points which are not owned by Sr. Membreño; most of the land previously owned by the Mario Carrio Chevez fishing cooperative in agreement with the municipality was sold off, in dubious circumstances, to Sr. Membreño; two short stretches of estuarine mangrove vegetation have been destroyed and replaced by white sand brought from the Pacific Ocean coast of the area; and heavy pressure has been exerted on one particular family to quit their land which now forms something of an island surrounded by the marina.
Probably the most critical of the local issues arising from the development, however, and the one that generates the most heated sentiment is the lack of suitable provision of potable water for residents of Aserradores, especially when set aside the provision of swimming pools, a number of hydro-massage whirlpools and luxurious bathrooms in the hotel suites. For years the community has had problems with its water supply. Water in the wells in the immediate area is too saline to be potable and subterranean water in general in this area is too contaminated with agrochemicals to be of use. In 2003 the supply of water was identified as the highest priority for resolution by over half the population, the next major problem (the lack of electricity) being identified by less than twenty per cent.[2] Francisco José Maliaño Molina, a former leader of the community now retired and tending his herd of goats, explains how in 2002 he sent a letter to Sr. Membreño, signed by over 80 residents, asking him to take into account in his development the community’s need for potable water. He never received a reply and concluded that: “he’s not interested in the community.”[3] Juan Alberto Chieres Casco, a member of the local administrative committee, related that “members of the local committee have discussed the problem [of water supply] with Membreño and he suggested that he was going to do something about it; but we don’t know when.”[4]
On the destruction of mangroves either side of the major quay to make way for white sand brought in from the nearby Pacific coast, in my discussions with him in 2003 Sr. Membreño was fulsome in his praise of the geologist who had assured him that the respective ecosystems would not be adversely affected. It has to be remarked, however, that it would be difficult to find any environmentalist or a geologist not in Membreño’s pay who would agree that such actions would have no effect.
Regarding land ownership in an
d around the community, residents report that Sr. Membreño’s supposed benevolence towards the local community has concealed his aggressive approach to acquiring the land required for the development. The family of Max Garay is one of the few Nicaraguans families in Aserradores who owned sizeable parcels of land. He explains:
The [fishing] cooperative gave up its rights to the Marina Puesta Del Sol and the marina began to develop a hostile attitude towards various residents, including my family. … [Membreño] has managed, through buying influence, to turn the illegal into the legal. … Bit by bit he has closed down our spaces along the estuary and at his whim they have closed our access to the sea for subsistence. … The judicial system in Nicaragua is very easy to corrupt.[5]
Max Garay’s wife, Tadea, adds: “I wanted to talk directly with him so that we could put all our cards on the table and tell him that I am not against his project. Our country needs progress. The only thing that I am asking is that he respects our rights.”[6] Allan Bolt, a journalist with El Nuevo Diario, one of Nicaragua’s leading daily newspapers, confirms this version of events:
Everybody, including the Garay family, welcomed the new tourism project enthusiastically because it meant work and increasing affluence for all. But it seems that this investor has his own vision of how he wants the countryside to appear and what type of people he wants to see there, so he has closed the public right of way to the shore (which is unconstitutional, but which the authorities have allowed), he has prohibited his employees from making purchases in Garay’s mini-store, he has tried to throw them off the Island of Aserradores (despite their land titles), and he has been supported in this ugly game by all the powers of the state.[7]
Some benefits have trickled down to a few members of the community of Aserradores, but these appear to have been more than offset by the trickle-down of a number of disbenefits to various residents, although it is an impossible task to quantify the net effect of these different impacts. But putting aside all the eulogistic publicity material in favour of the development, all the local criticisms against it and all doubts about the very notion of the trickle-down effect, probably the most telling comparison to make is the fact that the amount of money invested in the Marina Puesta Del Sol could have provided a safe potable water supply for every person in the whole of the Cosigüina Peninsula. Such an investment would have spread the health and security benefits of this amount of money to a huge number of people instead of leisure and luxury benefits to a tiny number of people whose wealth is already great enough to ensure their basic human needs and rights.
[1] Roberto Membreño (April 2003) In discussion with Martin Mowforth and others, Aserradores, Nicaragua.
[2] SELVA (2003) ‘Información Linea Base para el Diseño de Proyectos de Desarrollo de la Comunidad de Aserradores’, El Viejo, Nicaragua.
[3] Francisco José Maliaño Molina (September 2004) In interview, Aserradores, Nicaragua.
[4] Juan Alberto Chieres Casco (September 2004) In interview, Aserradores, Nicaragua.
[5] Max and Tadea Garay (September 2004) In interview, Aserradores, Nicaragua.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Allan Bolt (19 December 2002) ‘Turismo, soberanía y desarrollo’, El Nuevo Diario, Managua.
After a two year delay, the Nicaraguan Water and Sewer Company (ENACAL) signed contracts with seven Nicaraguan companies to start construction of 49 potable water systems and sewer systems in 27 Managua neighborhoods. The projects are estimated to benefit 130,000 citizens in the capital city and include potable water connections to 10,000 households and sewer connections to 18,000 households.
The project is being financed by a US$38 million credit extended by the Inter-American Development Bank. The project was scheduled to break ground in March 2009, but it suffered setbacks. The money will also go toward increasing the pumping capacity of wells in Managua, updating two sewer treatment plants, as well as toward sewage treatment improvements in Tipitapa and Ciudad Sandino. (La Prensa, Apr. 14)
Reproduced from Nicaragua News 20 April 2011
September 18, 2013.
On Tuesday, September 10, representatives of the diverse social movement organizations of the Water Forum held a press conference at the National Legislative Assembly to denounce proposed reforms to the controversial Public-Private Partnership (P3) Law as a back door, right-wing effort to privatize water. The reforms seek to include water treatment and administration among the public goods open for private contracts and concession after the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party successfully excluded water from the original legislation.
The Water Forum, which has been pushing for legislation to protect water from privatization efforts for years, criticized the recent formation of an ad-hoc committee by the Assembly’s right-wing parties to study the reforms, calling the move en effort to push through the reforms without public debate. FMLN Legislator Norma Guevara condemned the committee’s creation as “a means to take the issue out of the Treasury Commission and impose a rapid adjustment to incorporate water into the sphere of business, which appears to be one of the clearest interests of the [right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance] ARENA party’s financial backers, the largest economic groups.”
At Tuesday’s event, the Forum presented a letter to the Assembly (full English text here) demanding the exclusion of any schemes to privatize water from all laws debated in the Assembly and an audience with the ad hoc committee to present their arguments in defense of “the human right to water and its sustainability.” Carlos Flores, a member of the Water Forum, declared: “It’s impossible that ARENA continue to see water as a potential source of profit for companies to do what they like with: contaminate our aquifers, exploit state resources, contribute to the extinction of the country’s rivers. We cannot allow more privatization in this country!”
Extracts from an article in Semanario Universidad (Costa Rica), 03.06.09, ‘Water is in a state of emergency’, (p.3)
Ana Isabel Barquero, Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Programme of Research into and Management of Water of Costa Rica’s National University (PRIGA-UNA), warns that despite the abundance of water in the country its administration requires improvement if any degree of efficiency is to be achieved. Indeed, as a specialist in this subject, she described the situation of water in the country as “an emergency”.
Barquero stated that underground waters which are the major source of the household water supply are being contaminated by chemicals such as nitrates and other toxic substances which are used in agriculture. She particularly indicated that in the Caribbean coastal areas the chemicals used in pineapple and banana cultivation are reaching the rivers. A recent Nature Conservancy study contained evidence that many of the freshwater wetlands, rivers and lakes from Mexico to Panama and the life they contain are in danger from toxic substances.
She explained that in order to safeguard the water supply, in the first instance a genuine management scheme is required, “starting with the government and including the municipalities and other institutions.”
She singled out tourism which she says must start to use water resources efficiently – in various places in the country so much water is wasted for swimming pools and golf courses.
Reproduced from CISPES news item. CISPES is the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. – April 2, 2014.
With the ink barely dry on the State Department’s commitments to work with the incoming administration of Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the leftist Farabundo Martí Liberation Front (FMLN), US Ambassador Mari Carmen Aponte continues her crusade for privatization policy, intervening in El Salvador’s legislative affairs to promote corporate interests. Aponte has taken up lobbying efforts to urge the Legislative Assembly to approve reforms to the US-backed Public-Private Partnership (P3) Law, conditioning US development aid on the passage of the reforms package. The Ambassador insists the reforms are necessary to invest the pending $277 million Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) funds, claiming El Salvador’s investment conditions “are not totally mature yet.”
The P3 Law, which was originally drafted with US government advisors, opens up public projects to private concessions. The proposed reforms would reverse several elements that FMLN legislators had managed to include in the final bill to ensure it did not trigger a privatization free-for-all of essential public services. Presented by legislators from the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party last December, the reforms are based on a proposal by the National Council for Growth, a body created by the US-El Salvador bilateral economic agreement, the Partnership for Growth, that joins government representatives with the country’s wealthiest businessmen.
At a March 24 forum hosted by the Legislative Assembly, representatives of the broad-based social movement coalition the Water Forum and FMLN legislators expressed fierce opposition to a reform that would make water vulnerable to private concessions after the FMLN had successfully excluded it from the P3 Law. “The FMLN is not in favor of privatizing our fundamental services,” said legislator Orestes Ortez of the leftist party.
Intent on passing the reforms as soon as possible, the Council for Growth unveiled a reduced list of recommended reforms the next day, abandoning plans to bring water back into the realm of possible concessions. The surviving reforms aim to minimize public debate around concessions and speed up their approval. One would change the current P3 legislation, which requires the Assembly first approve the terms of bidding and then approve the final contract, so that concessions would only require a one-stop legislative approval. Another would put supervision of the concessions into the hands of the president’s Investment and Exports Promotion Agency (PROESA), rather than an autonomous oversight body in the Ministry of the Economy. A third reform would increase the limit on how much debt the State can incur from any one concession from 1% of the nation’s GDP to 3%. FMLN legislator Lorena Peña pointed out that 1% of the GDP is already $245 million, nearly the same amount as the entire MCC project ($277 million).
The US Embassy’s shameless intervention in the Legislative Assembly’s affairs make the US’s true foreign policy aims all the more transparent. Ambassador Aponte is forcing legislation on the country to ensure that MCC funds are easily diverted into the pocket of private, transnational corporations, granting them greater access to El Salvador’s public services in the future, regardless of the party in power. As Aponte recently affirmed the Obama administration’s willingness to work with the incoming FMLN administration, she emphasized the need to advance bilateral programs “not only for the benefit of El Salvador, but also for the benefit of the United States,” but her latest actions seem to indicate that the primary beneficiary will be, as ever, a transnational corporate elite.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has said that water scarcity is “a potent fuel for wars”[i], and Fred Pearce has described water as “rapidly becoming one of the defining crises of the 21st century.”[ii] Both are fearful of the consequences of the development of water shortages, whether caused by over-use, climate change, conflict or competition. Physically, however, Central America is blessed with plentiful rainfall and well-supplied hydrographic basins.
Key words:
Human right to water | Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) | Water-borne diseases | Improved sanitation | Improved provision of water | Sewage treatment | Privatisation | Private sector investment | Public-Public Partnerships (PUPs) | Water pollution | Pesticide contamination
[i] UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon cited in World Development Movement (WDM) campaign document (29 November 2007) ‘Water and Conflict’, London, WDM.
[ii] Fred Pearce cited in World Development Movement (WDM) campaign document (29 November 2007) ‘Water and Conflict’, London, WDM.
Report by: Nicaragua Dispatch
In celebration of World Water Day, the World Bank today announced a new $30 million project to bring potable water and sewage services to 85 rural municipalities in Nicaragua.
The sustainable water project, funded by $14.3 million in World Bank loans and $15.7 million in grants, will provide basic water and sewage service to 52,000 Nicaraguans over the next five years.
In Nicaragua, only 68% of the rural population has access to drinking water, and only 37% have access to sewage treatment, according to the World Bank. The government claims the percentage of those with access to drinking water in the urban households is slightly higher — around 84%. But in a country of daily water rationing in many poor neighborhoods, government statistics on access to drinking water are notoriously unreliable (in 2007, Ruth Selma Herrera, then-head of the state-owned Nicaraguan Water and Sewage Company, had to adjust the official statistics from 90% coverage to around 70% coverage after discovering just how inflated the government numbers were).
Maura Madriz Paladino, director of the water program for the Alexander von Humboldt Center, a non-governmental organization specializing in environmental issues, told The Nicaragua Dispatch last year that her organization surveyed Nicaraguan homes in 2011 and found that 80% of Nicaragua’s population doesn’t receive the quantity or quality of water it needs—a situation she qualified as “alarming.”
“We can’t determine who has access to drinking water by looking at the number of people who have plumbing in their homes, but in Managua a
lone there are lots of homes that have pipes in the walls but no water in the pipes,” Madriz said. “We need to talk about the percentage of people who actually have potable water available to them in the quantity and quality to satisfy their basic needs.”
Says Herrera, the problem in Nicaragua is not the amount of water, but the quality.
“We are a country rich in contaminated water resources,” she said this morning in an interview on a local radio station Café con Voz.
In 2007, the Chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Company, E. Neville Isdell, pledged “to return the water we use in our beverages and their production; to achieve balance in communities and in nature with the water we use.”[1] The company expressed a wish to recycle water, reduce water use and replenish water in communities. As a result, Coca-Cola has invested in over 100 Community Watershed Partnership projects in 49 countries, including El Salvador.[2]
In 2008, the Coca-Cola Company provided a grant of $60,000 to the ‘recovery of the watershed that supplies the San Antonio River’ project in Nejapa.[3] This project aims to contribute to the protection of water resources in the Nejapa area, and to generate income for the inhabitants. The project will clean water sources, reforest 8,000 native trees and teach local people how to cultivate crops without using chemicals.[4]
It is expected that 100 people will benefit directly from this programme, and a further 400 will indirectly benefit from environmental improvements. The company’s track record has included such promises in the past. Local people who stand to benefit from the watershed recovery programme are hopeful that these promises will not be left unfulfilled this time.
[1] The Coca-Cola Company (2008) ‘Replenish’ Report: Achieving Water Balance through Community Water Partnerships, The Coca-Cola Company, http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/citizenship/pdf/cwp_011608.pdf (Accessed 20/09/2010).
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Coca-Cola Company (2008) Corporate Contributions and Grants Paid, The Coca-Cola Company, http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/citizenship/pdf/2008_grants_contributions_paid.pdf (Accessed 20/09/2010).
[4] SABMiller (2009) Nejapa’s inhabitants benefit from San Antonio River conservation project, SABMiller, http://www.sabmiller.com/index.asp?pageid=149&newsid=969 (Accessed 02/09/2010).