DRTS
A Roundtable Discussion on Community and Civil Society
Struggles for Equitable Water Rights and Democratic Water
Policies—Experiences from India and the Philippines
April 25, 2009, Saturday, 10 am to 2:30 pm
University Hotel, UP Diliman, Quezon City
Sponsored by: The Development Roundtable Series Thematic Working Group*
April 25, 2009, Saturday, 10 am to 2:30 pm
University Hotel, UP Diliman, Quezon City
Sponsored by: The Development Roundtable Series Thematic Working Group*
Water has become one of the hottest and most contested
resources in the world today. Access to water, management of water
supply and delivery systems, and control of the world’s freshwater
resources are replete with economic and political struggles and
conflicts. The stream of ‘battles’ for and over water has become a
sudden rushing torrent. In different parts of the world, there are and
have been a multitude of civil society, community and social movements’
struggles for “water justice”, of ensuring peoples’ and communities’
access to safe, affordable, and sustainable water (and sanitation
services) for drinking, irrigation, recreation, fishing, cultural and
other uses in an equitable, effective, and democratic way.
In the Philippines, for example, the struggles around the privatization of MWSS’ distribution/water service provision have focused on defending public interest, the right to sufficient, affordable, and clean water. Metro Manila’s water privatization, hailed as the biggest in Asia, has become an iconic example of failed privatization experiments— of how it has limited or impeded the access to water of marginalized sectors of society, especially the poor, and of how poor communities are standing up to stake their claims and rights. Struggles for empowering public and collective forms of water control and reclaiming public water through community-based water systems such as cooperatives and user-owned systems are being waged. These are fights to reclaim decision making powers from the hands of powerful elites and private water companies; against the adverse effects of privatization on water users, citizens, and workers.
In the Philippines, for example, the struggles around the privatization of MWSS’ distribution/water service provision have focused on defending public interest, the right to sufficient, affordable, and clean water. Metro Manila’s water privatization, hailed as the biggest in Asia, has become an iconic example of failed privatization experiments— of how it has limited or impeded the access to water of marginalized sectors of society, especially the poor, and of how poor communities are standing up to stake their claims and rights. Struggles for empowering public and collective forms of water control and reclaiming public water through community-based water systems such as cooperatives and user-owned systems are being waged. These are fights to reclaim decision making powers from the hands of powerful elites and private water companies; against the adverse effects of privatization on water users, citizens, and workers.
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Towards an Assessment of the Visiting Forces Agreement 
Two weeks from now, Gloria Arroyo will be delivering her State of the Nation
Address (SONA), marking another year of tenacity and triumph over a
recurring and still-unfolding crisis confronting her delegitimized
regime. This upcoming SONA is her key address since the wildfire of
political scandals that revived calls for her resignation, including
the NBN-ZTE deal, the Malacanang cash gift fiasco and the impeachment
farce. The economy, which had been registering steady growth, low
inflation and some incremental improvements in employment, has
essentially served as her administration’s refuge from the political
verwirrung that followed. With her legitimacy in question, Arroyo and
her spin doctors have craftily appropriated the dictum ‘it’s the
economy, stupid,’ as a central strategy to deflect criticism and
opposition to her regime. Indications of a healthy economy have in
effect served as political tools for undermining and discrediting
demands for her to step down and cut her term short. Her spin doctors
have worked doubly hard to capitalize on this picture of a soaring
economy, presenting an image of Arroyo as a manager and leader bent on
getting down to work, with her goal set on ensuring and sustaining
economic progress, even in the face of escalating adversity and
‘destabilization’.