World Water Day

Paula Barker Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]]

First, let me thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) for securing this debate.

Access to clean water for drinking and for sanitation is an inalienable human right. Importantly, though, access to water and sanitation is recognised by the United Nations as a human right, reflecting the fundamental nature of these basics in every person’s life. Lack of access to safe drinking water, water for sanitation and water that is truly affordable has a particularly devastating effect on billions of people on their health, dignity and prosperity, especially in the global south. The markets and the money men think differently, with water joining gold, oil and other commodities being traded on Wall Street, as worries about the uncertainty of its availability in the future rises and therefore its attractiveness to big investors.

Water traded as a commodity is morally reprehensible. While the privateers make a tidy sum, half a million die globally each year because of diarrhoea-related illnesses on the back of drinking contaminated water, and that is just scratching the surface. The water shortage issue is slowly appearing on our media’s agenda, albeit on the back of rich Californians being told that they are not permitted to fill their swimming pools, or, of course, of the hosepipe bans that we have seen issued in recent years across the south of England on the back of protracted droughts. Growing water shortages are every bit linked to the deepening climate emergency as global temperatures continue to rise. By 2040, one in four children worldwide will lack access to clean drinking water. That means that, if they do not perish from diseases first, school days are lost and all human development indices will be down.

I know that we are looking at the global picture today, but nations—be they rich like ours—need to lay down a marker, driving the privateers out of the water markets, and that starts by nationalising our own water supply. Our international development strategy should be focused on helping developing nations to take control or maintain control of their own water supplies that are run in the interests of their own people, not private profit.

In many ways, water is the perfect commodity. It is a fixed, finite resource with a global market that covers every human being on the planet who needs access to it for survival. Most alarming is the emerging view that the resource wars of the future will be fought not on scarce resources like oil, but on water. We only need to look at the recent past for evidence of what could await poorer countries, particularly if right-wing autocrats force their people to abide by World Bank privatisation diktats in exchange for loans. We saw this in Bolivia barely two decades ago, where it even went as far as criminalising the collection of rainwater and violent scenes broke out across the country.

Members of this place should be absolutely committed to this agenda—one that guarantees universal access to clean and safe water for every human being, and a just settlement based on developing countries having the tools at their disposal to oversee their own destiny.