Nathaniel Meyer: An Activist Challenging Corporate Control of Water

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When I met Nathaniel Meyer, I was curious about what brought him to work as Senior International Water Organizer at Corporate Accountability International, a non-profit dedicated to protecting human rights, public health, and the environment from corporate abuse. “It’s a bit of a story,” he chuckled, and settling into his chair, he told a story that transported me from a crowded coffee shop in downtown Boston to Kiribati, a small island nation in the central Pacific Ocean. According to Nathaniel, his childhood experience in Kiribati instilled in him a global perspective and a commitment to social and environmental justice that has inspired his career.

Nathaniel’s family temporarily moved to Kiribati in 1994, when he was in second grade. While the move from the forests of Central Maine to a tropical island was a big change, he quickly became close to some of the local people. Nathaniel remembers his best friend Thomas, a native I-Kiribati with a wide smile and bright eyes, with whom he would play tag in the sweltering sun.

Although he soon returned to the United States, Nathaniel did not forget his friends in Kiribati. In fact, he kept hearing Kiribati mentioned in the news in the context of climate change. Within 50 years, Kiribati is expected to be the first nation to lose all its land to rising sea levels.

When Nathaniel enrolled in Oberlin College in 2005, he was intent on learning as much as he could about climate change. He studied biology and environmental studies, but found himself less interested in the exclusively scientific portrayal of climate change narrated in parts per million. “Thomas’s face was in my mind,” Nathaniel explained. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how people I know are having their lives totally upheaved by climate change, and developed nations are at fault.” This realization turned Nathaniel away from scientific research and inspired him to work on social justice issues. Instead of just learning about how environmental issues were harming people, he wanted to find solutions to what he has come to see as a root cause of these problems: corporate greed.

At age 26, Nathaniel is a seasoned activist with experience organizing around several environmental and social justice campaigns. He learned to mobilize grassroots campaigns as a Field Organizer with GreenCorps, a field school for environmental organizing. During this year, Nathaniel cut his teeth as an organizer for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign at Penn

State’s University Park campus, in the heart of coal country. By recruiting and training student leaders, holding rallies, and working with the college administration and professors, Nathaniel succeeded in building the student support and momentum that led the university to commit to eliminating on-campus coal use. While fundraising and organizing with Environment Maine and the U.S. PIRG, he also helped to advance renewable energy policy and land conservation initiatives.

Driven by a commitment to creating a just and sustainable future, Nathaniel now works on Corporate Accountability International’s campaign to Challenge Corporate Control of Water. Nathaniel shares the non-profit’s belief that access to clean drinking water is a fundamental human right and that water corporations and their financial backers are exploiting the global water crisis by transferring public water systems into private hands that are motivated more by profit than the public interest. Since the rise of privatization in the 1990s, most projects – from Cochabamba, Bolivia to Manila, Philippines – have increased water prices and have neglected to provide water services to the poor. By privatizing water, corporations turn a basic human right into a commodity that few poor citizens in developing nations can afford.

Corporate Accountability International’s long-term goal is to defend democratic control of water, support critical reinvestment in public water systems, and fulfill the United Nations- recognized right to water around the world. A significant step toward this goal is challenging the World Bank, an international financial institution, to stop funding and promoting water corporations. If the World Bank stops propping up multinational water companies, there will be more of an opportunity to develop community-based, democratically accountable water systems. Nathaniel sees his work as “pressuring abusive industries in order to create space for positive examples to take hold.”

With this goal in mind, one of Nathaniel’s current projects is identifying and organizing supporters for the human right to water in US Congress. Nathaniel explains that, “when the World Bank changed its policies in the past, whether on tobacco or labor rights, it was pushed by champions in Congress.” In April, during the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C., Nathaniel met with legislators, including several who sit on committees with jurisdiction over World Bank practices, to convince them to join the call for the World Bank to stop backing water privatization.

While challenging one of the world’s most powerful international financial institutions is ambitious, Nathaniel believes that, with his organization’s support, he has the power to help make real change happen. Nathaniel describes Corporate Accountability’s greatest strength as its ability to “be strategic and have well-informed campaigns that leverage the power of large numbers of people to create pressure until a corporation can’t help but change.” The non-profit’s recent victories include helping to secure the adoption of the global Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, in addition to convincing the city of San Francisco and several prominent national parks to ban bottled water.

Although the outcomes of Nathaniel’s work as an international water organizer are far removed from where he lives in Boston, he takes inspiration from the passion and commitment that his colleagues and allied organizations abroad have to ensuring that all people have access to clean, affordable water. Nathaniel explains, “It’s tough not being on the ground, but I don’t need to be on ground necessarily.” Instead, he believes that he can make a big impact by working with allies to “change some of the structural issues that are making water systems dysfunctional.”

Forcing these corporations to change is difficult, but Nathaniel draws strength from past social justice movements in the US, such as the Civil Rights Movement, student protests against the Vietnam War, and campus divestments during South African apartheid. Young activists sparked and led all of these movements and achieved unlikely victories against great odds. Nathaniel concluded by saying that “It’s easy to feel powerless, but it’s also equally easy to feel powerful.”

Boston Receives Public Health Grant: An Opportunity for Great Change or More of the Same?

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In the United States, the traditional approach to health care has focused resources on treating people when they are sick rather than paying to keep people healthy. Once people are sick, they have the added trouble of finding affordable treatment. Massachusetts has been heralded for being at the forefront of national health reform; their 2006 health care reform not only laid out the framework for Obamacare, but a recent study has also shown that it has a proven impact on health. Now, the state has a chance of paving the way for a new model of health care, with a focus on prevention. For many low-income and minority residents in Boston that are suffering disproportionately from preventable conditions such as asthma, could this grant be the solution they are looking for?

Continue reading Boston Receives Public Health Grant: An Opportunity for Great Change or More of the Same? →

Making Moves Towards Healthier Homes

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(Photo: Boston Urban News)

When the City of Boston passed its Rental Inspection Ordinance in December 2012, Mayor Thomas M. Menino issued a statement saying, “Landlords must be held responsible when it comes to providing safe and healthy housing for their tenants.” He was referring to the unhealthy living environments that fall on many city tenants when landlords neglect to request city housing inspections. This negligence leads to a higher prevalence of health hazards such as asthma and lead poisoning. Liz Connolly and Katherine Tanefis, of Boston’s non-profit, Health Resources in Action (HRIA), have been instrumental in promoting this protective rental policy. It is not an easy mission. Continue reading Making Moves Towards Healthier Homes →

20 Years Later: Moving Forward With Environmental Justice in Obama’s Climate Action Plan

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President Obama gives a speech about his Climate Action Plan at Georgetown University. (Photo: Worldwatch Institute)
President Obama gives a speech about his Climate Action Plan at Georgetown University. (Photo: Worldwatch Institute)

Twenty years ago, on February 11, 1994, President Clinton signed Executive Order 12898. Under the order, the federal government was told to direct their attention to the unequal amount of pollution being borne by minority and low-income communities across the country. To date, the results of “The Environmental Justice (EJ) Order” have fallen short of many of the hopes and expectations of its champions. Though there have been vast improvements in the attention given to important environmental issues under the Obama administration, the release of Obama’s Climate Action Plan last fall shows that there remains a disconnect between talking about environmental justice and achieving it. In honor of EO 12898’s 20th Anniversary, let us ask the current administration to demonstrate its commitment to the goals of the order by ensuring the inclusion of EJ communities in today’s climate policy. Continue reading 20 Years Later: Moving Forward With Environmental Justice in Obama’s Climate Action Plan →

It’s not all cacti: Converting from green lawns to California-friendly landscapes

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www.droughtmonitor.unl.edu
www.droughtmonitor.unl.edu

According to the United States Drought Monitor, as of April 15, the state of California’s temperatures were 9-12 degrees above normal, which contributed to the loss of half of the water contained in the state’s snowpack in a single week. Overall, the majority of the state was indicated to be in “extreme” and “exceptional” drought. Such levels of intense drought haven’t existed in the state since 2000.

As time goes on, these conditions are not projected to get any better as climate change continues. In fact, they are going to get worse. Water supplies throughout California have already decreased significantly in the current drought, which has put several cities on tight water use regulations. As a result of climate change increasing the frequency and severity of these droughts, combined with population growth, freshwater resources are being depleted faster than nature can replenish them. With projections like these something needs to be done to protect and conserve the region’s most important resource: its freshwater.

When it comes to water conservation in California there are two main areas of focus: agricultural and urban consumption. What few people know is that conservation priorities vary from region to region. For example, in looking at the state as a whole, agriculture consumes 77% of all freshwater, meaning conservation should be focused on cropland. However, looking at southern California specifically, agriculture only consumes around 16%, while urban residential consumption is around 54% and the rest is commercial or industrial use. This is the case because the majority of the state is covered in millions of acres of agricultural land, but a very large portion of the state’s population is concentrated in the south.

Looking at the southern California region, water conservation has been, and should continue to be, focused on urban residential consumption. The goal should be to change individual user practices to be compliant with a semi-arid region where there is little water availability and high temperatures.

Due to their similar climates, a study was done in 2011 comparing water consumption in Australia and California. It indicated that Australians consume half as much water as Californians because of their strict conservation regulations. One of the conservation techniques they focus on is outdoor water restrictions, such as limiting watering to between 8:00 pm and 10:00 am and encouraging the transition to less water intensive landscapes. Australia also encourages residents to implement rainwater tanks, which would not be affected by any watering restrictions, to take care of their outdoor needs. A big reason these efforts are so effective is because they are in place even when water is abundant. Australia is learning to live with their climate by changing their practices.

Similarly, the study found that the majority of water consumption in California was for outdoor uses, and therefore determined that California could greatly benefit from following the lead of Australian conservation.

This isn’t to say that California has not made any efforts. The state has made great strides in improving water conservation. One such technique they implemented was the “Cash in your lawn” campaign in 2009. The campaign entices residents to replace their lawns with California-friendly, drought-resistant landscaping (contrary to popular belief, not all drought resistant, native plants are cacti) by paying them $1 for every square foot they convert. In doing this, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) hopes to save 70% of the annual water used to maintain a healthy lawn. The program had some success over the first couple of years, but to improve these results, last year LADWP raised the rebate to $2 for every square foot converted.

So far, the LADWP has replaced around 1.55 million square feet of grass. They expect that number to continue to increase because of the increased rebate offer, along with an increasing interest in conservation as climate change effects become more severe and known, it is predicted that more and more people will be jumping on the bandwagon.

Ultimately, the southern California culture needs to change. California-friendly landscaping needs to become the norm and green lawns the (bad) exception. Underneath all of the green lawns, the West is still a desert. Climate change is making that clear with increased droughts and decreased water availability. The summers are getting warmer and snow is falling less, and the drought monitor is going to grow redder and redder as humans continue on business as usual. Humans and water are what created the grand civilization in the West, but living by nature’s rules is what is going to keep us here.

Kate Konschnik: Fracking’s Middle Ground Warrior

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If you’ve heard about “fracking” for natural gas and oil in the United States, you’ve probably heard one of two stories:

The first is a story of clean energy and US energy independence. Natural gas burns cleaner than coal and emits less CO2, making it useful in combating climate change. As a result of increased fracking in the past several years, natural gas now represents 30% of US energy supplies. This means that less US energy is coming from coal. Additionally, producing this energy within the US will decrease dependence on foreign oil.

The second story is one of yet another dirty, unregulated industry harming people and the environment. Mismanaged wastewater, along with chemical spills and leaks, are polluting groundwater. Fracking companies do not have to disclose the hazardous, carcinogenic chemicals they are using. And fracking releases large amounts of methane and other air pollutants that negatively impact both human health and climate change.

So which of these stories is right? According to Kate Konschnik, policy director for Harvard’s Environmental Law program, neither represents the whole truth. Konschnik believes natural gas is an important part of the US energy sector, but also recognizes that acquiring it poses real risks that must be managed. It is, Konschnik says, “a place where law needs to play catch-up, where law doesn’t quite know how to be applied.” Despite how contentious the topic of fracking has become, Konschnik believes a middle ground position, best found through well-made and managed laws, is both possible and necessary.

Continue reading Kate Konschnik: Fracking’s Middle Ground Warrior →

The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition: Cooperative Investment or Colonialism in Disguise?

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Foreign aid for Africa is taking new form as private investment from both foreign and local agribusinesses. Why this could be a game-changer for many commercial smallholder farmers, but why they must also remain vigilant.

 

In the 2012 G8 Summit held at Camp David, newly re-elected President Obama proposed a new plan to lift 50 million people out of poverty by 2022. In conjunction with the African Union and Grow Africa, the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition Initiative provided a framework for opening up African agriculture to foreign investment, infusing a crippled system with private capital and, as a result, bolstering food security in the region. This policy has, however, come under heavy fire from many environmental NGOs and local African organizations. Their fear is that this wave of private investment is just neo-colonialism in disguise. Continue reading The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition: Cooperative Investment or Colonialism in Disguise? →

Jonathan Waterman: Wilderness’ Voice

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www.nationalgeographic.com
www.nationalgeographic.com

Jonathan Waterman recalls that his interest in the Colorado River began shortly before 2008 when he discovered that the well water on his property could not be used to water his vegetable garden, let alone any other outdoor needs. After 25 years of living high in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado near the headwaters of the great river itself, he discovered that people downstream owned the water on his property, which meant he was not allowed to use it for his own purposes. Shortly after realizing that this was an issue Waterman read an article in the New York Times magazine talking about the glum future of the Colorado. He explained, with a quick laugh during our FaceTime interview, how these discoveries spurred him to “plunge right into action.” Continue reading Jonathan Waterman: Wilderness’ Voice →

UN Millennium Development Targets for Water Will Expire in 2015. So What’s Next?

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Every year, more people die from water-related illness than all forms of violence combined. Polluted water is deadly, and it is the poor in developing countries, and children in particular, that suffer most from unclean water and inadequate sanitation.

In Ethiopia, more than 60 percent of the population lacks access to clean drinking water. Most Ethiopians must therefore buy expensive water from private vendors, or collect water from untreated sources, putting them at risk of contracting life-threatening diseases like cholera and typhoid.

We have the know-how to solve these water challenges and save millions of lives. What’s needed is global political will and public pressure for clean water infrastructure. Fortunately, world leaders have a vital opportunity to transform the global water policy agenda with the expiration of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) next year.

In 2000, world leaders committed to halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation through the MDGs. Although this target has been achieved — more than 2 billion people have gained access to improved drinking water since 1990 — 1.1 billion people still live without clean drinking water and 2.5 billion people lack basic sanitation. Furthermore, the MDGs have failed to bring clean water to the poorest countries. While millions in Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific have gained access to clean water in recent years, Sub-Saharan Africa has been left behind. Today, over 40 percent of all people that lack access to clean drinking water live in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The privatization of water supplies is partially responsible for Sub-Saharan Africa’s lack of progress on the MDG for water and sanitation. Although the UN Task Force on the MDGs has avoided taking a firm position on privatization, the UN has given the World Bank and other major donors the authority to finance water projects in developing nations. The World Bank avidly promotes water privatization in Sub-Saharan Africa as a means of meeting water-related MDGs. The World Bank invests directly in corporate water giants like Biwater and Suez, which have been behind failed privatizations in Tanzania, South Africa, and other countries. These companies use the rhetoric of the MDGs to justify private sector involvement in water services, even while they prioritize profit and shareholder interests over affordable water access.

Private sector involvement in the supply of water in Sub-Saharan Africa is problematic because it has failed to extend clean, affordable water infrastructure to the poor. For instance, when the city government of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania handed its water system over to Biwater, many Tanzanians experienced soaring water bills and mass disconnections from the network. Rather than paying high prices for water that had previously been provided for free, many low-income families instead decided to consume contaminated well water. Thus, water privatization can be financially crippling and life-threatening for the urban poor of Sub-Saharan Africa. While there is a role for international financial institutions and the private sector in the fight for clean water, there is no justification for international agencies and corporations to continue promoting water privatization.

With the expiration of the MDGs in 2015, world leaders have the power to create a new set of water policies that prioritizes extending clean, affordable water to the poor. In place of the current MDGs, new action-oriented Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are being drafted as part of the UN’s Post-2015 Development Agenda. The SDGs have the potential to address many of the shortcomings of the MDGs, such as their neglect of the poorest countries and most excluded people, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The dire need for better access to clean water and sanitation is an important part of the SDGs discussion. The SDGs Open Working Group has identified water and sanitation as potential focus areas for the SDGs, and has outlined actions such as expanding wastewater treatment infrastructure, and ensuring safe access to safe and affordable drinking water for all. However, in its most recent proposal for the SDGs, the Open Working Group included a provision for greater involvement of the private sector in the implementation of the SDGs. This agenda is shared by the World Bank, which, as the largest external source of financing for water projects around the world, will have a big say in the creation of a new SDG for water. But it’s critical that the world’s poor have an even bigger say in the water policies that will affect their livelihoods and their health.

Under the current MDGs, corporate-driven, World Bank-backed water projects are allowed to prioritize profit over people’s needs for access. But water management must be returned to public hands, democratically accountable to the people whose interests are at stake. Around the world, public investment and management has been proven to be a more successful model for developing water delivery systems than privatization. And although financial institutions like the World Bank are big and powerful, it’s possible to change their agendas. One organization, Corporate Accountability International, is already at the front lines, challenging corporate abuse of water, forging alliances with grassroots water organizations abroad, and working with legislators to challenge the World Bank’s water policy.

The post-2015 SDGs are a major chance for world leaders, the UN, and the World Bank to join this fight for the human right to water and advocate for democratically controlled public water systems in developing nations. By enshrining support for human rights and publicly controlled water systems in the new SDGs, we can ensure that the needs of the poor are prioritized over corporate interests and the agendas of financial institutions like the World Bank.

The UN General Assembly will meet to discuss the first draft of the Open Working Group’s SDGs in September, so there’s still plenty of time for you to voice your support for public water policy in the nations that need it most.

What you can do:

1. Ensure that increasing access to clean water and sanitation is made a top priority in the SDGs.

Take the MY World survey and vote for clean water and sanitation to become a priority for the SDGs.

2. Tell your elected officials to pressure the World Bank to stop directly funding water corporations and instead implement SDGs that support publicly controlled water systems.

3. Join the global conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

Beyond Water Privatization: Deconstructing the Public-Private Binary and Considering Alternatives

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privatizingWater1

A Review of Privatizing Water: Governance Failure and the World’s Urban Water Crisis by Karen Bakker. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010.

In January of 2000, protests broke out in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in response to the skyrocketing price of water. Citizens saw their water bills triple or quadruple just weeks after the municipal water supply was handed over to a private company. Millions of poor city residents went on strike, shutting down Cochabamba for four days. The protesters called for universal water rights, using slogans like “Water Is God’s Gift and Not A Merchandise,” and eventually succeeded in forcing the government to revoke its hated legislation.

The Cochabamba protests are part of a global campaign for a human right to water. Vandana Shiva, a vocal opponent of water privatization, has said that “buying and selling [water] for profit … denies the poor of their human rights.” Conversely, institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have vigorously urged developing nations to privatize, asserting that market strategies can most efficiently extend water to the poor and ensure water conservation. The introduction of private management to the water sector during the past two decades has generated fierce, polarizing controversies worldwide. Continue reading Beyond Water Privatization: Deconstructing the Public-Private Binary and Considering Alternatives →