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Dignity and Defiance: the story of Bolivia's battle against globalization (Ed by Jim Shultz)

It has been ten years since Bechtel, the San Francisco-based international engineering and construction giant, was forced out of Bolivia due to riots against the price hikes they imposed on water bills. The story actually began in 1997 when the World Bank conditioned a loan to  Bolivia for water development in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city (population of 500,000). The conditional loan required that Cochabamba privatize their water supply system. Bolivia agreed and a contract went out to the lone bidder, Bechtel, who formed a local subsidiary “Aquas del Tunari” to run the water system. One of their first actions was to substantially raise the water rates to all people in the city with access to water. Though Bechtel said the increase was marginal, investigations showed that the water rates went up by 50 to 90%, leaving some poor families with a choice between food and water. These rate hikes were introduced without significant improvements in the water system in Cochabamba and occurred within weeks of Aquas del Tunari taking over responsibility for the water supply of the city. Given these large, unjustified rate increases, it was understandable that protests and riots broke out in Cochabamba. The government sent in troops to defend Bechtel, and an unarmed 17 year old boy was killed by the Bolivian Army; at least 175 others were injured. But the rioting and protests continued until in April 2000, when Bechtel was forced to leave the country and the water supply company they had formed reverted to public ownership.

In November 2001, Bechtel and its chief co-investor, Abengoa of Spain, filed a case with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), asking for restitution of $25 million in damages and $25 million in lost profits. But after four years of international public protest aimed at the companies, including protests in San Francisco that forced Bechtel to close its office twice, Bechtel and Abengoa agreed to abandon their case in exchange for a token payment. But while this was a victory for Bolivia and the people of Cochabamba, hundreds of foreign investment firms are seeking settlements from developing countries, usually with the support of their governments, so that poor countries will continue to serve the bidding of giant international firms. Only the court of public opinion, if it remains vibrant and activist, targeting the home offices of these giants, can achieve an equitable settlement, such as that in the Bechtel-Bolivia case. The idea that the world’s water supply should be a source of huge profiteering, serving corporate greed, will be with us for a long time and we should all be indignant and vigilant, for it is likely to resurface as an issue, time and again and in more subtle ways.

One of the more subtle ways that has found a home in America is the use of massive sales of bottled water, a behavior sometimes fed by the idea that public water is unsuitable for drinking. I have briefly commented on this issue earlier. Quite often, the company that bottles the water gets it from the same source as that used by the public. Public drinking water is widely viewed by experts as safe, but vulnerable. There have been notable exceptions to this generalization and there is always fear that drilling or spills of waste may contaminate a local water supply for years. So, while our water supply can be viewed as safe at the moment, we have to remain continuously aware of any developments that might endanger our water supply and the chemical composition of our water.  Water and water rights will surely become more contentious in the future, as the population grows and land in some regions becomes more arid. I look to Arizona as one of the first states to ban new golf course construction, and perhaps begin to tear a few up, as water shortages become more and more acute and water rationing becomes the daily rule. Climatologists predict that the Southwest will become hotter and drier as the decades of this century roll by.

One of the heroes of the Bechtel conflict was Evo Morales, now President of Bolivia. He was a legislator in the 1990s, when they were asked to approve a $ 50 million loan to “Aquas del Tunari,” the water subsidiary of Bechtel. Eventually, it was revealed that a Bolivian politician was involved in the loan arrangement and Morales began to organize  the “peasant movement” as an activist group against the loan, which spilled over into action against the water company once the price gouging began. Morales was elected President of Bolivia in 2006 and again in 2009.

In December 2009, Morales took a new policy to the Copenhagen climate meeting and presented a view that the major economies of the world should pay reparations to poor countries that had virtually nothing to do with the initiation of the climate change threat that lies in our future.  He demanded that the industrialized countries should stick to the Kyoto commitment to control carbon dioxide  so that the projected increase in global temperatures is held to one degree centigrade. He blamed capitalism for the misfortunes of our future.  He was recently  named “World Hero of Mother Earth” by the United Nations General Assembly in recognition of his commitment to issues of the environment and the impact of global climate change, for which he asserts the following: he accuses the Western countries, who have caused the threat of global climate change, to have backed off the Kyoto plan and adopted instead a plan coming out of the Copenhagen meeting that will allow the Earth’s temperature to rise by two degrees centigrade, instead of just one, as the Kyoto meeting (which the U.S. did not agree to) tried to establish. Morales claims that the difference from one to two degrees, will be sufficient to melt the glaciers of the Andes and Himalayas and through that alone, cause massive water shortages for millions of indigenous people, both within and outside of Bolivia.

Continuing with the theme he established in Copenhagen, last week, Evo organized the “World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (April 19-22, 2010), held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the conflict site that first brought Evo Morales into political ascendancy. Naomi Klein attended the meeting and reported on it in The Guardian. Morales’ proposal is to develop a fund for replenishing the earth. From an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Morales states “According to information we have, we find that the developed countries spend $1.7 trillion, supposedly for defense and international security, but that actually means in military intervention in other countries. Imagine, with $1.7 trillion for life and for nature, that would be so important. And that is the right of Mother Earth, the right to regenerate Mother Earth’s caring capacity. It’s very important.”

While the kinds of climate changes the major industrialized countries are talking about may or may not be manageable by them (rising water levels, more arid land, changes in bio-cycling behavior, changes in salinity, weather patterns, increased velocity of hurricanes, etc), these changes will have devastating impact on the poorer countries, such as Bolivia which, for some regions, could be in danger of losing their water supply due to the disappearance of mountain glaciers: in many regions of the Andes, glaciers are rapidly disappearing, such that any glacier-based water supply is potentially in danger.

The difference between the Northern and the Southern hemispheres in this regard could not be more fundamental: the industrialized North, including the United States, looks on Bolivia as a country in need of “climate aid,” whereas Bolivia looks on financial assistance as a form of “climate debt.” Which interpretation do you favor? When Bolivia and Ecuador refused to rubberstamp the Copenhagen Accord, which ignored the pleas of Morales, the US government cut their climate aid by $3m and $2.5m respectively.

What Morales was attempting to do with his summit meeting was to draw attention to the fact that, by giving the major polluters of the world the exclusive rights to determine the response to global climate change, it leaves out consideration of those that might be more seriously impacted by the environmental catastrophes ahead of us. Such a one-sided solution invites further global enslavement of indigenous peoples, like those living in Bolivia. It’s a different, albeit contorted version of bio-terrorism. In retaliation, Morales has proposed that 1) nature should be given rights to protect itself from the devastation of over-development, deforestation and destruction of ecosystems (a “universal declaration of Mother Earth rights”); 2) those that violate those rights should face legal, internationally-enforced punishments (a “climate justice tribunal”); 3) that poor countries who are facing devastation from global climate change should be given support as one component of “climate debt” and 4) there should be a world-wide forum for people to express their views on these topics (a “world people’s referendum on climate change”). You can read further about this fascinating summit at Democracy Center, which includes YouTube presentations by attendees.

As Naomi Klein states “by contrast [to the United Nations and the Copenhagen Agreement], the climate change policy brought to Copenhagen by Bolivia was drafted by social movements through a participatory process, and the end result was the most transformative and radical vision so far.”  This movement, if it gains momentum, could become a tipping point that alters the international dialogue on global climate change. It is however unlikely that a group numbering initially at about 10,000, could forge a meaningful coalition if their first task is the elimination of capitalism. However, it is already too late to avoid some complications related to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Our planet will surely get hotter as time goes by, with an impact on human populations that cannot easily be projected. Much depends on the extent to which sea levels rise and coastal populations are forced to move inland. These changes may be apparent over the course of many decades but almost surely not by tomorrow. Yet the danger that climatologists worry about is the possibility that atmospheric carbon dioxide could reach a point where it rapidly accelerates into a higher state of earth temperatures through a positive feedback system that involves melting the permafrost  of Iceland and the rapid melting of the polar ice caps, especially the Antarctic. This effect would release large quantities of methane, which would add significantly to the greenhouse effect imposed by the atmosphere. However, it is hard to imagine otherwise that the threat of global climate change is indeed a test of capitalism, a system of private greed that must be called upon now to solve a global problem long in the making, and one without doubt as to those forces that are primarily responsible for creating it. Will the industrialized countries take responsibility for glaciers melting in Bolivia? My guess is that Goldman Sachs will sell short on Bolivia’ future and the future of Cochabamba. Perhaps there really is a market for selling short on these new derivatives.

In summary, Bechtel begot Morales who is challenging capitalism and its impact on our planetary future. Will the movement he helped to develop be crushed by the power of corporatist influence or the Western democracies that view him as a pest? Or, will his movement, based on listening to and thinking about the future of his people, become a rallying cry for the voiceless indigenous people of the world, those who can think more clearly about the future of the planet in light of what we know today? We should all stay tuned on this one, it may be the brightest light towards our future we have seen in many, many years.

RFM