Will water corruption trump water security?

Fortunately the GCR makes important recommendations for reform, including the scaling up and refining of the diagnosis of corruption in water, strengthening the regulatory oversight of water management and use, ensuring fair competition for and accountable implementation of water contracts, and adopting and implementing transparency and participation as guiding principles for water governance.

Turning back to Australia, if one reviews the submissions made to the 2009 biennial assessment of implementation of the National Water Initiative one could be forgiven for thinking that either severe pulmonary incompetence or "state capture" is at play in this country.

It is chilling to imagine a world without water security. Not only is water essential for life but, as the February report of the Pacific Institute points out, it is crucial for the global economy: it drives every industry from agriculture to electric power to silicon chip manufacturing, and activities as diverse as apparel manufacture and tourism also rely on supplies of clean, potable water to survive and grow. That water is the economic linchpin no doubt explains why the World Bank has already closely examined this for one of Australia's largest trading partners.

Finally, also courtesy of the Pacific Institute (PDF 1.01MB), we are able to track and categorise events related to water and conflict.

What is clear from all this is that the current way we regulate, manage, and use water in this country is dysfunctional and must change. Apart from the Government letting us see how we are faring by releasing immediately the National Land & Water Resources Audit Final Report: 2002-2008, it must kick its army of salaried officialdom into action to examine first, the potential for and consequences of water (and wastewater) corruption; second, how government's ability to provide water security notwithstanding water scarcity will be hindered if the management and control of water is in the hands of global marketeers (like investment firms, banks, private-equity firms, hedge funds, pension funds, technology corporations and sovereign wealth funds) and, last but not least, the extent to which water corruption, privatisation and state capture has already occurred.

It is our government's role to calculate and make provision for raising the public capital required for water research and technology and the replacement and creation of water infrastructure; if it fails to do that you can bet that the water investment opportunities for the marketeers will come thick and fast as the financial crisis deepens.

Just as there is an uncomfortable feeling that the coming water crisis is inescapable, there is a similar sense of inevitability about the truth of Maude Barlow's predictions that we will continue to witness corporate giants force developing countries to privatise their water supply for profit. Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk water export schemes. Corrupt governments use water for economic and political gain. Military control of water emerges and a new geo-political map and power structure forms, setting the stage for world water wars.