| The Victory of the Italian People is a Victory for the People’s Global Struggle against Water Privatization! |
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| Written by Administrator |
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For the first time since 1995, a referendum managed to reach a quorum in Italy and of the 57% of the population that voted (about 26 million), 96% voted to keep their water services public. This is a remarkable achievement for Italians and for the thousands of activists who spent months in the spring and early summer doing outreach at local markets and public spaces, handing out information, and registering people in a petition to demand a series of national referenda to overturn the water privatization law.
Two laws on water privatization strongly being lobbied in Italy’s congress for approval:
The first grants private companies, wishing to participate in the public water services sector, ‘equal treatment and no discrimination’, and encourages the former to buy up to 70% of any listed public water company. The second suggests that the price of water services be decided on the basis of a guaranteed return on investment, meaning that the private companies could then charge as much as they wanted to guarantee a higher profit.
The water campaign in Italy points out that water privatization is clearly global in scope. In spite of the UN recognition of the human right to water in 2010, transnational corporations are gaining more control of water supplies across the world, and are selling them back to local communities for profit, often with the backing of global and regional economic institutions such as the World Bank and ADB. Accordingly, the movement against water privatization becomes a struggle shared by peoples from various regions of the world. The Italian people’s victorious water movement has once again proven how peoples’ struggles can and will succeed through coordinated campaigning and capacity-building in research, education and advocacy. Indeed, there is no discounting the fact that the voices of the people are increasingly becoming powerful in the global movement towards people’s control over water resources. We express our solidarity and admiration for the Italian peoples’ remarkable and inspirational campaign. Clearly, this victory is not only for Italy, but constitutes an important landmark in the people’s ongoing struggle against water privatization in different countries across the world!
Source: http://www.sierraclub.ca/en/main-page/victory-italian-water-movement-citizens-overturn-water-privatization-laws |