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	Spike in Food Prices Projected by 2013 by Joanna Foster New York Times   March 7, 2012   In 2008 and in 2011, the world was rocked by riots and by revolutions coinciding with spikes in food prices. Now researchers are projecting that by 2013, food prices will soar to unparalleled heights, causing widespread hunger in the most vulnerable populations and social unrest, with an enormous potential for loss of human life.   The computer modeling that generated the prediction of a food crisis was first published by the New England Complex Systems Institute in September. The modeling has gained considerable credibility by accurately predicting food prices over the last 10 months. The research indicates that the crucial factors behind food price increases are the conversion of corn crops to ethanol and investor speculation on the agricultural futures market.   “There are two policy decisions we’ve identified as key drivers,” said Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the institute. “The first is the promotion of ethanol conversion, which provides the U.S. with less than 1 percent of its energy but has a much larger effect on global food availability.” The second is the deregulation of commodity markets by Congress’s Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, the report said.   Steps have been taken in the United States to address those factors. The nation’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission agreed in October to limit the number of commodity contracts that any investor could hold in agriculture or energy, and American ethanol subsidies were eliminated in December.   Still, Dr. Bar-Yam is skeptical that either of these steps will prevent food prices from spiraling out of control. The federal government still guarantees demand for 37 percent of the national corn crop, he said, and before the end of ethanol subsidies, about 40 percent of the corn crop was being converted to ethanol.   And there is strong opposition to the commodities commission’s new regulations, he said, and no guarantee that what goes into effect at the end of 2012 will have real teeth. Moreover, even if one of these measures is effective, speculation or ethanol conversion could have enough of an impact to push food prices past the reach of the world’s poor, Dr. Bar-Yam argues.   “Those who stand to profit from speculation claim that it cannot have an effect on actual food prices,” he said. “Once people understand that markets are not always in equilibrium and that buying futures can affect real prices, we hope they will take action.” Visit the related web page
	Water and sanitation have been recognized as human rights by IPS, AFP & agencies   21 March 2012   On World Water Day, United Nations water and sanitation expert Catarina de Albuquerque called on countries not to go back on their decisions to recognize the right to water and sanitation for all, and act consistently with them. The right to water and sanitation was explicitly recognised by the United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Council in 2010.   “Some States, including Canada and the United Kingdom, are apparently proposing the removal of an explicit reference to the right to water and sanitation for all from the first draft of the ‘Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development’ outcome document,” warned the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation. This declaration is currently being discussed in New York.   “States are wasting their time on re-negotiating their own decisions rather than moving forward to implement the right to water and sanitation for all,” Ms. de Albuquerque stressed. “We should be marking World Water Day with progress, not debating semantics and certainly not back-tracking on these issues.”   “In the context of the Rio+20 agenda,” she said, “who does not want a future where every single individual enjoys safe drinking water? Who does not want a future where nobody dies due to drinking unsafe water? Who does not want to eradicate the indignity and humiliation of open defecation?”   “In order to achieve the future we want, we need to again underline our commitments to the human right to water and sanitation. We need to speak up for the millions who are marginalized and forgotten – people sleeping on the street, girls who walk miles to fetch water every day, boys who drop out of school because of diarrhoea, people who cannot access water because of their disabilities.”   We should not forget that billions still lack a safe supply of water and access to safe sanitation,” Ms. de Albuquerque underscored.   “Rio+20 and post-2015 development goals should not betray the previous commitments on the right to water and sanitation. It is now time to focus on the world population who only have access to unclean and unsafe water and inadequate sanitation,” the United Nations Special Rapporteur appealed on World Water Day.   March 2012   Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians and Food & Water Watch, criticizes the core mission of the World Water Forum (WWF):   “Water and sanitation have been recognized as human rights. The challenge now is to have governments implement these rights as quickly as possible now. It’s a poor starting point for the World Water Forum to fail to recognize these fundamental rights.”   “Whoever controls water controls a great source of power and of course a great source of profit,” says João Ferreira, a Portuguese member of the European Parliament, in Brussels. “This resource cannot be managed privately and untamed privatisation will lead to a disaster”.   Back in 2001, Gérard Mestrallet, CEO of the transnational water giant GDF- Suez, highlighted his company’s "commitment to fight for better access" to safe water and sanitation throughout the world, in order to put an end to all deadly water-borne diseases, from children’s diarrhoea to parasitic diseases to dysentery.   Over a decade later, at least 1.8 million children continue to die each year as a result of diarrhoea.   In addition, over 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and some 2.6 billion people lack even the most basic sanitation.   Civil Society groupss view the Forum as an outmoded apparatus, lagging woefully behind the movement for "water justice" around the world.   "If the right to water was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on Jul. 28, 2010, it is not thanks to the (World Water Forum/WWF). Rather, it is thanks to the fight of social movements," says Jean-Claude Oliva, a water expert.   One of the primary objections to the WWF is that its decision makers often defer to private companies to make critical decisions about water distribution; including the heads of multinational like Coca-Cola and Nestlé.   "They (WWF) calls upon the private sector to solve the problem and we refuse this because corporations will privatise and monitor water all over the globe," Kim Lê Quang, a Belgian representative, told IPS.   In contrast, the Alternative Water Forum with representatives from some 50 countries calls for public management of water resources; seeking to pressure governments to include the right to clean drinking water and sanitation in national constitutions, as a means to ensure the implementation of the right to water as a basic human right.   Civil society members promote the public management of water, especially through "public-public partnerships" (PUPs), which they see as benefiting all stakeholders.   Establishing a non-commercial relationship, the municipality can provide a transparent and accountable service, involving community based organizations to enhancing the role of the community by building management capacity at the local level.   In order to assist communities from the developing world to repossess their water service, the sewage authority for Paris, SIAAP, developed a unique partnership with the city of Hue in Vietnam, to empower local citizens to renovate and plan the future design of the sewage system.   Likewise, the public water authority for Paris, Eaux de Paris, worked with the engineering school of Sfax in Tunisia, to share techniques and promote best practices.   Such models allow communities to set affordable prices for everyone, instead of relying on market and profit to dictate prices.   The battle for water as a public good and a human right began in earnest with what was called Bolivia’s water wars in 2000, when local communities waged fierce protests against the privatisation and commodification – and the soaring prices that immediately followed – of water.   There is a strong awareness of the perils of privatization in Latin America, which has the strongest public ownership of natural resources of any region. The Bolivian model of local control of water supplies was emulated across Latin America and elsewhere. "The privatization model is failing, as it advances neither the right to water nor concrete access to water for people in need," say civil society activists.   Citizen management of water resources, and the recognition of water, as a communal resource which belongs to all of humanity is fundamental.   March 2012   The trend to the privatisation and commercialisation of water services, which set in the 1980s and continued throughout the 1990s, slowed due to the process’ own failures, and has given rise to a return of those services into efficient public management, according to a new book titled "Remunicipalisation: Putting water back in public hands" says the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) in cooperation with several non-governmental organisations.   Martin Pigeon, an expert for public services at CEO warned that "EU institutions, are now pushing very strongly the governments in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy to re-privatise their municipal water systems".   He said that the remunicipalisation trend needs "ongoing committed citizens participating in the process to master the multiple challenges the public water management sector is facing now.   Another author, David McDonald, says that, while the reasons for remunicipalisation are quite diverse, they "stem in no small part from the failures of water privatisation."   McDonald said that "even the World Bank (one of the main supporters of privatisation in the first place) has called for a ‘rethink’ of privatisation policies, having recognised the regulatory problems associated with multinational water providers, and having seen the effects of a profit-driven service delivery model on workers, low-income households and the environment."   McDonald said the commercialisation of water continues "largely through the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs).   The privatisation of water services in the Argentinian capital shows that the PPPs promoted by international financial institutions, and private water management multinationals, constitutes a dangerous legal trap for the government and society.   Argentina, which terminated its contract with the French company Suez in 2006, is potentially facing a fine that could amount to hundreds of million dollars from the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.   The fine is a penalty imposed upon the Argentinian government, for having terminated the contract before its legal expiration with Suez for Buenos Aires water systems, even though the company"s performance had been grossly inadequate.   "In Brussels, Belgium, it took a major scandal - when the private sector company closed a sewage plant for a week, sending raw sewage directly into the river - and two years of investigations by independent experts to realise that the contract contained well-hidden loopholes and that the company had built a plant smaller than what was expected".   The study highlights that, despite the promising perspectives of remunicipalisation of water services, the commercialisation of water continues.   http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/water-scarcity-to-drive-conflict-hit-food-and-energy-experts/
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