The Green Movement of Sri Lanka organized a colourful and high impact demonstration to mark International Water Day and protest against its privatization. We have been heavily involved in campaigning to receive equitable and free access to this natural life source and vehemently disagree with its value as a commodity. This campaign was held outside parliament over the first day, and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) on the second day for maximum results. Sri Lanka has its own elaborate and extremely effective water system which has been managed for centuries and maintained and shared communally. Clear entitlement rules, along with effective distribution and access, ensured community benefit and co-operation, with different communities using different ways as they know best. More recently, however, multi national companies and international financial institutions have attempted to manipulate nature’s gifts to their own benefit. From the ‘development’ and ‘conservation’ disguise, they are marketing water as something to be controlled, bought and sold in order to curb predicted future shortages. In reality, community owned water will become corporate, and shortages will be in terms of access and entitlement, with everyday local people suffering. Privatization began in the 1990’s and is big business, with annual profits of $400 billion. The key players in South Asia are the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, who impose policy conditions for privatization of water in return for financial help. This is already penetrating into Sri Lankan life, with policy documents and arrangements being drafted, and widespread ‘experiments’ adverrsly affecting rural communities.
The Greens demonstrated their ideas to the general public and engaged them in a sharing and learning experience where people found out about IWMI’s intentions and the threat of privatization. Most people who stopped did not know anything about the water issue, therefore the campaign was a huge success in terms of alerting people to the truth, and giving them the tools to address this.
