The Earth summit conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 laid down the concept of water as a market commodity. Reports by the World Bank in 2005 indicated that $180 billion per annum were needed to provide potable water worldwide, whereas the available funds amounted to a mere $60 to $80 billion, and international financing institutions have leaned hard on underdeveloped countries to privatise potable water production. This however, does not take into consideration the social dimensions of the issue. Privatisation is a drastic solution to raise the quality of fresh water on one hand and, on the other, to achieve the UN goal of decreasing the populace without access to fresh water from two to one billion by 2010. International financial institutions insist on linking the provision of loans to the privatisation of the water sector. In Egypt, the issue is a contentious one.
Credible service
Water expert Diaa’ Eddin al-Qoussi says that there is a need to compensate the costs of good all-round supply of potable water, irrigation water and water for industrial purposes. “A credible service can be offered versus a rise in price to coincide with human consumption as well as industrial use and power generation,” Dr Qoussi says. “But irrigation water runs into technical, social, and economic problems. Most farmers own very small parcels of land, and there is a huge number of them. It would not be practical for each to have a separate metre, nor would it warrant the number of officials required for the purpose. Farmers—who constitute 40 per cent of the Egyptian labour force—are very poor, and they would have to pay the required taxes in addition to the cost of drawing water. The hard-to-shoulder additional costs would oblige many to seek other jobs which, under the current conditions, would be difficult to find, and would entail a decline in agricultural activity. “To be honest, there must be a difference between a simple planter who cultivates less than an acre and an investor who cultivates hundreds.”
Impossible policy
Egypt has repeatedly announced it rejects water pricing, and that the private sector would never become involved in water administration and distribution.
A study by the Arab organisation for agricultural development warned that countries obtaining water quotas under international agreements, such as between Egypt and Sudan or Iraq and Syria, would have to reach a settlement on sums ranging between $11 to 28 billions per annum as a value of the water they claim under formerly-agreed quotas.
The study indicated that Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Iraq and Mauritania—which include about half the population of the Arab world, and produce two thirds of its agricultural output—would be most affected by selling international water. The financial burden of paying for metered water would result in severe social and economic damage. Water-consuming crops such as sugar or rice, and industries based on them, founded on an economy of free water, would severely suffer. At the very least, the cost of agriculture would rise, possibly leading to a severe reduction in produce, a change to crops which require less water, and much weaker export opportunities.