In developed countries like the U.S., many communities have already found their water supplies turned over to private corporations, who then raise rates through the roof in their insatiable search for higher profits.
Privatizing the water supply inevitably results in monopolies, because there is no choice of service. Water is pumped from the ground and distributed through treatment plants and existing infrastructure that the private company simply takes over. Furthermore, privatization removes the community’s voice regarding their water service. When a local government controls water service, if the citizens are dissatisfied with it, they can voice that dissatisfaction at town meetings, with letters and phone calls, and at the ballot box if it becomes necessary. With private organizations, the community doesn’t have that ability, and they’re stuck with high prices and deteriorating quality of service.
Conservative economist Peter Morici, in discussing problems with Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” budget, quite correctly says that there are times when the market just doesn’t work. Public utilities is one of those areas. Despite conservative circles claiming that the private market knows best and is most efficient, there are times when the opposite is true. A company has its profits and dividends to put first. They’re concerned with their customers’ needs when they’re concerned that they’ll lose market share for having lousy customer service. However, a company that doesn’t have to worry about losing market share by hiking prices and cutting corners to help inflate profits, will inevitably do so. The water market has extremely low competition and it will likely remain that way (look at the electric companies), so there’s no buffer there to help ensure customers continue to get quality service at reasonable prices.
Furthermore, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in three people worldwide lives without adequate water today, and the problem is getting worse, not better, as the world’s population grows. The WHO says that one of the major problems involves water distribution, even in areas where rainfall or other sources of water are plentiful. A company with profits to consider is not likely to spend a lot of money bringing water to areas where they think they’ll have trouble recouping that cost. Indeed, they’re more likely to pump water out of that area instead, particularly if it’s in an underdeveloped area, and bring it to more profitable areas.Read more: thanks Josh for the Nestle Water Rights
This week, President Obama is making his first major visit to Africa since taking office. One topic that’s likely high on his agenda: US investment in African agriculture.With the global population expected to top 9 billion by 2050, the Obama administration is pushing hard to use foreign development funds to expand farming in the developing world, and especially in Africa. Since 2009, when Obama made a pledge at the G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy, to devote massive resources to global “food security,” Congress has committed more than $3.5 billion to an agricultural development program called “Feed the Future.” Congress has since renewed the initiative’s funding.
This is something I want to hear viewpoints, perspectives, theories, etc. about because to me there are just so many things that don’t add up.
Let’s start with a simple, two-part question. How much money has been donated to Africa over the last half century? And how much have those donations achieved?
Well, obviously we cannot put an exact number on the amount of money donated to Africa in the last 50 years. The question is not intended to be answered literally, but rather generally.
Quote:
| While Mr Bush has been severely criticised for the invasion of Iraq, his green credentials, and the general deterioration of relations with the rest of the world, his African record has won considerable support.At the top of the list is the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar), initiated in 2003.
At the time just 50,000 Africans were on anti-retroviral drugs.
Since then the US has pumped $18bn (£12bn) into fighting HIV/Aids – much of it in Africa.
By 2007, 1.3 million Africans were on medication, much of it paid for by the Bush administration. >>more<<
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Foreign Aid for Development Assistance
Author And Page Information
- This page:http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance.
- To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print version:
Foreign aid or (development assistance) is often regarded as being too much, or wasted on corrupt recipient governments despite any good intentions from donor countries. In reality, both the quantity and quality of aid have been poor and donor nations have not been held to account.
There are numerous forms of aid, from humanitarian emergency assistance, to food aid, military assistance, etc. Development aid has long been recognized as crucial to help poor developing nations grow out of poverty.
In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their GNI (Gross National Income) as official international development aid, annually. Since that time, despite billions given each year, rich nations have rarely met their actual promised targets. For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.
Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations:
- Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and services from donor countries
- Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most
- Aid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products, while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products
“After decades in which agriculture and nutrition didn’t always get the attention they deserved,” Obama said in an address last year, “we put the fight against global hunger where it should be, which is at the forefront of global development.”But the US government’s motivation for investing such a large sum in Feed the Future isn’t entirely altruistic. Here’s a look at some of the other reasons behind the sudden enthusiasm for agriculture in the developing world.I’ve heard that hunger had something to do with the Arab Spring. Is that true?<<<>>>
Possibly. The impetus for Feed the Future goes back to the food price crisis of 2007-08, when prices for basic commodities like corn rose dramatically all over the world. Among middle-class consumers in the United States and Europe, the spike in prices went largely unnoticed. But in developing nations such as Côte d’Ivoire and Haiti,(Just where did all the money go that was donated world wide after the earthquake, that was supposed to go towards food, etc? Oh I know adminstrative costs, greedy politicans?) where families typically spend a large portion of their incomes on food, it led to riots. Some observers theorized that the price spike hastened the start of the Arab Spring.At a May 2008 hearing on the food price crisis, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) predicted that shortages of food “are likely to recur frequently if the United States and the global community fail to open up agricultural trade and invest in agricultural productivity in the developing world.” The damage of the food crisis, he added, “likely would have been ameliorated if more of the world’s poor farmers had access to better technology, titled land, small loans, extension support, and accessible markets.”Do US businesses stand to profit from all this new farming development in Africa?<<>>
The term “Arab Spring” is an allusion to the Revolutions of 1848,
1848 painting titled Germania, by Philipp Veit
The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples[3] or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history, but within a year,reactionary forces had regained control, and the revolutions collapsed.
The revolutionary wave began in France in February, and immediately spread to most of Europe and parts of Latin America. Over 50 countries were affected, but with no coordination or cooperation among the revolutionaries in different countries. Five factors were involved:
widespread dissatisfaction with political leadership; demands for more participation in government and democracy; the demands of the working classes; the upsurge of nationalism; and finally, the regrouping of the reactionary forces based on the royalty, the aristocracy, the army, and the peasants.>>more<<
which is sometimes referred to as “Springtime of the People”, and thePrague Spring in 1968. The first specific use of the term Arab Springas used to denote these events may have started with the American political journal Foreign Policy.[41] Marc Lynch, referring to his article in Foreign Policy,[42] writes “Arab Spring—a term I may have unintentionally coined in a January 6, 2011 article”.[43] Joseph Massad on al-Jazeera said the term was “part of a US strategy of controlling [the movement's] aims and goals” and directing it towards American-style liberal democracy.[41] Due to the electoral success of Islamist parties following the protests in many Arab countries, the events have also come to be known as “Islamist Spring” or “Islamist Winter”.>>more<<
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