We take it for granted. After all, it's all around us — it literally falls from the sky — but in some parts of the world water is even more precious a natural resource than the petroleum we in the West cherish so highly. However it's still a naturally occurring resource, one readily available through springs and water holes to those in the desert and to us in more temperate climates rivers, rain barrels, and the tap in our kitchen sink. Of course we in the city pay for the water we use — usually in the form of a metered rate to our municipality — but the cost is usually so insignificant we barely notice. After all nobody is trying to profit from selling us our water or treating our sewage, just covering the costs.
However as recent events have shown us, nothing is safe from privatization and corporate greed, and water is no exception. Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank debt laden countries are being coerced into selling their water rights to American and European private corporations. The results have invariably been disastrous for the general populations as water prices have risen by as much as 50%. In Bolivia, where the rights were sold to Bechetel, an American company, in the late 1990s, the result was what's become known as the water wars. People rioted all over the country in response until the company was forced to cancel the contract.
Of course companies don't need the World Bank or the IMF to do all their dirty work for them. In an age where natural disasters and wars are considered golden opportunities for doing business, all a good corporate executive need do is wait for the next tsunami, hurricane, or earthquake to destroy some poor country's infrastructure, and with the right political connections they could end up owning the rights to almost anything they want. Offer to help secure the necessary loans from the World Bank to finance rebuilding that dam and then generously offer to purchase the rights to the water the dam controls in order to help pay back the loan, and everybody's happy — except for the people who are all of sudden paying for something they never had to before.
It's against this background of international greed Nigerian/Canadian author Carole Enahoro has set her first novel, Doing Dangerously Well, being released by Random House Canada May 11, 2010. However it's not just Big Business and the forces of globalization that come under attack in her book, as Enahoro takes shots at every side in the argument. Government officials in Nigeria, do-gooding liberals in North America, and of course corporate social climbers are all grist for her mill.
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