Water Portal

From Powerbase
Revision as of 19:58, 31 October 2008 by Kyle R Mitchell (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search

Welcome to the Water Portal on Spinprofiles

Welcome to the Water Portal on Spinprofiles—your guide to networks of power, lobbying and deceptive PR within the water industry.


This water portal will track and profile global and regional governing institutions, lobby associations, policy planning organisations, think tanks and agents all involved in the water industry. It will include those of a pro-privatisatisation persuasion but also those who are promoting an alternative vision orientated towards publicly owned and participatory systems.


Spinprofiles has a policy of strict referencing and is overseen by an Managing editor and a Sysop and several Associate Portal editors. The Editors of the Water Portal are Tommy Kane and Kyle Mitchell.

Priority pages on Water



(This is a list of pages that need work - See more...)

Context of the Water Debate

Often taken for granted, water is vital to life. It is the essential component in all aspects and activities related to our well-being and existence, including food and energy production and manufacturing in general. It’s clear that if our water supply continues to dwindle, and/or, water became unaffordable, then our lives would be detrimentally transformed. Millions are already experiencing and suffering from the mismanagement and unequal allocation of water. Between 1.1 and 1.5 billion people in the world lack access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. 1.8 million Children die each year from diarrhoea – a water related disorder. In total, 2.2 million people die each year due to low quality drinking water and/or lack of sanitation – that is 42, 000 people a week, 90 percent of whom are children (WHO/UNICEF, 2005: 15). These horrific consequences, of exclusion to socially necessary goods and services, are catastrophic, yet entirely preventable.

Access to and control of water, have been contentious issues for centuries. Most recently this struggle has taken the form of a conflict over the increasing commercialisation, privatisation and liberalisation of fresh water goods and services. This shift in regulation, which has been introduced throughout much of the world, can be characterised not only by its nature – an increase in private sector participation in the water sector and thus a reliance on the free market as the model upon which society structures the governance, production and distribution of socially necessary goods and services – but also the geo-political climate within which this shift takes place, namely, the era of economic globalisation.

Indeed, this shift has been facilitated by processes of economic globalisation – processes that are defined by the dominant neo-liberal policies of deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation. Economic globalisation has done more than just facilitate the shift from public to private sector however. When it comes to governing resources which hitherto were considered public goods or part of the global commons, neoliberal policies have changed the nature and structure of governance. The shift in regulatory power has meant a reduction (and in some cases an outright eclipse) in the planning capacity of local, regional and national authorities.


Issues

Text needed here

Recent Articles on SpinWatch

Rss Water

Categories

There are a list of categories associated with this page:


Recent changes to pages on Water

<DynamicArticleList>

 title=Newest Pages
 type=new
 count=10

</DynamicArticleList>

<DynamicArticleList>

 title=Recently Updated Articles
 type=update
 count=10

</DynamicArticleList>

References and Resources

Text needed here

Getting Started

Looking for somewhere to start?

To learn how you can edit any article right now, visit Spinprofiles:About, Welcome, newcomers, our Help page, Frequently Asked Questions, A quick guide to editing or experiment in the sandbox.

Research and Writing Tips

Article guidelines | How to research front groups | Resources for studying propaganda | Research using the web

Can you help?

Spinprofiles can be made more effective if more people join the project. If you have research or writing skills or just spare time, you can help.

If you are unsure where to start, you could expand some of the recently created but currently very brief articles. (If you look at the recent changes page you will see some noted as being 'stubs' - articles that may just be a line or two and needing to be fleshed out). So if you would like to add to some of those you would be most welcome.

There is an automatically updated page which includes the pages which have been signalled by Spinprofiles users as most wanted. In addition there is a page which includes a list of Things you can do to help.

Or if you would like some other suggestions closer to your interests you could drop Spinprofiles editor, David Miller an email. His address is editor AT spinprofiles.org

Start Here


Spinprofiles history

Spinprofiles is a collaborative venture initiated by Spinwatch in collaboration with Lobbywatch, GM Watch Red Star Research and Corporate Watch, but put into effect by a wide variety of volunteers and independent researchers.

Contributors are now working on 19,154 articles.

Disclaimer: Spinprofiles is an encyclopedia of people, issues and groups shaping the public agenda. It is a project of the Spinwatch—email editor AT spinprofiles.org.

Antispam note: To avoid attracting spam email robots, email addresses on Spinprofiles are written with AT in place of the usual symbol, and we have removed "mail to" links. Replace AT with the correct symbol to get a valid address. We regret the inconvenience this entails. Campaign for more effective antispam regulations.


References