Africa

Intense military activity is reported in Khartoum and Omdurman and bridges across the River Nile close.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Sep 21 2021 (IPS)

As developing countries struggle to cope with the pandemic, they risk being set back further by restrictive fiscal policies. These were imposed by rich countries who no longer practice them if they ever did. Instead, the global South urgently needs bold policies to ensure adequate relief, recovery and reform.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Bold fiscal responses needed
Governments must mobilise and deploy resources sustainably and fairly, consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With rich countries’ refusal to help more, adequate government financing is crucial.

Taxation is typically a more sustainable, effective and accountable way of raising government fiscal resources. But the pandemic has imposed extraordinary demands requiring massive urgent spending.

National authorities can generate fiscal resources in two main ways, by collecting revenue or borrowing. Government borrowing is generally needed as revenue has been hit by the slowdown.

Massive fiscal resource mobilization and appropriate spending are needed to contain the contagion and prevent temporary recessions – e.g., due to lockdowns – from becoming debilitating protracted depressions.

Fiscal policy involves both government resource generation and spending. But developing countries have been far more conservative in spending compared to the rich. The latter have introduced much bolder relief and recovery packages.

In the short, medium and long term, both government spending and taxation must be progressive. Much depends on how revenue is raised and spent. Hence, both taxation and expenditure need to be considered.

Taxes less progressive now
Governments must quickly develop progressive ways to finance massive spending needed to protect both lives and livelihoods. Over the last four decades, many governments reduced progressive direct taxation, instead embracing regressive indirect taxes.

Higher tax rates on the wealthy made direct taxation progressive. The regression was mainly due to lobbying by powerful elites, including foreign investors. The influential Washington-based Bretton Woods international financial institutions led such advocacy.

Incomes of the wealthy are mainly from assets, rather than wages, salaries or payments for goods or services. But tax rates on the highly paid, as well as property, inheritance and corporate incomes have declined in most countries.

Wealth is often untaxed, or only lightly taxed at lower rates. New rules now allow assets to be moved and hidden abroad. Depending on how one estimates, between US$8–35 trillion is held offshore, obscuring wealth concentration and inequality.

Taxation can reduce existing inequalities, but rarely does so despite the widespread presumption that taxes are progressive overall. Worse, most state spending is regressive, little mitigated by highly publicised social spending.

Difficult to measure, pandemic impacts on various inequalities vary considerably. Nevertheless, the vicious cycle connecting economic disadvantage with vulnerability has worsened disparities.

Ensure progressive taxation
To be equitable, taxation must be progressive. More equitable tax systems should get more revenue from those most able to pay while reducing the burden on the needy. Wealth taxes are the most progressive way to raise revenue while also reducing inequalities.

Direct taxes on wealth and incomes are potentially progressive. Progressively higher rates and exemptions for the poor can ensure this. Low rates on investment income and assets – such as property, wealth and inheritance – can be increased. Besides reducing inequalities, these can finance progressive spending.

Taxing windfall and excess profits is not only publicly acceptable, but can also raise considerable funds. Some corporations and individuals have benefited greatly during the pandemic, e.g., US billionaires have reportedly become over a trillion dollars richer over the last year and a half.

In the longer term, progressive taxation means less reliance on indirect taxes – such as sales or consumption taxes, including value-added, or goods and services tax – which burden those with lower incomes much more.

Tax evasion by the wealthy must also be deterred. Companies using tax havens to pay less can be penalised, e.g., by disqualifying them from all government and state-owned enterprise contracts. Tax systems can thus be made more progressive by improving design and with strict, equitable enforcement.

Equitable recovery?
Ensuring equitable recovery requires urgent systemic reforms. Although unlikely to yield much more revenue in the near term due to the economic slowdown, introducing such reforms now will be politically much easier.

Taxation can transfer fiscal resources from the wealthy to the needy. Those living precariously, including those now at risk due to the pandemic and its broad impacts, urgently need help. But financing relief and recovery provides liquidity, averting protracted economic contraction and stagnation.

Some pandemic relief spending in many countries has been ‘captured’ by the politically well-connected, as political elites and their cronies seize the lucrative new opportunities. These compromise not only relief and recovery, but also reform efforts.

When relief and recovery are treated as temporary ‘one-off’ measures, they are unlikely to address pre-pandemic problems, including inequities. Governments should instead use the crisis to advance SDG solutions for both the medium and long-term.

Multilateral cooperation needed
International cooperation can help, but the rich countries’ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has long focused on addressing offshore tax evasion to secure more revenue for themselves.

A decade ago, it broadened its attention, but continued to insist on its own leadership at the expense of developing countries. It has thus effectively blocked multilateral tax cooperation for decades, ignoring the UN’s strong mandate from various Financing for Development and other summits.

Equitable international tax reforms remain urgent. But these have been undermined by earlier reforms encouraging cross-border flows of funds, enabling illicit financial flows from developing countries.

Although unlikely to yield much revenue for some time, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s global minimum corporate income tax proposal deserves strong qualified support.

Developing countries need to ensure that transnational companies are better taxed, instead of the current G7 proposal for a low rate. Revenue should be distributed according to where both production and consumption take place instead of just where sales occur.

Effectively checking tax abuses also requires access to financial information and common, equitable and transparent rules, not those imposed by the rich. But such outcomes can only be achieved through UN-led multilateralism with developing country governments participating as equals.

 

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By Sania Farooqui
NEW DELHI, India, Sep 20 2021 (IPS)

Last year, as the world grappled to survive the Covid-19 Pandemic, Megan Fernandas an accountant living in Toronto, was trying to face her biggest fear, not the COVID-19 virus, but missing her doctor’s appointment after surviving a rigorous fight against stage 2 breast cancer.

Meagan had just gotten back to her normal life when the news of the pandemic hit the world. “I live with my family here in the city and we were all at home, even now we barely go out, so we knew we could ensure not getting infected, but god forbid if I had a health escalation or a reaction to any medication, this was a very stressful time for me.

Dr. Monsura Haque

“We all know how difficult it is to get a doctor’s appointment, sometimes even if it’s an emergency, the wait period can take weeks, and only the lucky ones are able to find a personal physician. My fear was missing my monthly check-ups. This pandemic could ruin it all, just because we can’t get to a doctor on time. I just wish meeting a doctor was a simple and easy process,” says Fernandas.

Fast forward to September 2021, as Canada continues to fight the pandemic, come snap elections, parties have made several pledges to make sure Canada is prepared for the next pandemic – though experts warn “this could be trickier than politicians make it out to be”.

Earlier this month, Toronto-based research group ICES said that between August 29 and September 4, Peel, a region which has cases steadily rising, had the sixth highest positivity rate – 4.46 percent out of 34 public health regions in Ontario, which is Canada’s most populous province. The region has reported more than 114,000 cases since the pandemic began, with over 960 deaths.

The COVID-19 pandemic generated uneven experiences for millions of healthcare workers and physicians across the world. In Canada, with a health system battered by the pandemic, the country has reported more than 1.45 million cases and more than 26, 000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to John Hopkins University data.

What makes this worse is a report in 2019 stated that only 241 physicians per 100,ooo population were available in the country, indicating the sheer overburden on Canada’s health system through this global health crisis.

Dr. Joel Parungao

While there are a lot of discussion on making the integration of Internationally Trained Medical Doctors (ITMD) easier in Canada, Joel Parungao a trained physician from the Philippines with more than 5 years of experience in public health and hospital medicine managed to contribute his bit during the pandemic last year.

Despite experience and qualifications, Parungao joined the Ontario Ministry of Health as a Covid Case Manager.

“This job gave me an opportunity to “be in the frontline,” Parungao says. “A remote work-from-home job and we were deployed to a specific Public Health Unit conducting COVID case investigations and helping them deal with outbreaks. I was able to help the province and the country in fighting the pandemic,” Parungao says in an interview given to IPS News.

Parungao being amongst the very few who played a role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic is amongst the 13,000 ITMDs in Canada who despite qualifications and experience are yet to become licensed doctors in the country.

“I am still pursuing my dream to be a licensed doctor here in Canada. It’s difficult, given the amount of time and money you have to invest in just credentials verification, qualifying exams, and other required medical residency training,” says Parungao. “You have to be ready to work in ‘survival jobs’ that are completely out of the medical field at first and then find a way to move to an alternative health profession afterwards,” Parangao says.

One of the key challenges as reported here for ITMDs in Canada remains cost associated with licensing examinations, the CaRMS application process is often a barrier for newcomers. A report states that 47 % of foreign-educated health professionals are either unemployed or employed in non-health related positions that require only a high school diploma.

Dr. Monsura Haque, an international Medical Graduate from Bangladesh with almost 16 years of experience in medical practise says, “there is no doubt that Canada needs more doctors for all types of work, either clinical or alternative pathways. This pandemic reveals that need and the crisis in the healthcare system.”

While Dr. Monsura has no practical experience in clinical settings, with her speciality in Public Health, she volunteered in hospitals and University to gain more experience, while they were excellent opportunities for her, “those settings were really just using volunteers without any remuneration,” Haque says.

Health care systems across the world are undergoing massive challenges, strains and are not without faults. During the pandemic, access concerns, quality of care and the high costs of services which are not covered by insurance or by those who can’t afford it are few common traits across borders. For healthcare professionals the challenge has been access to PPE kits, long exhaustive hours, mental and physical trauma and these issues are further complicated in Canada by just the lack of the number of doctors available per person for COVID and non-COVID related cases.

The cost of healthcare is increasing, and Canada cannot afford to say it is going to focus on health care without including or evening mentioning the pool of ITMDs available and under utilized.

“Integration of ITMDs into the Canadian healthcare system requires a national strategy and approach by government policymakers and other regulatory bodies,” says Dr. Shafi Bhuiyan, ITMDs Canada Network (iCAN) Char and Global Health Expert.

“Canada has the opportunity to make these changes right now, I always say it will be a win-win situation for all. We have a pool of talented ITMDs who are under utilized or leaving their professionals due to such roadblocks. If these changes can be made, and we find a way to include ITMDs into our healthcare system, a lot can be achieved.” says Bhuiyan.

 

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Food experts have many and varied expectations of the UN Food System Summit. It's hoped decisions made here will help the world get back on track for the Sustainable Development Goals 2030. Credit: Alison Kentish

By Alison Kentish
DOMINICA, Sep 20 2021 (IPS)

Dubbed ‘the People’s Summit, the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) hopes to put the world back on a path to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, through food systems overhauling. From the tempered to the extremely optimistic, experts in various food system sectors share their expectations of transformation.

The world has been lagging on ambitious climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals, but the UNFSS is hoping that commitments to transform global food systems will get the world back on track to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

The inaugural UNFSS will take place virtually during the UN General Assembly High-Level Week, under the leadership of UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

It promises to bring together the public and private sectors, non-governmental organisations, farmers groups, indigenous leaders, youth representatives and researchers to outline a clear path to ensure that the world’s food production and distribution are safe, healthy, sustainable and equitable.

Learning from the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, the summit also hopes to make food production and distribution more resilient to vulnerabilities, stress and shocks.

Experts in sustainability and various food system sectors have been speaking about their expectations and hopes for a summit that is built on solutions to some of the world’s most pressing issues such as land degradation, inequality, rising hunger, and obesity.

Panellists at a Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN) ‘Fixing the Business of Food’ webinar held on September 16, 2021, were asked how optimistic they were, on a scale of 1 to 10, of real food systems transformation in the next 12 months, triggered by the private sector.

“I am going to give a full 10,” said Viktoria de Bourbon de Parme, Head of Food Processing at the World Benchmarking Alliance. “I am super optimistic,” she added. “I think we are there. Momentum is there, and it is going to happen.”

Executive Director of Food and Nature at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development Diane Holdorf is similarly optimistic.

“I would say an 8 out of 10, but I do have to preface this by saying that systems change is complex. With individual leading companies demonstrating what is possible and bringing others along, we are going to see for sure actual system changes,” she said.

Not all experts are optimistic that the UNFSS will bring about the urgent changes required for food systems transformation.

IPS spoke with Million Belay, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) head, about his expectations for the summit.

Belay, who is also an advisory board member for BCFN and a food systems researcher, said that he and alliance members disagree with the summit’s agenda and structure. The alliance represents farmers, pastoralists, hunter/gatherers, faith-based organisations, indigenous peoples and women’s groups,

“The pre-summit has happened in Rome. During that presummit, we had our own summit, organised by civil society mechanisms, and it was clear that farmers, fisherfolk, indigenous people, local groups, and women’s organisations were all saying no, the UNFFS summit does not represent us. There is no reason to be part of that,” Belay said.

Belay believes that the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) should have been responsible for organising the Summit.

“This is a space where the civil society in general and the civil society mechanism and governments come together to negotiate about food-related issues, so the agenda should have been set there,” he said, adding that, “the UNFSS has set up a scientific body as part of the structure, but we already have a scientific body in the CFS, that is called the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition. It is a scientific body, and you can say that we need to beef up this body, but they have established a totally different scientific body.”

While expectations from the summit differ, the experts are unanimous in their view that the world is in urgent need of radical change in how food is grown, sold and distributed to tackle food insecurity, land degradation and rising poverty.

“(The Summit) is one step on a very, very long journey. Perhaps more than ever, as the UN General Assembly opens, we feel the weight and burdens of non-sustainability in the world,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

Sachs says the transformation to sustainable development will demand deep energy and fiscal policy change.

With land-use accounting for about 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and ensuing issues like deforestation and loss of habitat, he is calling for fundamental change in land-use policies across the globe, adding that current, unsustainable use is a ‘massive contributor to crises the board.’

Another aspect of the complex global food system that requires urgent attention is the need for healthy diets.

“About half the world does not have a healthy diet. Of the 8 billion people on the planet, roughly 1 billion live in extreme hunger. Another 2 billion live with one or more micronutrient deficiencies, anaemia, vitamin deficiencies or omega-three fatty acid deficiencies, which are absolutely debilitating for health. Another billion people are obese,” Sachs said.

This week’s UNFSS hopes to get commitments from governments, the private sector, farmers and indigenous groups to work together and change global food production and consumption.

By tackling the food crisis, organisers hope to address the climate, biodiversity, and hunger crises.

 

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A market vendor sells produce at Victoria Market in Port Victoria, Seychelles. Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By Nick Nisbett, Lesli Hoey and Jose Graziano da Silva
BRIGHTON, UK, Sep 20 2021 (IPS)

COVID-19 has exposed numerous fractures in global food systems that leave millions at risk of food insecurity. Like the numerous political failures in dealing with COVID, the repercussions of food system failings are experienced by rich and poor countries alike, with the poorest and most marginalised paying the greatest price.

To be clear, while the numbers of those who are undernourished remain shamefully high, this is a food crisis that is not just about hunger or famine. There is also a silent and growing crisis of an estimated 38.9 million children worldwide affected by overweight and in too many cases, these children grow into adults facing unhealthy eating and chronic diseases associated with obesity (diabetes, heart disease and some cancers etc.).

Alongside these dual burdens of malnutrition, there is a third crisis – climate change – which the food and agriculture is a major contributor to as well as being vulnerable to its impacts, and therefore further threatening food security.

The United Nations (UN) Food Systems Summit on 23 September 2021 was conceived (in the jargon of the UN) to develop equitable, healthy and sustainable responses to ensure that “no one is left behind” as we “build back better” from COVID-19.

Forty one thousand people have taken part in Summit dialogues but the process has been marred by continual criticism, particularly for its inadequate attention to human rights, the sovereignty of indigenous peoples over their own food systems, and worker rights across the food system.

More than anything, criticism of the Summit has focused on its inclusion of ‘Big Food’, including names such as PepsiCo who were invited to ‘fireside chats’ as part of the Pre-Summit in Rome.

Of course, food companies are an essential part of the food system. Indeed, had the Summit engaged first in a root cause analysis of the problems that have contributed to the syndemic (synergistic epidemic) – of undernutrition, obesity and climate change – all issues the Summit portends to address – corporate concentration, negligence and unbridled power would have been identified as the primary cause of policy inertia.

There is no doubt that corporations will need to radically transform as part of the changes advocated by the Summit. But they won’t do that on their own and they certainly won’t do that as part of cosy fireside chats.

Yes, this will take dialogue, but the record on this to date is poor. In many global and national spaces, rather than be “part of the conversation”, there is widely documented academic evidence of big food companies trying to shape the outcomes in their interest: towards voluntary measures and empty promises, away from the regulation (such as front of packet labels) and taxation (such as soda taxes) which have been shown to be most effective in minimising the damage from unhealthy, highly and ultraprocessed foods.

Discussion of such issues, alongside such products’ environmental impacts, have been minimised as part of the Summit process. Was that to avoid Big Food’s’ discomfort at discussing the most unhealthy and unsustainable foods?

UN organisations and their staff are well aware of such issues but have been pressured to “come to the table” with companies they know are more interested in driving shareholder value than contributing to sustainability and public health.

Such companies have a history of unethical marketing of unhealthy foods to children, or persuading poor mothers not to breastfeed. Fortunately, there are conflict of interest rules and protocols that exist to protect the day to day work of UN organisations so that they can fulfil their public mandate without such unethical interference.

As part of our own contribution to the Summit planning and to help it overcome such criticisms, two of us led an ad-hoc committee focused on the Summit’s own ‘principles of engagement’. We also wrote to the UN Secretary General and the Summit leadership to suggest that the Summit simply follow the UN’s own conflict of interest rules and be transparent about who was involved in shaping Summit processes and why.

Our letter was initially signed by 100 individuals and international organisations across five continents, ranging from dietary disease activists in Ghana to organisations such as Save the Children and researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

The UN’s own Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food was an early supporter and 40 additional signatories were added recently when we re-opened the letter due to popular demand, including the American Heart Association and a co-author of this opinion article, the ex-Director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (now Director General of Brazil’s Zero Hunger Institute).

But from the leadership of the summit itself, nothing in reply.

You may ask who cares about these UN summits, really? We do and everyone else should too. Such summits set the scene for national action, they define future funding patterns for UN and bilateral aid organisations, they spawn decades of debate on the issues raised, and, if not well conceived, they provide nice sounding cover for the status-quo.

Behind the multiple fights that have raged in the privileged world of these global debates, there are real issues that will play out in multiple ways in every country faced with the global food and climate emergencies and the inequities that caused them, made all the more raw by the COVID pandemic.

What we have seen ahead of this week’s Summit is a lot of “nutri-washing” and thousands of proposals reflecting the voices of well-nourished people and little (if any) proposals for putting an end to hunger and other forms of malnourishment as a political priority by governments around the world.

The final speech by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres could be a turning point to change this, but not if he chooses to paper over the sensitivities when addressing contentious issues, as UN leaders are wont to do.

If you haven’t yet, get involved, even after the Summit on 23rd September. This battle will rage on including in your own country as it faces up to these multiple food and climate crises and as policy makers face numerous influences over policy directions in response.

All future UN processes should be governed by a simple set of rules set by the precedent of past UN organisations and international summits where conflicts of interest have been taken seriously. This will set the standard for national debates across the world, which is where the real work begins.

Nick Nisbett is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies; Lesli Hoey Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Michigan; and Jose Graziano da Silva is former Director General of FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) and Director General of the Zero Hunger Institute. Nick Nisbett is based in Brighton, UK, Lesli Hoey in Michigan, USA and Jose Graziano da Silva in Campinas, SP Brazil.

Footnote: The UN Food Systems Summit, scheduled to take place on Thursday 23 September , will be a completely virtual event during the UN General Assembly High-level Week.

According to the UN, the Summit “will serve as a historic opportunity to empower all people to leverage the power of food systems to drive our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and get us back on track to achieve all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.”

 

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The Chichipicas spring is one of the San Huitzizilapan indigenous community's water sources, in the Lerma municipality, in the state of Mexico -adjacent to Mexico City-, where several community systems manage the resource. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
LERMA/COYOTEPEC, Mexico, Sep 18 2021 (IPS)

In the San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan Otomí indigenous community, in the state of Mexico –adjacent to the country’s capital–, access to water has been based on collective work.

“Public services come from collective work. What we have done is based on tequio (free compulsory work in benefit of the community), cooperation. The community has always taken care of the forests and water,” Aurora Allende, a member of the sector’s Drinking Water System, told IPS.

In San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan, a town of 18,000 people in the municipality of Lerma – about 60 kilometres west of Mexico City – some 10 autonomous community water management groups are responsible for the water supply in their areas.

The first community system emerged in 1960 to meet local needs. “The water falls by gravity and we pipe it. The water runs through 200 drains that come from the hill, and there are two or three wells for the smaller neighbourhoods,” explained Allende, whose father started the first autonomous system in the community and who is a homemaker in addition to her community work.

The Drinking Water System serves some 150 families who pay about two dollars a month for the maintenance of the facilities.

Huitzizilapan, whose name means “river of hummingbirds” in Nahuatl and which owns about 4,000 hectares of land, half of it forests, is part of a strip of water factories that supply the Cutzamala System, the set of dams that supplies water to both the capital and the state of Mexico.

The Otomi people are one of Mexico’s 69 native groups, numbering some 17 million people, out of a total national population of 128 million. More than400 000 indigenous people belonging to five groups live in the state of Mexico.

Despite being guardians of the cultural and biological heritage of this Latin American country, they suffer discrimination and poverty. Almost 50 percent of the headwaters of Mexico’s watersheds are in areas inhabited by indigenous peoples and the regions with the highest rainfall are located in their territories.

The 1992 National Water Law does not recognise the rights of native inhabitants and allows the government’s National Water Commission (Conagua) to grant water permits throughout the country to anyone who applies for them. In 2012, a constitutional amendment recognised the human right to water. However, approval of a new law to implement the constitutional reform is still pending.

In addition, water faces the three horsemen of the apocalypse: the effects of the climate crisis, such as drought; overexploitation; and pollution.

Native peoples suffer from restrictions on new uses of water, put in place by Conagua with the argument that there are water shortages. Today, at least nine of these measures apply in eight of Mexico’s 31 states and the federal district of Mexico City.

Autonomous initiatives have become a mechanism for organising and defending access to water, despite the fact that they are not recognised by law, although they are not prohibited either. But there is no estimate of how many operate in the country nor has there been an assessment of how they function.

But for Conagua and the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission, these systems are a nuisance, because they fall outside the jurisdiction of the former and, for the latter, electricity to operate wells serves as a means of pressure to promote the municipalisation of the service, due to the costs paid by the independent systems.

Aurora Allende, seen here outside the gate of one of the local waster plants, is an autonomous water management system member in the San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan indigenous community, in central Mexico. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Struggles over water

The water issue is a reflection of how native groups are treated in Mexico, because Conagua has granted individuals, companies and municipalities more than 29,000 concessions for the use of water in their territories, covering about 35 billion cubic meters.

For that reason, water is a recurring source of political, social and environmental conflicts in this country with the second-largest population and economy in Latin America and the third largest area, as indicated by recent reports.

Mexico faces a high risk of water stress, surpassed in the region only by Chile, according to the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas developed by the Aqueduct Alliance, made up of governments, companies and foundations. In 2021, the country has been suffering from a severe drought that has had a major impact on agriculture, livestock and water availability in urban centres.

The 2015 report “Conflicts among Indigenous Peoples and Communities of Mexico” prepared by the official National Institute of Indigenous Peoples and seen by IPS, documents 246 disputes over agrarian issues, mining projects and violations of indigenous rights.

Of these, 16 involve water issues, such as the construction of thermoelectric plants, aqueducts and hydroelectric dams.

In the Coyotepec municipality, in the state of Mexico -adjacent to the capital of the country-, the official National Water Commission manages 11 wells to supply the resource on site. Community liquid management systems pose a challenge for the authorities to control the water. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

The 2019 “Report on Violations of the Human Rights to Drinking Water and Sanitation in Mexico,” drawn up by a collective of NGOs, provides a more detailed picture of conflicts over water, outlining 72 cases of violations of the right to water in 16 states.

The municipality of Coyotepec, also in the state of Mexico, illustrates like few others the struggle for water.

In June 2013, the municipal government tried unsuccessfully to take control of the water service, a move that was opposed by the public. The local water supply was managed by the autonomous Coyotepec Drinking Water Administration (AAPCOY), founded in 1963 to provide water to the town of about 41,000 people.

In May 2016, local residents prevented a municipal consultation because they considered it was rigged and aimed at approving the transfer of water to nearby real estate projects.

“The conflict persists. The state government saw that we were winning the battle and forcibly removed us. We oppose municipalisation, because it is the door to the privatisation of the service. They want to take control of our water,” a retired accountant who is a member of the June 9 Popular Front in Defence of Natural Resources of Coyotepec told IPS.

In Coyotepec, which means “place of coyotes” in Nahuatl, located about 40 kilometres north of Mexico City, AAPCOY serves some 12,000 members, who pay about 2.50 dollars a month, and is complemented by two other water systems. For its part, Conagua manages 11 wells and a pumping plant.

In San Lorenzo Huitzizilapan, Coyotepec and other localities with a majority indigenous population, there were violations of rights to water availability, physical and economic accessibility, water quality, as well as access to information and participation, accountability and justice, according to organisations that defend the right to water.

Seeking a remedy, indigenous peoples have sought legal protections that denounce the breach of the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007, which recognise native territory and the right to water.

Claudia Gómez, a non-governmental Lawyers Collective member, and Wilfrido Gómez, the head of Social Data Ibero at the private Iberoamerican University, agree that legal questions are at the root of the problem.

“There are not enough legal mechanisms to guarantee the protection of water as part of indigenous territory,” Claudia Gómez told IPS. “Neither the Water Law nor the constitution has adequately regulated water for the people. There is a battle to gain recognition for native practices and use of water.”

Wilfrido Gómez (no relation) said that “if water is available and if they meet certain legal requirements, companies are given concessions, but for the communities it is more complicated. Control over water is gained by whoever has the money to obtain permits. One implication is the widespread dispossession of land and water, which go together.”

Due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need for clean water, the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs urged governments in its 2020 report “Indigenous Peoples and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Considerations” to improve access to and management of water and sanitation, especially for indigenous people in remote villages, and said this should include “relevant indigenous practices, such as watershed management.”

Despite this situation, Mexico’s National Indigenous Peoples Program 2018-2024 does not mention water once.

Community water rights advocate Sergio Velázquez is fighting for the continuity of an independent water management system in the municipality of Coyotepec, in central Mexico, which has brought him up against pressure from the city council for control of the resource in the municipality. Photo: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Caught between risks and promises

The solution seems to lie in a new water law, which has been held up in the Chamber of Deputies. The lower house of Congress has received at least six initiatives, including the first in the country developed by organisations defending the human right to water, indigenous peoples, agricultural producers and academics.

After seven years of forums and workshops, the citizens’ initiative was built on 12 consensuses.

These include respect for the water rights of local communities, a ban on water permits for toxic mining and fracking endeavours, an end to the hoarding of water permits, prevention of the privatisation of water services, a guarantee of full access to information and sufficient public funds for water supply.

Allende said “all they want is our water and our forests. There are projects for bottling plants and real estate developments in the highlands. They’re doing everything they can to have access to that area. There is a threat of urbanisation; we are afraid that they will enter our territory.” She lamented that they receive no compensation for taking care of the forest and the water.

Claudia Gómez and Wilfrido Gómez advocate the approval of the citizens’ initiative.

“We believe that the approval of a new law that recognises the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities is necessary. There should be conservation and care policies, so that there is no shortage of water in other regions. Therefore, we ask for consensual regional plans, which are achieved through planning by region or basin, and thus priorities are selected,” said the lawyer.

Wilfrido Gómez stressed that the citizens’ initiative provides tools for controlling water concessions. “Very soon there will come a time when there will be no access to water and there will be no guarantees for the right to it. Today, Conagua has no legal tools to deny or withdraw concessions,” he explained.

In Coyotepec, the solution lies in new elections to lead AAPCOY and “oust the usurpers”, in Velázquez’ words, although it is also necessary for the beneficiaries to pay on time for the service, one of the shortcomings of the system.

“Thus, we could return to representative management that guarantees the right to water,” said the activist.

The project for this report was the winner of the Journalistic Research Grants on community water management in Mexico, a Fundación Avina, Cántaro Azul and Fondo para la Paz initiative. But this resulting content is solely the responsibility of IPS.