International Appeal for Support of the Film Project
Water Makes Money
Your assistance is needed, so that a film criticising the advancing privatisation of
WATER, the basis of our existence, can be made!
Most people don't realize the value of the important things in life until they're no longer available. Good water is one of those things.
A human being is 70% water. He has to keep refilling, otherwise he's dead after about 3 days. That's why water, as an essential basic foodstuff, has always been a publicly administered commodity. And throughout the world today more than 80% of all water supplies are still administered by public authorities. For good reasons: drinking water and waste water are always a local monopoly. Nowhere in the world does water from various competing suppliers flow through the public network of pipelines. A market is unimaginable. He who privatises this essential service all the same, replaces a public monopoly with a private one.
This is exactly what is taking place throughout the world in the name of competition and the market, when water companies such as Veolia and Suez knock on the doors of financially hard-pressed communities. Global player Veolia - emerging first in 2003 as the offspring of Vivendi Universal , a result of France's greatest financial-political crash - is present in at least 69 countries on all five continents, thus ranking No. 1 in the world of private water supply. In Germany the French water company has risen in a short time to the position of being the largest supplier of drinking and waste water in the country, with participation in the waterworks of 450 German communities. Day after day the French global players report new conquests. They promise efficiency, the possibilities of easier financing and as well as sustainability. But in France, the concern's home, hardly anyone believes them......
The "French model"
Here of all places, where Veolia and Suez supply 8 out of 10 citizens with water, many municipalities want to get rid of these concerns a soon as possible. Lack of transparency, poor water quality, continual cost increases and monopoly abuse are the accusations. The municipalities have great difficulty monitoring whether the amounts in the billings correspond to the services performed. Were the billions paid in fees really used for restoring the pipes? Has the money French municipalities paid for water been used to finance the global expansion of Veolia and Suez?
Right in the heart of the water giants' power, in Paris, there is an open wound. The capital city and more than one hundred other French municipalities have decided to retake control over these essential services. At the end of this year Veolia and Suez must pack their bags in Paris. After that the water supply will be administered by Parisian municipalities.
A film "from below"
The film „Water Makes Money " will cast light on these explosive new developments. It will show what Paris and other French communities have learned from the rule of Veolia & Co., and how they have managed to retake control of the water. Examples from Europe and America expand the film into a teaching example for the entire world! „Water makes money " will provide encouragement: Water in the hands of the people is possible!
"Water makes money" has been developed as a "film from below" - financed by those who want to see it, those who want to show it, those who need it as a medium of education. What a film of this kind can accomplish in the way of education and mobilization can be seen from another project by the same film maker, „Railway on the Auction Block".
That's why we are issuing this appeal: Help us to make „Water Makes Money ".
