Bill Frist and 'Currency for Peace'

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has just introduced a bill to make access to safe water and sanitation for developing countries a specific policy objective of the United States’ foreign assistance programs. In an age when America’s image overseas is wanting in so many ways, integrating this sustainability objective into foreign policy seems a worthy start on the road to redemption.

Frist’s legislation authorizes funding for a pilot program to assist countries with high rates of water-borne illnesses and requires federal agencies to coordinate in developing a strategic plan to focus the United States’ commitment to global water issues.

The Safe Water: Currency for Peace Act of 2005, as the legislation is formally called, has three policy objectives:

to establish that clean, safe water and sanitation, sound water management, and improved hygiene for people around the world is a major policy goal;

to authorize a five-year pilot program (“with such sums as necessary to assist countries that have a high rate of water-borne diseases”) to fund alternative mechanisms like investment insurance, investment guarantees, or loan guarantees to develop sustainable water infrastructure systems; and

to create a national strategy for implementing U.S. foreign policy objectives that expand access to safe water and sanitation, sound water management, and improve hygiene for people around the world.

Says Frist:

By 2025, it’s estimated that almost two-thirds of the world’s population may be subject to water stress. And where there’s water scarcity and where this precious resource is shared by so many countries, armed conflict can arise.

Frist is not someone I am accustomed to praising, but he has gotten this one right. Water is a fundamental human right, the lack of which can lead not just to untenable suffering, but to conflict and war. Rich, developed nations like the U.S. have a fundamental responsibility to help engender water sustainability, among other basic human needs, to those that lack it.

Frist notes that his legislation

reflects the truth that water is not only essential to life, but that proper management of this increasingly scarce resource can serve as currency for peace and international cooperation.

That’s a profound sentiment, far more enlightened than the prevailing sentiments of Frist’s party, which posits that threats and direct military action are the currency for peace and international cooperation. (Hmmm. Does that make clean water “the moral equivalent of war”?)

Frist is hardly the first to recognize the links between water and peace. Dr. Ismail Serageldin, who served as Vice President for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development at the World Bank during much of the 1990s, noted in 1995 that “Many of the wars this century were about oil, but those of the next century will be over water” (as recalled in a 1999 interview on the topic). In 2000, Prof. Kader Asmal, South Africa’s Minister of Education, gave a poignant speech on the topic titled "Water is a Catalyst For Peace" to the Stockholm Water Foundation. And organizations like Green Cross International and UNESCO, among others, have preached the gospel of water as a catalyst for peace.

Now Frist has taken an important step, and he deserves praise and support. The progressive community, not quick to cotton to Republicans’ initiatives, ought to stand up to be counted.

In his 2000 address in Stockholm, Kader Asmal wryly quoted Mark Twain, the frontier laureate who lived in a California that was hot, drought- and flood-prone, mosquito-ridden, politically unstable, and economically stagnant -- “a condition closely resembling many nations today,” as Asmal put it.

"In the West," wrote Twain, "whiskey's for drinking, and water's for fighting over."

Frist’s bill offers a little bit of hope that the latter might not come to pass.

March 8, 2005 in Sustainability | Permalink

Comments

The bill sounds good on the surface, but the privatization of an essential public good, clean drinking water, could be a less-than-sustainable response. See New Water Bill in Senate Correctly Identifies Problem, But Offers Wrong Solution (http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0303-15.htm). On the other hand, public-private coolaboration on such matters, perhaps, could be accomplished in a manner that promotes a public good and uses the strength of the marketplace. But it does not appear to be part of Frist's bill.

Posted by: Mark Hiester | Mar 20, 2005 5:41:52 AM

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Posted by: Wendell B. Adams | Mar 26, 2005 10:06:08 AM

"What is the value of 500 billion GALLONS OF GLACIER WATER?" Our company, ClearWater Int'l.com is a full service bulk water and water enginering company located in Sarasota, FL and Alaska. Check us out on our web-site.

Posted by: Wendell B. Adams | Mar 26, 2005 10:06:08 AM

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