Water is a human right that the UN recognized in 2010. It is an essential resource for people's lives and dignity. Many multinationals have tried to control this resource because it guarantees them great benefits and nobody can live without water. In the water supply there is no competition – the service is provided by a single company in each municipality – there is a captive client – because nobody can unsubscribe from the water service – and private management is freed from the control of citizenship. That is why human rights cannot be accepted, even though water has begun to be traded on the stock market. But water and its ecosystems, like all natural goods and resources, are part of the natural heritage of the community and governments must ensure that private business is not done with the commons.

Subcontracted waters Bilbao-Bizkaia

In the concentration of the PNV around the Bilbao Bizkaia Water Consortium (BBUP), in addition to political control by the water monopoly, there is another perversion: see the water service as a business. Although Bilbao-Bizkaia is public on paper, the fact is that its management model is governed by the same criteria as private companies. In fact, although ownership of the form is public, in practice a model has been reinforced that has gone from direct management of public money to private hands over the years, not only for the construction of new infrastructures, but also for the management of the service through subcontracting, the agreement between the Provincial Government and the BBUP for the years 2008-2016, which amounted to 316 million. The level of outsourcing and outsourcing of services is very high. Thus, private companies, even in subcontracting, keep their pockets with millionaire contracts awarded by the Bilbao-Bizkaia Consortium. Multinationals and large companies are outsourced such as Iberdrola, Acciona or Aqualia, Suez… They carry more than 60% of the public money that is paid on water bills. In the perversion of this covert privatization, it is the subcontractor's workers who pay for the precariousness of their working conditions.

The Bilbao-Bizkaia Water Consortium is increasingly remote from the site and its structure is far from the municipal and regional scale. There, decisions and day-to-day management are taken in organs of low representation and with no minimum participation, and in terms of transparency, it is increasingly opaque. Decisions have also been taken here and outside which have caused economic damage, such as investments in Argentina and Uruguay, which are completely outside the objectives of the Consortium and which are non-logical and unjustifiable commercial operations, let alone with water which is a basic asset. The BBUP monopoly is also unthinkable in Europe, as the Water Framework Directive indicates that water management competences must be transferred to the hydrographic confederations. In other words, the basins are management units. But the Greater Bilbao model does not go beyond the European directive and prefers to control everything in a monopoly at Bizkaia level. The change that the PNV has made in the statutes of the Water Consortium in the last region, in Busturialdea, has been a coup d ' état, cutting the way to the democratic decision of citizenship and considering that the integration of all municipalities at the same time was sufficient with a simple majority rather than a qualified majority.

New forms of social control and participatory democracy need to be promoted to ensure transparency and effective and proactive participation of citizens, as set out in the Aarhus Convention. Thus, Directive 2003/35/EC of 26 May 2003 transposed into European legislation the European Convention and Law 27/2006 of 18 July, regulating the “Rights of access to information, public participation and access to justice” to Spanish legislation. In this sense, in the last five years the concept of water democracy has been assumed by many social organizations, especially in Europe, concerned about the growing role of large corporations in the management of water services.

Municipal public water services

And if the water service were really public and municipal, where would each City Hall decide how to benefit the citizens and not the big multinationals? Service with own resources not subcontracted to private companies, being their workers of the Public Entity and with decent and quality jobs. A service that respects the environment, optimizing natural resources and not seeking economic profitability. A model that ensures citizen participation and transparency in management. A democratic model at the citizen's level. In this model, water would not be a game of power and money, but a public service that shields human law. So why not all bet on the Busturialdea Water Consortium?

The Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve was created with the objective of becoming a laboratory of sustainable development experiences to export these experiences to other areas. Nothing has been exported or created at the moment. At the Johannesburg summit, five elements were agreed to measure sustainability to ensure: water, food, energy, health and biodiversity. A new organisation of water policy that takes the water catchment area as a basic unit for tackling the challenges of the future from a holistic perspective. Among these challenges are commitment to climate change, improving water quality and sanitation, minimising water losses or reducing flood risks, the relationship between water and energy, infrastructure design and model, social participation, etc.

The Busturialdea Water Consortium has aspects to resolve, but they are not irreversible. Among other things, the lack of water in the summer season makes it necessary to renew the Oiz canal, for which the Provincial Council of Bizkaia already had a project worth EUR 8 million, when Iosu Madariaga was a member. There is no excuse for the Provincial Council not to make this investment. We are committed to a management model in which the public entity manages to make its actions and decisions known, both to the dependent public authorities and to the citizens. In addition, it is essential to facilitate the involvement of all users and social agents linked to the urban water cycle in the planning processes, promoting the necessary consensus to advance on common principles. We call for a non-profit public water management model which, from a socio-ecological point of view, respects the rights of citizens as a service of general interest and combines with the local energy sovereign generation.

*Iratxe Arriola is Mayor of Ea and member of the Bizkaia Board representing EH Bildu