Although the Ecuadorian government has until October 14 to submit a water bill before Congress, the protests of the indigenous movement have been ignored, Ecuarunari, the Kichwa Confederation of Ecuador says.

“The Water bill we submitted on November 19, 2008 before the Congress members of Alianza Pais and over 20,000 colleagues was virtually thrown into the dust bin and it was not even discussed by the National Assembly”, Ecuarunari says.

Meanwhile, on Monday, there were simultaneous demonstrations of the indigenous communities of the provinces of Loja, Azuay, Pichincha, Cañar, Cotopaxi, Bolívar and others, mainly by blocking all communication and transport means.

These mobilizations were repressed by the police, but they did not manage to crush the demonstration.

The problem

The organizations question the bill of Rafael Correa’s administration because they claim it leaves the determination of the permits to megaprojects in the hands of the authorities of the moment.

They say that there are economic and market considerations in the granting of the authorization, and they criticize article 73, according to which “authorizations for the economic use of water will be granted for mining activities, first to the national projects that fall under the National Development Plan”.

Soledad Vogliano says this “shows the mercantilist aspect of this bill which conceives water as a commodity”.

Vogliano works on Natural Resources in Ecuarunari.

She told Real World Radio about the conflict that the communities are having so that the water bill reflects their cosmovision and their ancient rights.

“The dispute over the development model in Ecuador is the dispute over water”, Soledad Vogliano said.

The indigenous organization reports that nowadays in Ecuador 64% of the water is in private hands, while only one per cent of the “beneficiaries” has 63% of land and 64% of the water for irrigation.

Although the indigenous movement has always promoted debate, Soledad Vigliano says the government circles have not been open to their initiatives.

Nearly a thousand peasants and farmers who own lands have only 24 per cent of water, with an average of 11 liters a second per plot of land, while the corporations that cultivate products for export, mainly flowers, concentrate 76% of the water in their lands.