Does Water Belong to Everyone or Only to those who can Buy It?

Having lived through  and tried to grow food during a number of drought years, I feel angry about this. Nestle is also taking pure water from a Maine watershed and worrying the residents of the area.  Water is a public right and a public Need.

Nestlé

 is sucking water from a watershed during drought conditions in order to bottle and

sell it.

 From patenting flowers to claiming water is not a public right, Nestl

é

 is trying to commodify everything.

Tell Nestlé

 to stop bottling from a Canadian aquifer in drought conditions.

Sign the Petition

Nestlé's Chairman and former CEO once infamously declared that "access to water should not be a public right." And now his company is putting into practice its belief that

every resource should be commodified and sold off.

Nestlé is sucking up water from a Canadian watershed during drought conditions --

to bottle and sell it off.

Nestlé has won a permit to drain an Ontario aquifer whenever it likes.

 Meanwhile, the surrounding communities which rely on the aquifer have by-laws to

restrict their access to their own water

 during dry conditions in the summer. This just isn’t right, and groups are fighting

back against Nestlé and the Ontario government office that handed out its permit

in an environmental tribunal. It shouldn’t take a legal proceeding to force Nestlé

to do the right thing. Let’s tell Nestlé that a community’s access to its own water

supply is more important than any company's profits.

Tell Nestlé: Stop bottling Ontario’s water source during drought conditions.

Currently,

Nestlé has a permit through 2017 to take about 1.1 million litres of water per day

from Hillsburgh, Ontario

 for its bottling operations in nearby Aberfoyle -- even during drought conditions

while there are by-laws on water use for households. SumOfUs.org is joining a number

of groups that are fighting back against

Nestlé.

Nestlé has been in the news a lot lately for attempting to profit from our natural

resources. Last month,

over 220,000 SumOfUs.org supporters signed our petition against Nestlé's greedy effort

to patent the fennel flower,

 a cure-all medicinal remedy for millions of people in impoverished communities across

the Middle East and Asia. Several days after we sent out our petition, a video emerged

showing Nestlé’s Chairman claiming that the idea that water is a human right comes

from “extremist” NGOs and that water should have a market value. Nestlé has dealt

with NGOs and lost before -- the years-long boycott over

Nestlé's dirty tactics to get mothers to stop breastfeeding and use

baby formula --

which resulted in thousands of infant deaths from water-born illnesses

 -- was a historic success in corporate campaigning.

Nestlé’s appetite to commodify water and natural remedies is a recurring strategy

by a corporation with a pattern of seeking to privatize and profit from traditional

knowledge and our natural resources. By speaking out against the draining of our

watersheds, you will be taking a stand against Nestlé’s strategy to profit off everything

in nature.

Demand that Nestlé stop commodifying everything in nature. Stop draining Ontario's watershed to bottle water.

Thanks for all you do

Angus, Martin & the team from SumOfUs.org

************

More information:

Council of Canadians raises climate change and drought concerns in Nestlé case.

 Council of Canadians, Apr. 23rd, 2013.

Nestlé Denies that Water is a Fundamental Human Right.

 Global Research. Apr. 20th, 2013.

 SumOfUs is a world-wide movement of people like you, working together to hold corporations

accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy.

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