Community rights, people's sovereignty and treaties to reclaim the genetic and water commons.

• Author: Shiva, Vandana
• Position: Thinking Economically - Brief Article

The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre has emerged as a celebration of democracy and people's sovereignty. The forum is organized by the regional government of the southern Brazilian State of Rio Grande do Sul, NGOs and social movements, and signals a different relationship between the government and citizens than the one engendered by globalization. It was therefore the appropriate forum for launching two initiatives, one to reclaim the water commons the other to reclaim the genetic commons.

Institutions such as the WTO and World Bank, and the agreements and programs such as TRIPs (trade-related intellectual property rights), GATS and structural adjustments that they impose on governments destroy the multilayered functions of government. They centralize power and ownership over resources in the hands of states. Sovereignty is articulated through the principle of eminent domain. This is undermining constitutions, federal structures of power, and people's rights.

Resisting the privatization of bio diversity through intellectual property rights and the privatization of water through structural adjustment programs and services trade, needs a combination of strategies at local, national and global levels and a shift in the constellation of the power and rights of states, corporations and citizens.

Privatization based on exclusive rights of corporations to vital resources like biodiversity and water is an enclosure of the commons. Reversal of this enclosure requires a recovery of the commons through a combination of actions.

1. At the local level, the recovery of the commons needs the strengthening and assertion of local community rights and people's sovereign and natural rights to vital resources such as water and biodiversity.

2. At the national level, the recovery of the commons requires a reinvention of sovereignty...