As water becomes more rare, it is being treated as a costly commodity by governments. Late last year, I had the great privilege of giving a presentation at the International Landcare Conference on the global water crisis. What I observed as well as what I have researched about Australia's water crisis disturbed me deeply and led me to write these words of warning.

With a few exceptions, your politicians are not dealing honestly with you about the water crisis looming on your horizon. The use of the word "drought" leads people to believe that this is a cyclical situation and will end. That is not my reading. Annual rainfall is declining; salinity and desertification are spreading rapidly; rivers are being drained at an unsustainable rate; aquifers are way over-pumped - groundwater extraction skyrocketed a whopping 90 percent in the 1990s - as well as being contaminated from the 80,000 toxic dump sites under the major cities; and many surface management areas now exceed sustainable limits. Ask any farmer: Australia is running out of water.

Yet, at the very moment that massive conservation plans must be implemented and the need for public oversight of diminishing water supplies has never been greater, your governments are promoting or planning at least six ways in which your water is being wasted, exported and privatized for corporate profit.

First, obsessed with the ideology of unlimited growth, politicians refuse to question the massive export of "virtual" water from water-intensive agricultural industries such as beef (almost two-thirds of which is exported), dairy and cotton. It is simply unsustainable for the driest continent on earth to be a net exporter of virtual water - about 4000 million megalitres a year - when this water is so desperately needed at home. Not surprisingly, these water exports benefit the big agribusiness companies while bleeding water (and livelihoods) from smaller farmers growing for the domestic market.

Instead of rethinking this dangerous and short-sighted policy, your Federal Government is negotiating a free trade agreement with China which, by the way, has destroyed its own water resources in its drive for economic dominance.

Second, the big European water companies are running water and wastewater systems in many of your cities, making huge profits from your scarce water resources. Residents of Sydney and Adelaide don't need to be reminded of the problems they have experienced with Thames Water, Vivendi and Suez, but you need to know that these companies have provoked a huge reaction all over the world for their outrageous water rates, poor service and environmental transgressions. At the fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City last March, the United Nations documented the global failure of water privatization and called on governments to provide water for their citizens as a public service, not for profit.

Third, your governments are busy handing out massive bottled water licenses to companies big and small for a pittance so they can put your precious water in plastic bottles and sell it back to you at exorbitant rates, all for shareholder profits. (Why would anyone choose bottled water over Melbourne's beautiful tap water if given a choice?) There are hundreds of domestic water brands in Australia with annual domestic sales of around 600 million litres. Moreover, your precious water is now also being exported in designer bottles to the rich in other countries. A recent example is the new Coca-Cola bottling facility outside Melbourne.

This is terrible public policy.

Fourth, your governments have set the stage for massive water trading, brokered by private middle operators, between cash-starved farmers and growing urban populations. The idea is to use each drop of water in the most profitable way. (For the record, this is what China did and is now experiencing a huge grain shortage, as its water was diverted to industry.) Separating water from land is a recipe for ecological disaster. The rivers and aquifers need more water, not less. And just which farmers will be encouraged by the banks to sell water instead of growing food? The small farmers producing for the domestic market, that's who. Big agribusiness exporters will still get all the water they need as long as it lasts.

Fifth, your governments are turning to big high-tech, corporate-run "solutions" to the water crisis such as desalination, perhaps powered by nuclear energy. Desalination plants are ugly, dirty, intrusive, expensive, polluting and noisy. They create greenhouse gases and release poisonous chemical brine back into the ocean. Desalination plants are the hallmark of failure; they are what you do when you have run out of other options. As bad as things are in Australia, you have not run out of options.

Finally, there are plans afoot to move bulk water by tanker from Tasmania to the thirsty cities of the coast, operated of course, by private companies for profit. There are myriad problems, ecologically and economically, with massive bulk water transfers. By and large, nature put water where it is intended to be; mass movement of water must be carefully thought through and the decision for such a serious undertaking should never be left to those who would stand to profit from it.

There is a historic and profound shift taking place in water policy in Australia just at the time it is becoming clear that you have a severe water problem. Until recently, your water was considered a common heritage and your governments had the constitutional responsibility to manage it in your collective name. Now, your governments have decided that water is a commodity, like running shoes, and has set out to sell it to those with the deepest pockets.

This is a tragedy.

International water conservation campaigner Maude Barlow was a key speaker at last year's Landcare conference in Melbourne.

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