Paraguay and Water: The next Lucrative market???

I recently read over at The Pursuit of Happiness Blog That Paraguay is becoming a hot spot for tourism among celebs and politicians.

I guess nancy pelosi can't say enough of how great the place is:

Quote :

I was having lunch with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi at Opera Plaza Sushi in San Francisco about six months ago, and she said to me, “Every so often, I need to get away from it all. I want to go where nobody knows me, where I can relax and have a change of scenery. So I go to Filadelfia, Paraguay. It’s a wonderful place! You should go.” So I did.
Filadelfia is still very much off the beaten track. Almost all Paraguay tourism is concentrated in the capital, Asuncion, and I certainly won’t knock it. It’s a great place to buy luxury goods cheap (because they are smuggled in), and the hookers are hot. But Asuncion is not the exotic Paraguay. To see that, you have to go to Filadelfia.

Many celebs supposedly have also been going to Filadelfia:

Quote :

As I mentioned earlier, celebrities have occasionally been seen in Filadelfia. They pretend to be ordinary tourists and usually go unrecognized since there’s no TV. Jack Black, Teri Hatcher, Cindy Crawford, Bono, Peter Tork, and Pete Wentz have all been spotted in the past year, according to Michael Czarcinski. But they all register under false names, so there’s no proof on paper.

I find this to be a strange co-incidence. A couple of years ago, I watched doc on water called "Blue Gold" In the documentary, they talk about the Guarani Aquifer, which is the largest reserve of water in the world. Filadelfia, seems to be on the edge of this aquifer.

Quote :

Wikipedia - The Guaraní Aquifer, located beneath the surface of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, is one of the world's largest aquifer systems and is an important source of fresh water.[1] Named after the Guaraní tribe, it covers 1,200,000 km², with a volume of about 40,000 km³, a thickness of between 50 m and 800 m and a maximum depth of about 1,800 m. It is estimated to contain about 37,000 km³ of water (arguably the largest single body of groundwater in the world, although the overall volume of the constituent parts of the Great Artesian Basin is much larger), with a total recharge rate of about 166 km³/year from precipitation. It is said that this vast underground reservoir could supply fresh drinking water to the world for 200 years. Due to an expected shortage of fresh water on a global scale, which environmentalists suggest will become critical in under 20 years, this important natural resource is rapidly becoming politicized, and the control of the resource becomes ever more controversial.

In the documentary they speak about the bush family, and how they have bought approx 300,000 acres of land over this water source combined. Scary. ( here's another link on the Bush's)

( start at 3:18)


It seems as if the celebs and politicians might be prepping for a water shortage and a new lucrative water market. I can't say if these other people have actually bought land in these parts, it could be possible.

just found this as well:

http://aquadoc.typepad.com/files/stygoscape_spring_2010.pdf

Groundwater, Gossip,
Guano, and the Guaraní
The previous issue of Stygoscape introduced the Guaraní Aquifer shared by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. This issue will close out the Stygoscape series with a discussion on the conspiracy theories related to the control of the water stored in this “megawatershed.”
The conspiracy theories have been widely circulated in the mainstream media and the blogosphere. National Geographic ran an article about some of the conspiracy theories in 2006 (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060828-guarani.html). I first heard the conspiracy theories about who is trying to control the Guarani Aquifer from Maude Barlow in the 2008 movie Blue Gold (http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com/). In the movie, she suggests that vast landholdings by various members of the Bush family are actually a dodge to control and sell the water stored in the Guarani Aquifer. One of the best summaries is The Guarani Aquifer blog (http://guaraniaquifer.wordpress.com/research/the-conspiracy-theories/) maintained by journalist Annabel Symington whose last update is May 2009. Her summaries include connections to NAFTA and the “war on terror” so I will not repeat them here.
For some context, recall from the previous edition of Stygoscape that the World Bank funded the Guarani Aquifer Project, launched in 2003. Symington’s blog reported that the project cost an estimated $27 million, $13 million of which came from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) a multi-agency consortium dominated by the World Bank. A summary presentation was given at the October 2009 GEF conference held in Australia (http://iwlearn.net/abt_iwlearn/events/iwc5/iwc5_presentations/amore_iwc5_guarani.pdf), and a new documentary film is underway (http://theguaraniproject.com/).
There are suggestions that the World Bank is part of a conspiracy as a group of World Bank scientists withdrew from the Guarani Aquifer region in South America in 2009, after the aquifer's four countries decided not to renew the World Bank's investigation license, which had reserved the vital information gathered by the bank regarding the Guarani for its own use with no obligation to share the data. Specialists wonder if they will ever see the information the World Bank holds (http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3884).
Summary of Talking Points
Sara Grusky, an official from the Water for All NGO in Canada, recently declared that international organizations like the World Bank are seeking to create a Guaraní industrial region without concerning themselves with safeguarding the conservation of the aquifer or the real interests of the inhabitants, thus increasing the risks of privatization.
Even more seriously, partial or total concessions have been granted to transnational corporations including the U.S. Monsanto Wells and Bechtel C, the French Suez/ONDEO division and Vivendi, the Spanish Aguas de Valencia and Unión FENOSA ACEX, and the UK Thames Water, among others.
The blogosphere was also circulating a story that a government office, the U.S. State Department's USINFO Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation, denied the following information circulated by the Cuban news service Prensa Latina and others (e.g., Blue Gold) about the Bush family:
• Former President George H.W. Bush owns 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) in the Chaco region of Paraguay, or
• Former President George W. Bush owns 40,000 hectares (98,842 acres) in the same region.
These supposed land acquisitions were often claimed to be associated with alleged U.S. designs on the Guarani Aquifer or the Mariscal Estigarribia air base (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3101177).
But the secretary-general of the Guaraní Aquifer Project, Brazil's Luiz Amore, told Tierramérica in 2009 that such charges "don't make sense.” (http://www.tierramerica.info/nota.php?lang=eng&idnews=1454).