Blog Posts: Activists Slam Water Forum

10 hours ago

ISTANBUL (AFP) A global ministerial meeting was putting the final
touches here Saturday to resolutions for tackling the world's water
crisis but activists attacked the process as a corporate-driven fraud.

The communique to be issued by more than 100 countries on World Water
Day on Sunday climaxes a seven-day gathering on how to provide clean
water and sanitation for billions and resolve worsening water stress and
pollution.

"The world is facing rapid and unprecedented global changes, including
population growth, migration, urbanisation, climate change,
desertification, drought, degradation and land use, economic and diet
changes," according to a draft seen by AFP.

The document, which is non-binding, spells out a consensus for boosting
cooperation to ease trans-boundary disputes over water, preventing
pollution and tackling drought and floods.

It also describes access to safe drinking water and sanitation as "a
basic human need." France, Spain and several Latin American countries
were striving to beef up this reference, from "need" to "right," a
change that could have legal ramifications.

But campaigners representing the rural poor, the environment and
organised labour blasted the communique as a sideshow, stage-managed for
corporations who are major contributors to the World Water Council,
which organises the Forum.

Maude Barlow, senior advisor to the president of the UN General
Assembly, said the Forum promoted privatisation of resources by "the
lords of water" and excluded dissident voices.

She called for the meeting to be placed under the UN flag.

"We demand that the allocation of water be decided in an open,
transparent and democratic forum rather than in a trade show for the
world's large corporations," Barlow told a press conference.

David Boys, with an NGO called Public Services International, said
"transparency, accountability and participation" were absent from the
Forum, and dismissed the ministerial statement as "vapid."

Around 880 million people do not have access to decent sources of
drinking water, while 2.5 billion people do not have access to proper
sanitation, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) said in a report on Tuesday.

By 2030, the number of people living under severe water stress is
expected to rise to 3.9 billion, a tally that does not include the
impacts of global warming, according to the OECD.

The World Water Council, based in the southern French city of Marseille,
holds the World Water Forum every three years. The Istanbul conference,
the fifth in the series, drew a record more than 25,000 participants,
and registrations from at least 27,000.

The Council's website says it is funded by more than 300 member
organisations from 60 countries, including water utilities, governments,
hydrological institutions and associations involved in research,
environment and education.

Its president, Loic Fauchon, rejected charges of elitism and exclusion.

"Everyone is invited, and in any case, everyone comes these days," he
told AFP.

He added: "If it (the Forum) were organised by the United Nations, it
would lose its characteristic of being open to all. In a UN conference,
not everyone who wants to come can participate. In the World Water
Forum, anyone can take part."

The Istanbul Forum has focussed overwhelmingly on issues of policymaking
and includes a big trade fair by water utilities and engineering firms.

It has also staged side events on issues of civil society, but to a far
smaller degree than in other big environmental meetings.

Grassroots campaigners have complained of high registration fees, of
geographical separation from the main conference events and of
overbearing security.

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