3-17-06, 7:48 am

By the year 2025, many estimate that two-thirds of the world's population could be facing severe water scarcity problems, which has disastrous, if not apocalyptic, implications for both humans and the environment. Even today, one billion people throughout the world lack access to clean drinking water, and approximately 2.6 billion are left without adequate sanitation, a fatal situation which has lead to the death of 2.2 millions victims annually. The vast majority of these potential candidates live in extreme poverty, on the margins of society. With these stark realities in mind, it is obvious that immediate action must be taken to counter the world’s imminent water crisis.

This growing shortage of potable water has spurred a good deal of international attention, and has led to the staging of gatherings, including this week’s Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City. Many hold lofty hopes that the high profile event will achieve its mission of promoting a dialogue between various stakeholders influencing global water policy, thus, according the forum’s website, “assuring better living standards for people all over the world and more responsible social behavior towards water issues in-line with the pursuit of sustainable development.” Nevertheless, there are many critics of the forum who argue such progress is all but impossible, as the event is dominated by pro-privatization and big business interests who are more concerned with the commercial use of water to improve their bottom line than ensuring universal access to it.

Improving Universal Access to Water or the Bottom Line?

Come Thursday, the eyes of those concerned with the increasingly ominous water issue will be in Mexico City for the opening of the World Water Forum. Mexico City is an ironically fitting backdrop for the event, as the city itself is facing a perilous water crisis as it is very quickly compromising its fresh water supplies, leading the city to actual sink as its aquifers are being sucked dry. It is here, at the luxurious Banamex Centre, where event organizers claim to welcome all, including governmental representatives, international development agencies, private water corporations and non-governmental grass-roots organizations, to join the effort to tackle crucial water issues. Although the World Water Forum touts itself as an open event, which encourages participation from all water stakeholders, not all agree with this assessment of its inclusiveness. To this end, there are a rash of criticisms levied against the event, beginning with doubts about its primary organizer, the World Water Council, who, critics argue, is dominated by pro-privatization interests such as the World Bank, big corporations, and first world water industries. Moreover, Maj Fiil, of the Washington-based Food and Water Watch, in discussing her organization’s experience at the last World Water Forum, contends that the event did not actively engage civil society, and instead such groups were given their “own room in a corner to sit there for five days.” Similarly, many water activists maintain that while the event claims to welcome all participants to the discussion table, access is subtly restricted by the fact that the event is dominated by powerful private interest groups and their international allies at the event, and carries a the $600 registration fee with extremely limited funding and sponsorship opportunities.

Furthermore, many point to the fact that the first three World Water Forums failed to recognize the availability of water as a human right, instead categorizing it a “need.” This is a technicality that allows for the exploitation of water on a for-profit basis, rather than as a result of equal access on a universal non-profit basis. In addition, it appears that many water enthusiasts have grown wary of the false promises of progress that these types of highly political international water forums espouse, and these doubts are fostered by a growing skepticism of the World Water Forum’s Ministerial aims. Water experts Peter Gleick and Jon Lane assert that Ministerial projects should be left in the more qualified hands of the United Nations, and that while smaller regional conferences may be more practical and effective, in the event of future global conferences, they should be more limited in their scope, and designed to address only problems that “really need global consensus.” It is these types of questionable event underpinnings which have led Fiil to liken the World Water Forum to a “trade show,” rather than a transformative public event which can be counted on to produce any sort of global consensus.

A Conflict of Interest

Much of the skepticism regarding the forum stems from a perceived pro-privatization agenda, a view which organizers vehemently deny. Nonetheless, many feel the unsettling presence of the world’s leading water giants, from the French companies Vivendi and Suez, to bottled water leader Nestlé, taint the event, as discussions of universal access are often incompatible with those who see water as a way to make huge profits. While the responsibility to provide water access has historically fallen on the shoulders of governments, water is becoming an increasingly profitable business, and major private corporations, are looking to cash in on the growing industry. Over the past few decades, a tide of water and sanitation privatization, particularly benefiting a few Western-owned corporations, has been sweeping the developing world, backed, if not subtly imposed, by lending agencies such as the World Bank and IMF.

Many privatization proponents, from big water transnational corporations to international financial institutions, tend to justify their enthusiastic promotion of water privatization by referencing the unimpressive history of developing countries’ governments in regards to public water management in regions such as Latin America. However, the belief that privatization is the cure-all for inefficiency and corruption in the public sector was certainly tarnished by the infamous Enron case, and the hundreds like it, thus establishing that the private sector is at least as susceptible to the corruption of power and greed of which the public sector is so often accused. Furthermore, in the case of Latin America, many contend that the public mismanagement of yesteryear was not in fact an inherent problem with the public sector, but rather with the undemocratic governments that dominated the region in the 1980s. Many anti-water privatization activists argue that lack of democratic participation in water distribution and management is a cause for enormous public concern. Thus, as Latin American citizens flock to the polls in record numbers, it is clear that it is no longer the governments which are bereft of accountability, as much as it is the private transnational corporations.

In addition, privatization opponents contend that the argument that prudent management of a scare resource mandates putting a price on it as a means of reducing waste is inapplicable to water. Many feel that this type of logic denies the multifaceted biological, environmental, and often cultural, importance of water, and moreover, putting a price on water, based on economic principles, invites the intolerable danger of pricing people out of the water market. Many water activists contend that water privatization has failed in practice, often resulting in exorbitant prices and poor delivery services, and that efforts should instead be focused on improving the public utility sector. With these ideological conflicts bound to come to a head in Mexico City it is far from certain that the discussion will lead to any constructive conclusions.

Forging Ahead on an Alternative Path

What is perhaps more impressive than events such as the World Water Forums are the grassroots organizing and action they inspire. For example, in April 2005, the first People’s Workshop in Defense of Water convened in Mexico City, where a diverse group of over 400 attendees met to share experiences and discuss “consolidating and furthering the defense of the liquid as a human right for everyone, managed in a sustainable, democratic, and responsible manner.” In January 2005, during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, participants established a ‘Global Platform for the Struggle for Water,’ which, among other things, called upon the UN General Assembly to declare water as a human right, as well as advocated returning water to public hands, a strengthening of the campaign against transnational water corporations, opposing the inclusion of water in trade agreements as a commercial good, and combating the World Bank’s affirmations of privatization as the best option for water management.

Currently, activists are gearing up to make sure that their presence is felt at the World Water Forum, both within plenary sessions of the meeting itself, as well as holding their own separate alternative events. Many see the alternatives to the forum as a more engaging and effective means to promote publicly responsive national policy that would stress small scale community based solutions. Among the activities on the alternative agenda, led by groups such as the Coalición de Organizaciones Mexicanas por el Derecho al Agua, are speak outs and marches. A Latin American Water Tribunal also will be held, which, though it has no binding authority, will formally try cases of water violations submitted from various Latin American countries.

Conclusion

While the World Water Forum may not be the ideal platform for the champions of free water throughout the world to promote the protection of such resources and obtain a declaration of universal access to water as a human right, the event does signal an important recognition of the urgent need to address the global water crisis. Though skepticism abounds about the effectiveness, and even the bona fides of the forum, perhaps the action and dialogue promoted outside of the formal event will lead to a more relevant evaluation of the global water situation, and generate the types of practical effective solutions of which the world is in dire need.

From Council on Hemispheric Affairs