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Rights: Groups Divided on State Vs. Private Water Management

Posted on: Thursday, 16 March 2006, 21:00 CST

By Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Mar. 15, 2006 (IPS/GIN) -- Although the organizers of a water forum beginning Thursday in Mexico City talk about access to water as a basic right, activists see the international event as promoting the privatization of water resources.

The 4th World Water Forum and a parallel civil society gathering combined will draw a total of 15,000 participants to the Mexican capital from March 16 to 22.

While both sides present similar figures on the availability and scarcity of water around the planet and declare that it is a public resource that must be universally available, they do not agree on how to achieve this goal.

The non-governmental delegates who will take part in the Rallies in Defense Water organized alongside the Water Forum are particularly adamant in their opposition to any form of privatization of water services.

Some 2,000 activists will meet in hotels, city squares and convention centers, some of them made available by Mexico City authorities. Among their ranks will be environmentalists, youth groups, women's organizations, and even a number of government delegates. They also plan marches and other public demonstrations.

For its part, the 4th World Water Forum will be attended by more than 13,000 delegates from private companies, governments (including 121 government ministers) and United Nations agencies, as well as a handful of activists who have paid the registration fee of between $240 and $600.

The largest number of participants hail from the host country, Mexico, numbering roughly 2,000, followed by the United States with 391 delegates, France with 309, Japan with 252, India with 181, the Netherlands with 175, Nigeria with 151, Colombia with 110, Spain with 121, Canada with 105 and Germany with 99.

The delegates, who will be meeting in a convention center owned by a private bank, will discuss privatization schemes and state control of water resources and services, the organizers informed IPS.

The forum was organized by the World Water Council, an international non-governmental platform founded in 1996 and made up of some 300 members from academic and business groups, multilateral financial institutions, development agencies, U.N. experts and local authorities.

The founders of the council include multinational corporations that manage water resources in numerous countries, such as the SUEZ Group, based in France.

The first World Water Forum was held in Morocco in 1997, followed by the second in the Netherlands in 2000 and the third in Japan in 2003.

Gordon Young, the coordinator of the U.N. World Water Assessment Program and of the 2nd U.N. World Water Report titled "Water, a Shared Responsibility" -- released last week in Mexico City -- told IPS that there is a global consensus that water is a public good that must reach everyone. But differences emerge when the subject turns to privatization versus state control of water resources and services. At present, less than 10 percent of water-related services are in private hands.

According to the recently released U.N. report, multinational companies involved in this sector have begun to scale back their activities, especially in developing countries, because of perceived political and financial risks.

"We are on different sides, because the council promotes the privatization of water, while we demand that water be recognized as a shared resource that must be publicly managed," Claudia Campero, spokesperson for the Coalition of Mexican Organizations for the Right to Water, told IPS.

The coalition has organized the bulk of the meetings and other events being held parallel to the official forum.

Although speaking from the opposing "camp," Loic Fauchon, executive director of the Marseille Water Supply Group of France and president of the World Water Council, issued a statement calling for the right to water to be included in the constitutions of the world's nations.

Ricardo Sanchez, the Latin American and Caribbean regional director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), told IPS that private sector participation should be neither ruled out nor stigmatized. "In certain cases it can prove suitable and in others no, depending on the individual case," he said.

A similar stance was voiced by Miguel Solanes, regional adviser on water and public services law at the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

"Privatization of water services is an option when there is adequate legislation, as is the idea of maintaining this resource in the hands of local or federal authorities. Both are valid options, depending on the context," Solanes remarked to IPS.

But Campero maintained that "everywhere that water has been privatized, there is corruption, high fees and poor service, because corporations consider it a business and not a service that should be available to all.

"We do not believe in privatization in any way, shape or form, and we believe that the World Water Forum is aimed in this direction, no matter what they say about being open to discussion. We know that the issue will be discussed there, and that is good, but in the end the pro-privatization stance will win out," the activist said.

According to the recent U.N. report, although there are sufficient water resources for the entire world population, 1.1 billion people do not have access to water, while 2.6 million lack sanitation services because of poor management, corruption, bureaucratic apathy and a lack of investment.

The international community has pledged to reduce the proportion of the world's population without safe access to drinking water by one half by the year 2015, as part of the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the U.N. member nations in 2000.

The problems of poor distribution are the shared responsibility of both the public and private sectors, the report states.

More than 3 million people died in 2002 from water-related diseases, most of them were children under five in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Every year, the lives of 1.7 million people could be saved if they were provided with safe drinking water, sanitation and health care services, according to the report.

Source: Global Information Network

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