Debating the Future of Our World's Water

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons.org:


Debating the Future of Our World's Water
World Water Forum in Marseille sets the stage for important talks at Rio environment conference

By Daniel Moss


The World Water Council, the convener of the World Water Forum, sure knows its market. At their recent global gathering held in Marseille, France, they tapped into the thirst of governments, development agencies, banks, NGOs and private water operators for a conversation about water services and managing the growing water crisis — as well as a shot at lucrative contracts. Exhibition booths included desalinization companies and private firms like Suez and Veolia, the biggest in the industry. The event had the feel of a trade show and the price tag of the Superbowl, dissuasive to thousands of water justice activists who set up a parallel, alternative peoples’ water forum in a dock-side warehouse.

Where is UN leadership on water? A Crisis of Water Governance

The first World Water Forum was held in 1997; the Sixth concluded last month. The World Water Council is a private, not-for-profit body with a board weighted towards private water industry representatives and government officials friendly to private water management. The United Nations might appear a more sensible host for a global conversation about world water policy—water troubles are felt locally but the hydrological cycle is turned topsy-turvy globally. Human rights and environmental activists who steered clear of the Forum advocate moving it to the UN. The same opinion was whispered to me by a Forum session facilitator, “but if we say it out loud, this party is over.”

One obstacle to this shift is the approximately 27 UN agencies that deal with water. This bureaucratic dispersion mirrors the way most national governments split administration of water matters. There tends to be one agency administering potable water, another issuing water permits to mine operators, a third overseeing sanitation and no one watching out for watershed protection. Unlike, say, the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no central UN agency for global water. No one leads; into the vacuum steps the World Water Council.

“Would you have a pharmaceutical business federation run the world conference on health?” Pedro Arrojo, 2003 Goldman Environmental Prize winner asked at a non-Forum meeting of civil society organizations and governments. “It would be unthinkable.” .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/debating-future-our-worlds-water