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 “Life in society is not possible without sharing; sharing knowledge, values and resources. Amongst the latter, water is the most precious because it is essential to all forms of life. Every person has a right to water and a duty to offer it to his fellow men.” (Marc Gentilini, President, French Red Cross, 2004).
As Britain's largest water company announced last week that it will be imposing a ban on London’s hosepipes and sprinklers from next month due to “serious water shortages”, we are forced to acknowledge that the Earth as a whole is getting thirstier as unprecedented increases in consumption and pollution are diminishing already limited global reserves. There is however a significant difference between water shortages around the world not being able to wash your car once a week is massively different to not having enough water to maintain levels of personal sanitation in order to ward of life-threatening disease. The UN reports that 1 billion people lack access to improved water supply, and globally 2.4 billion people lack access to improved sanitation. Yesterday, on World Water Day, the UN officially presented its 2nd World Water Development Report at the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico. This report promises to place a focus on the central role of water use and allocation in poverty alleviation and socio-economic development, identifying poor governance as the greatest cause of the current water crisis. Key problems include corruption, stagnated budgets, declining levels of development assistance and investment in the water sector, inadequate institutions and limited stakeholder participation. The danger of competition over scarce or poorly allocated resources leading to insecurity between nations raises the need for the development of policies which allow for sharing among all stakeholders. In order to accommodate the different interests at stake, the UN report highlights the need for policy makers to listen to the different needs of cities and rural areas, rich and poor, public and private, infrastructure and natural environments; mainstream and marginal groups, local stakeholders and centralized authorities. Currently the world has several potential conflict areas. Israel, Jordan & Palestine have 5% of the world's population surviving on 1% of its water (a factor which contributed to the Arab-Israeli war in 1967). In Africa, Angola and Nambia continue to compete over the Okavango Basin whilst the rapidly growing populations of Ethiopia and Sudan threaten conflict along the Nile as they demand a greater supply of water limiting Egypt’s supply. China and India have long struggled to equitably use the Brahmuputra river, and in 2000 India accused China of not sharing information on the river's status as landslides in Tibet caused floods in north-eastern India and Bangladesh. Chinese proposals to divert the river have also recently been of concern to Delhi.
The idea of cooperating over resource use is increasing, at the regional and international level, and the UN reports on many river basin and aquifer authorities who are developing integrated approaches that stress cooperation of the shared resource. A UNESCO programme called PC-CP (From Potential Conflict to Cooperation Potential) is currently reviewing such case studies of "transboundary" water sharing. PCCP was the co-convener of a special session at the Forum which involved two partnership events which focussed on the Tigris Euphrates Initiative for Co-operation. This event brought together members of the official delegations of the riparian countries involved, as well as hearing from the donor community, potential partners and members of interested delegations that are keen to participate in the decision making process. Following three years of intensive regional discussions, March 2001 saw African countries from the Nile Basin region agreeing to cooperate on projects to manage water resources from the Nile River and alleviate poverty through sustainable development. The projects range from efficient water use for agriculture and hydropower interconnection to watershed management. This Nile Basin Initiative, a historic partnership of ten African countries (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda) who share the resources of the Nile River, promises to support socio-economic development and poverty alleviation. Together they are working toward a shared vision – ‘to develop the precious resources of this as yet pristine river system in a manner that benefits all, reduces poverty, improves the lives of all their people, and protects the river and its resources for generations to come’. The UN’s World Water Development report warns that increasing competition for water resources can have potentially divisive effects, and stresses the importance of mechanisms for cooperation and shared governance between those who use the resource. It goes on to suggest that the resource should be regarded as a catalyst for cooperation and a medium for deterring political tensions, while encouraging equitable and sustainable development. The report promises to offer some interesting conclusions and recommendations to guide future action and enhance the sustainable use, productivity and management of the world's increasingly scarce freshwater resources, but will governments adhere to these recommendations as the private sector increases its efforts to tighten its grip on this precious resource? Water Privatisation Many parts of the developed world has already seen its water supply systems privatised, and multinational companies are now seeking to gain control of water supplies around the world. Where water is limited and demand is high, privatisation is promoted as a suitable water management option for governments, despite evidence that this creates more problems than it solves. Unnecessary increases in the price of water reinforces the unequitable access to clean water. There are examples of successful publicly run water utilities in the developing world such as Porto Alegre in Brazil. In 1961, the city council in Porto Alegre created a water and sanitation provider, called Departamento Municipal de Água e Esgotos (DMAE). Despite the population doubling in size over forty years, DMAE extended water supply to 99.5 per cent of the population and sewerage services to 84 per cent of households, drastically improving the quality of life for the city’s inhabitants. The infant death rate of 14 per thousand is significantly lower than the national average of 65, strong evidence that publically controlled water management works to the benefit of the poor. The reality we must face up to is that as a result of increased water privatisation, water quality degradation and reduced access have led to more deaths in Central America than violent conflicts or natural disasters (Sequeria 1999). In 2005, Central America witnessed an uprising which led to a declaration against water privatisation. Over 100 participants of the “Human Right to Water” Forum, held in Managua, Nicaragua, released a declaration that defined water as a basic right and stated that such a valuable resource should not be subject to production and sales targets. This forum also strongly protested against the restrictions in access to water caused by the inefficient distribution of the resource by multinational companies, working under concessions. Participants said they would boycott the 2006 World Water Forum in Mexico and international organisations or legislation aimed to privatise water. This comes as a strong warning to other nations, against the privatisation of water supplies, and the concessions (regarded as the first step towards privitisation) granted by governments to transnational companies. Central American water tribunal director Javier Bogantes said that the population of 37 million in Central America 35% have no access to potable water. The Central American Water Tribunal, met last year to hear several cases which revealed that water resources in Central America are at risk. The Tribunal ruled out that some Central American governments are guilty of not protecting their water resources despite having signed international treaties and having passed legislation to protect their water resources and environmentally vulnerable areas. Apart from governments, the Tribunal ruled that private companies and international financial institutions like the World Bank are liable for the state of water resources in the region. Renowned for its promotion of public participation, the CAWT offers a venue for action for groups in society which are normally denied access to such justice, and to those who are directly affected by the depletion of these resources. The groups experiencing the effects of water resource degradation the most include farmers, households, and families headed by women. CAWT’s strength is its offer of justice without affiliation to a distant and corrupt government. Though limited in its power, it represents an important shift towards public participation in water resource management. However, the violent protests which erupted in the 1990s in Central America against private water management companies control of public water supplies, threaten to deter badly needed corporate investment away from municipal water systems. This occurred in Bolivia where demonstrations in 2004 in the slum city of El Alto, outside La Paz, saw the subsidiary of French Suez Corp cancel its contract to provide water to the slum city. As a result the world's poor buy bottled water from private multinational companies such as Coke, Danone and Pepsi. The Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental group, reported that sales of bottled water in China jumped by more than 250% between 1999 and 2004, whilst in India they tripled and almost doubled in Indonesia, bringing the worth of the industry to about $100 billion per year. As the 4th World Water Forum draws to an end, the world remains challenged by the complex issues surrounding this unique resource. Whilst the UN is calling on nations to share and co-operate over water, the privatisation of water supplies threatens to further exacerbate the unequal access to affordable, clean water for millions of people living in poverty. Governments need to urgently address their water strategies for the future, especially in areas threatened by depleting supplies and increasing demand; whilst the temptation to allow private companies to take control will be great, this must be avoided in favour of publicly controlled systems. Louise Edwards, STWR
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