Bogor, 2008
This week the 5th World Water Forum has been meeting in Instanbul, Turkey to discuss global water issues.
Published on Saturday, March 21, 2009 by Agence France Presse
Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud
Demonstrators, protesting against the privatization of water resources clash with riot police in front of the venue of the World Water Forum in Istanbul March 16, 2009. Turkish police fired teargas to disperse a group of hundreds gathered at the start of the global water forum in Istanbul on Monday and detained 17, state-run news agency Anatolian reported.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, urbanization, 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 organized labor blasted the communique as a sideshow, stage-managed for corporations who are major contributors to the World Water Council, which organizes the Forum.
Maude Barlow, senior adviser to the president of the UN General Assembly, said the Forum promoted privatization 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 Organization 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 organizations 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 organized 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 focused 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.
“While the world’s population tripled in the 20th century, the use of renewable water resources has grown six-fold. Within the next fifty years, the world population will increase by another 40 to 50 %. This population growth – coupled with industrialization and urbanization – will result in an increasing demand for water and will have serious consequences on the environment.
People lack drinking water and sanitation
Already there is more waste water generated and dispersed today than at any other time in the history of our planet: more than one out of six people lack access to safe drinking water, namely 1.1 billion people, and more than two out of six lack adequate sanitation, namely 2.6 billion people (Estimation for 2002, by the WHO/UNICEF JMP, 2004). 3900 children die every day from water borne diseases (WHO 2004). One must know that these figures represent only people with very poor conditions. In reality, these figures should be much higher.”
That Jakarta has a serious water problem (either too much in the wrong place or not enough in the right place) has been obvious, certainly its citizens are fully aware of the situation. And it has not gone unnoticed as the links below to The Jakarta Post articles attest:
With the most recent being Letters : Water shortage in Jakarta an editorial appearing in the March 22, 2009 TJP edition and written by Wolf C. Hoffman. In part, here is what Mr. Hoffman reports,
“The great question is: Why has nothing fundamentally changed? In Indonesia there are some excellent universities and enough technical colleges to teach and train young academics and engineers.
It cannot be that nothing has been happening in the wide field of planning, reliability and environmental issues; the reason seems to be the missing financial resources.
A further provocative question: Who is sitting on the cash box for all these necessary investments for a worth-living future? The reference to missing funds is very often a beautiful excuse! Why does a district building authority allow the development of buildings in nondeveloped areas?
How can it happen that there is uncontrolled construction of houses and workshops directly near rivers and canals, where there is no adequate infrastructure – besides a road?
Why do the authorities tolerate thousands of people getting rid of all their human waste and household waste by throwing it in the rivers’ flowing waters?
The administrations are responsible for the strict compliance of the development schemes and settlements. Every migration of people from rural regions to the city or its surroundings can only be carried out when the planning prerequisites for a settlement are fulfilled.
Via the Internet I found a very informative article by the architect Bony Sukamto, who lives in Jakarta and studied at the TU Berlin in the 1980s.
In the German article “Flood Wave in Jakarta” he described exactly, devoid of any polemics, the floods of February 2007 and how, at any time during the monsoon season, these could happen again. Bony also mentioned the basic data of the development planning from 1965 to 2003 which were once the aim of the regional government of Jakarta.
None of this was strictly adhered to. Almost three-quarters of the 200 ponds and many “green isles” in Jakarta were victims of excess planning and were built over – or more clearly: Covered with concrete!”
Indeed, covered with concrete. How can it be?
