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World Water Forum - Diluting Dissent?
hile resistance to the global water privatisation offensive is on the increase, the influential World Water Forum continues to promote the corporate management of drinking water systems around the world. The organisers, including the industry-biased World Water Council, hope to appease anti-privatisation movements at the upcoming conference in Japan.
On March 16-23, an expected 8,000 people from around the world will participate in the Third World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan.[1] The triennial World Water Forum has become a key focus for the international debate on the global water crisis. Although it is not a United Nations event, a Ministerial Conference involving high-level government officials from around the world is attached to each World Water Forum. The organisers claim that the forum is open and inclusive to every ‘stakeholder’, while critics argue that it is elitist, undemocratic and deeply biased towards corporate interests.
It is not just the excessive entrance fees and the obscene lack of grassroots group participation, particularly from the South, that undermine the forum’s claims of legitimacy. Behind the Forum itself is a sophisticated campaign by neoliberal and corporate interests to establish global consensus on water policy and to promote an enhanced role for the private sector in water management. The Forum is organised by the World Water Council (WWC), a Marseille-based group established in 1996, which defines itself as "the world's water-policy think tank."[2] Its membership includes research institutes, government agencies, UN institutions and mainstream NGOs, but the WWC is dominated by the World Bank and some of the world’s largest water corporations.[3]
Orchestrating ‘Consensus’
At the previous World Water Forum (in the Hague, March 2000), the WWC presented the ‘World Water Vision’, a document it claimed reflected the global consensus on solutions to the water crisis.[4] The World Water Vision, essentially a pro-privatisation manifesto, was strongly denounced by activist groups during the conference. Since then, resistance to the corporate water agenda has intensified around the world but the WWC stubbornly declares that “all elements in the big picture seem to have been adequately addressed,” implying a de facto consensus.[5] At the Third World Water Forum, the organisers claim, the time has come for “moving from rhetoric to action” and focus on ‘implementation’ of the World Water Vision.
To support this distorted interpretation of reality, the WWC has recently published a “World Water Actions” report, “an overview of actions being taken around the world to improve the way that water is being managed.”[6] The reports lists over 200 projects, many of which may be beneficial (from pollution reduction via nature protection to rural, women-based water supply and sanitation projects), but many others that are certainly not. Not only are projects run by notorious greenwashers (including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development), the WWC has also sneaked-in planned water privatisation projects in Chad, Portugal, Thailand, Saint-Lucia, Uruguay and elsewhere.[7]
Ignoring dissent
The WWC has made little effort to consult with those affected by these World Water actions, as the example from Uruguay reveals.[8] The proposed privatisation of drinking water in Uruguay, designed by the World Bank, is fiercely opposed by social movements in the country. The World Bank’s privatisation plans are clearly ideology-driven, as Uruguay has one of the best functioning public water supply systems in Latin America. In response, movements in Uruguay have been running a strong campaign for a referendum to change the constitution and ban water privatisation. The WWC’s decision to promote the World Bank’s privatisation plan as a World Water Action is just one example of the report’s bias. Popular struggles against privatisation in South Africa, Bolivia, Nicaragua and numerous other places around the world are simply ignored. The same goes for the visionary models of community-controlled water supply that have proven to be highly viable alternatives to privatisation.[9] In fact the “World Water Actions” report serves to orchestrate a false consensus that increasing the role of private water corporations is the only solution to the water crisis.
Challenging the Forum
Just as in previous Forums, numerous mainstream NGOs that have to a large extent embraced the corporate water agenda will play an active role during the upcoming World Water Forum, including the World Wildlife Fund, IUCN, and the Stakeholder Forum. In the run-up to the Kyoto conference, the World Water Council has launched a charm offensive towards those NGOs that are opposing water privatisation, inviting them to join this year’s event, for instance by co-organising panel debates. The WWC wants to avoid the embarrassment from the previous conference (The Hague, 2000), when these groups challenged the forum’s legitimacy and corporate bias, both inside the conference and in a counter-summit. As the Forum sees it, in order to “avoid the controversy over public or private” during the Third World Water Forum, “the concept of public-private partnership will be advanced.”[10] Winning over privatisation opponents with PPPs is hardly a realistic scenario, as this basket concept has long been abused by water corporations. In the real world, PPPs often means corporations running the water supply with (local) governments subsidising investments, covering political risks and guaranteeing corporate profits.[11]
Some critical campaign groups are now working on what could be called a ‘Trojan horse’ strategy. They will participate in the World Water Forum in order to win the debate over water privatisation or at least spoil the efforts to orchestrate a false consensus.[12] Others like youth activists ASEED Japan will concentrate on colourful anti-privatisation actions outside of the conference centre, denouncing the flawed World Water Forum process.[13] Parallel to the events in Kyoto, alternative fora will take place in various cities around the world, including Florence (Italy), Sao Paolo (Brazil) and New York.[14]
Privatisers in Action
In between organising the World Water Forum every three years, the World Water Council (WWC) operates as a think-tank promoting neoliberal ‘solutions’ to the water crisis. Speaking of ‘public-private partnerships’ instead of ‘privatisation’, the WWC continues to promote the illusion that leaving water supply to transnational corporations is the only way forward. In fact the experience of the last decade has shown that these profit-seeking corporations are incapable of delivering water to the worlds poorest.[15]
An example of the WWC in action was the UN conference on freshwater, held in Bonn, Germany, December 2001. During this event, WWC Vice-President René Coulomb organised several workshops on how to remove obstacles for private sector expansion into water markets around the world, with speakers from Suez, Vivendi and other major water corporations. Coulomb is also a board member and former director of Suez, the world’s largest private water corporation.[16]
Another example is the international task force on financing new water infrastructure, which the WWC launched in 2002. The task force is chaired by Michel Camdessus, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who imposed disastrous Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) on many Southern countries, including the privatisation of water and other essential services. Camdessus is joined by representatives of water TNCs as well as international financial institutions and investment banks that are complicit in the debt crisis, one of the biggest obstacles to improving access to clean water for the world’s poorest people.[17] Hardly surprising, the group’s recommendations to the World Water Forum will focus on how to expand the role of private water corporations.
Notes
1: See also: http://www.worldwaterforum.org/
2: Ibid.
3: Corporate members include Suez, Evian, Mitsubishi, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd, Severn Trent Plc and Aguas de Barcelona.
4: See: ” ...And Not a Drop to Drink! World Water Forum promotes privatisation and deregulation of world's water”, Corporate Europe Observer - Issue 7 (July 2000), http://www.corporateeurope.org/observer7/water.html
5: “Third Announcement Third World Water Forum”, page 2.
6 The ‘World Water Actions’ report is available at http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/WAU.shtml
7 The WBCSD’s Water Project aims to convince the world that corporations like Suez, Nestle and Rio Tinto are doing the right thing and that solving the water crisis can be left to them. http://www.wbcsd.org/projects/pr_water.htm
8: “Water and Sanitation Sector Reform in Uruguay”, http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/WAU.shtml
9: See also “The Power of Participation”, Corporate Europe Observatory, March 2003.
10: “Second Announcement Third World Water Forum”, page 18.
11: Sharing the risks with governments is obviously attractive if a privatisation does not lead to the expected profits or if the local population mobilises against increased water prices. Public-private partnerships can result in private corporations taking over only the profitable parts of a local water market and leaving the poorer neighbourhoods without water.
12: The Blue Planet Project: http://www.blueplanetproject.net/english/
Public Services International (PSI): http://www.world-psi.org/13: For instance actions on March 16 and 21st against the role of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank in imposing water privatisation in the South. For more information, see http://www.aseed.org/water/en/index.html
14: For instance the Peoples World Water Forum in Florence: http://www.cipsi.it/contrattoacqua/forum-acqua/en/index.htm
15: See: "European Water TNCs: Towards Global Domination?", Corporate Europe Observatory, March 2003.
16: World Water Council press release, December 4 2001, http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/download/PR_Bonn_financing.PDF
17: Top people from Suez and investment banks CitiBank and Lazard Freres, as wella s the presidents of the MDB's including IADB, ADB, AfDB, ERBRD and IFC. "International panel search for new investment in water", http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/download/Financ_panel_PR.pdf
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