World forum backs water as 'basic need'

Ahead of the forum, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) called on water to be recognised as a fundamental human right. "A rights-based approach to water would be a very important means for civil society to hold their governments accountable for ensuring access to an adequate quantity of good quality water as well as sanitation," said PACE President Lluís Maria de Puig. 

He underlined that, in Europe alone, 41 million people do not have access to safe drinking water and 85 million lack access to basic sanitation. Meanwhile, "the continent is still failing to treat more than 50% of its urban water pollution". He called on his parliamentary colleagues in the 47 member states of the Council of Europe to act as "advocates" of the right to water and sanitation and take legislative initiatives to ensure proper water governance in this regard.  

Earlier this month, the European Parliament approved a resolution stating that "water is a shared resource of mankind" and "access to drinking water should constitute a fundamental and universal right". The resolution calls for the required effort to be made to guarantee access to water for the most deprived populations by 2015. 

MEPs thus called on EU member states to increase their contribution to the official development assistance programme in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goal related to drinking-water supplies.

On the protection of the right of access to water and sanitation, a representative of the Gender and Water Alliance argued that the Istanbul Ministerial Declaration "seems to go back in time", stressing that it is essential to provide a basic amounth of free water for everyone. 

Public service  and trade union representatives called on fora such as the World Water Forum "to produce binding outcomes on the right to water and sanitation" and urged governments to use the tools available to them to provide sustainable access to water and sanitation, while considering the roles of workers in the water sector. 

A representative of Business Action for Water, a World Business Council for Sustainable Development initiative, underlined that water is critical for business, the economy and employment, and that technologies to address water-related problems in coastal areas are already available. 

The World Political Forum last month issued a Memorandum for a World Water Protocol, which calls for a global political paradigm shift regarding water, and the establishment of a world water plan featuring the universal right to water and sanitation. Presenting the memorandum at the Peace with Water international conference, Mikhail Gorbachev called for clear political leadership on water, demanding that all nations help the United Nations to "enshrine the right to water as the most important human right". 

Regarding calls to establish access to water as a human right, Maude Barlow, special advisor on water issues to the president of the UN General Assembly said the right to water "clearly does not mean the right to fill one's swimming pool, but it is about the right to life and to water for your daily needs, and about the right to local sustainable food production." 

Barlow thinks it is possible "to begin the process toward the notion that no-one should be denied water because they can't pay for it". However, this will not happen overnight and some countries have different reasons for opposing it, she underlined. According to Barlow, in Canada and the United States, for example, serious water crises are hitting indigenous reserves and neither government wants to face litigation over such a right. At the same time, governments of poor countries fear that their populations will use it to sue them, she said. 

AquaFed, the international federation of private water operators, wants to "bridge the real water divide between haves and have-nots". While the 2008 International Year of Sanitation raised awareness about sanitation, it made clear that targeting "access to toilets" is not sufficient to protect people from contamination by others, it argued. 

Moreover, the federation wants to see the role of waste water collection, treatment and reuse to protect public health and economic development better recognised, calling for integrated sanitation management to address all sanitation challenges simultaneously. 

AquaFed is also demanding "a more realistic approach to the economics of water services" through sustainable cost-recovery, which mixes user payments (tariffs) with subsidies from public budgets (taxes). "The objective is to ensure that user payments are affordable for each category of users and that predictable public subsidies support the service operator if necessary."

It notes that the magnitude of water-related challenges is such that "all capacities must be mobilised" and the "artificial and unhelpful" polemics trying to oppose public and private operators need to be overcome, as they "simply slow progress" and are detrimental to the poor. "Profit is not a criterion that distinguishes private from public utilities. Many well-managed public utilities, including in developing countries, make profits (sometimes named surpluses) and many pay dividends to their public shareholders," AquaFed underlines.