Strasbourg, 16/03/2006 (Agence Europe) - The right of the poorest sections of society to access drinking water as a fundamental human right and to enjoy this shared human resource should be acknowledged as a right. This is the essential message the European Parliament would like to see coming out of the World Forum on Water, which opened on Thursday in Mexico (Mexico, 16-22 March) on the theme of “Local action for a Global Challenge”. This is therefore the essential demand it formulated in a resolution adopted on 15 March in Strasbourg in the hope that the EU would defend this position in Mexico.
Parliament has set its sights further and is urging the EU and its Member States to propose, as part of the United Nations framework, the elaboration of an international treaty on water and the management of hydraulic resources and for this right to be recognised. The EP points out that this is part of the Millennium Objectives for development, which aims to “reduce by half” by 2015, the percentage of the population that does not have sustainable access to drinking water supplies and appropriate water purification facilities. MEPs are pleased that in this respect EUR 500 million was allocated under the 9th European Development Fund (EDF) for launching the ACP-EU water facility (EUR 475 had previously been raised) and are requesting that the 10th EDF reserves adequate funding for water supply and treatment. On the other hand, Parliament deplores the fact that the UN has not sufficiently integrated the World Water Forum actions and that the work of its 21 agencies is uncoordinated. Parliament would also like to see the setting up of a “Water Coordination Agency” for protecting public health and the environment and promoting strategies for economic and agricultural development compatible with a high water quality.
The resolution calls on the Commission and Council to recognise the fundamental role of local EU bodies in the protection and management of water and that their potential in expertise, human and financial resources are fully utilised. With regard to the allocation of “European Water Funds” the Commission is therefore invited to take the projects presented by local European bodies more into account. The EP emphasises the need for greater participation by all actors in developing countries in encouraging genuine ownership of initiatives and the mobilisation of the different bodies on the ground. Pierre Schapira (French Socialist) welcomed this, explaining, “Strengthened by their successful experiences, towns in the North are eager and able to bring assistance to developing cities”. Roberto Musacchio (GUE/NGL, Italy) pointed out that his group took part in a Social Forum last year in Bamako, Mali, where they adopted a “manifesto for the right to water”. He hammered home the fact that like air, water is needed in order to live and he criticised attempts to privatise water which would “be like privatising air, privatising the right to live and only giving this to those who can pay”.
NGOs organise a water defence counter-summit
The NGOs that denounce the overrepresentation of the interests of energy and water multinationals, the Bretton Woods institutions, governments from the North and the World Forum's attempts to “influence water policy making at a global level” will get their voices heard at the alternative to the official event, the “International Forum in the defence of Water”. Friends of the Earth International (FoEi) underlined the fact that, “the official Water Forum is a business-dominated talk-shop”. According to Carlos Santos from REDES/FoEi Uruguay, “Water privatisation guidelines that came out of the 3rd Water Forum failed spectacularly in Uruguay. Privatisation of water services in the Maldonado area caused grave social, economical and environmental consequences”.