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dam-l PR: Ministers Should Reject 'World Water Vision'



OLD WATER IN A NEW BOTTLE:
“WORLD WATER VISION” IS CHRONICALLY SHORT-SIGHTED

International Rivers Network (US)
International Committee on Dams, Rivers and People
Both Ends (Netherlands)

Statement on the Report of the World Commission on Water
(World Water Vision)

March 17, 2000

The report of the World Commission on Water (WCW) is a restatement of tired 
orthodoxies from the international water establishment and should be 
rejected by the water ministers who will meet in The Hague on 21-22 March. 
The report, written by the WCW Chairman and World Bank Vice-President Ismail 
Serageldin, is merely old water in a new bottle.

The title of the WCW report, "A Water Secure World: Vision for Water, Life 
and the Environment", is highly misleading. It contains no vision and hardly 
mentions the environment. The WCW process, with its confusing welter of 
reports, fora, and 'visions' has been a waste of money and a diversion from 
the vital task of creatively finding sustainable and equitable ways of 
managing the world's freshwater.

The WCW claims that its report is the result of "an unprecedented 
participatory effort". This is a sham. The process has been controlled from 
the start by a small group of aid-agency and water multinational officials, 
mainly from the Global Water Partnership, World Water Council, World Bank 
and Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux. The key conclusions of the WCW report – that 
there is a global water shortage crisis which can only be solved with a 
massive increase in private funding for water projects in developing 
countries, backed up with guarantees from the World Bank and other aid 
agencies – was predetermined. Critical viewpoints have simply been ignored 
or relegated to the obscurity of the numerous supporting documents.

The WCW assumes that all public enterprises are necessarily incompetent and 
inefficient, and all private water suppliers eager to serve the public good. 
Examples of efficient public enterprises are ignored and privatization is 
assumed to be the only way of financing infrastructure investments. The WCW 
call for water to be treated purely as an “economic good” should be 
rejected. Access to adequate amounts of safe water and sanitation should be 
a basic right.

Much of the WCW report is a restatement of general principles already agreed 
at an international water meeting in Dublin in 1992 and since endorsed at 
numerous meetings of the global water establishment and promoted in numerous 
World Bank reports and press releases.

The WCW analysis glosses over the fact that the problem is less one of 
global shortages of either water or investments, than one of mismanagement 
and skewed political priorities. The crisis is one of overconsumption, 
waste, pollution, watershed degradation, rampant dam building, poorly 
conceived and operated infrastructure projects, corruption and inequality.

Although the WCW gives the impression that we are all about to go thirsty, 
the extra water required to ensure a minimum basic domestic supply to all 
the world’s people in 2025 is only one per cent of current water 
withdrawals.  The main pressure on freshwater ecosystems will come from 
irrigated agriculture, which currently accounts for about 85% of all water 
used in Africa, Asia and Central America. However, irrigation, especially 
that based on the huge dam and canal schemes promoted by agencies such as 
the World Bank, is notoriously inefficient, making massive water savings 
possible.

It is no surprise that one of the main recommendations of the WCW is to call 
for strengthening the role of the GWP, WWC, World Bank Global Environment 
Facility and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Policy 
(CGIAR) in global water management. These are the institutions which have 
set up and run the WCW and they are also those which have designed, funded 
and promoted the policies and projects that have led to the current water 
situation.

This global hydro-aid complex has thrived on corrupt, non-transparent, 
unaccountable, non-participatory, unsustainable and inequitable water 
mismanagement. They have promoted water and agriculture policies which have 
left billions of people without access to safe water and sanitation and 
adequate nutrition and ever more at risk from floods and drought. They have 
built dam and irrigation projects which have deprived countless millions of 
people of their rights over water, land, forests and other natural 
resources.

The water ministers should ignore the pleas for money and attention from the 
WCW, GWP, WWC and GEF. They have little relevance to the task of moving 
toward sustainable and equitable water management around the world.

A truly visionary report on global water would have concentrated on issues 
such as:
* how to provide just reparations to those deprived of their rights by past 
water projects;
* how to ensure that future project planning will be transparent and 
accountable;
* how to ensure that the potential of small-scale appropriate technologies 
is fairly assessed;
* how to best support successful, small-scale community-based projects and 
technologies, and ensure their wide dissemination;
* how to ensure that local people will have the first right over local water 
sources and will not have their means of survival stolen from them; and
* how to review existing systems to see which ones can be improved and which 
should be decommissioned.

And lastly a visionary report would have put the need to ensure plentiful 
water for people and ecosystems within the context of a world facing overall 
environmental degradation, catastrophic climate change, and growing 
inequalities within and between nations. Dealing with these issues is key to 
ensuring adequate water for people and ecosystems.

Because large dams have consumed such huge amounts of national water 
resources budgets and because of the overwhelming evidence of such projects 
being unsustainable, inequitable, non-participatory, cost-ineffective and 
inefficient; and taking note of the huge underutilised potential of local 
systems and existing large projects, the World Commission on Water should 
call for a halt to the construction of new large dams around the world and a 
review of projects underway.


For an alternative vision of the water future the ministers should read 
‘Towards People-Oriented River Basin Management: An NGO Vision’, circulated 
by Dutch NGO Both Ends.

Contacts: Patrick McCully, IRN Campaigns Director, The Hague, cell phone +31 
(0)6 22936523.
Paul Wolvekamp, Both Ends, cell phone  06 28228094.

This statement is endorsed by:

Sadi Baron, Dam-Affected People’s Movement (MAB), Brazil
Nicholas Hildyard, The Cornerhouse, England
Himanshu Thakker, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, India
Devaki Jain, Indian Association of Women’s Studies
Leo Saldanha, Environment Support Group, India
D. Narasimha Reddy, Centre for Resource Education, India
Minar Pimple, YUVA, India
Ashish Kothari, Kalpavriksh, India
Dr Abey George, Kerala, India
Shripad Dharmadhikary, Save the Narmada Movement (NBA)
Chandra Mani Adhikari, Maya Chhetri, Narayan Paudel, Lok Bdr. Basnet, Joy 
Krishna Goit, Suresh Thapa, Gyanendra Aryal, Bhaj Raj Bhatta, National 
Network for Resource Conservation, Nepal
Aly Ercelawn and Muhammed Nauman, creed alliance, Pakistan
Juraj Zamkovsky, Friends of the Earth Slovakia
Liane Greeff, Environmental Monitoring Group, South Africa
Peter Bosshard, Berne Declaration, Switzerland
Shalmali Guttal, Focus on the Global South, Thailand


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