To whom does water belong?
A panel of experts debated this controversial issue as a prelude to Swiss Re’s RE-Source Award ceremony held at Rüschlikon on Monday 17 March 2003.
Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years. According to the United Nations, more than one billion people on Earth already lack access to fresh drinking water. If current trends persist, by 2025 the demand for fresh water will rise by 56% and as many as half of the world's population will be in water stressed or severe water scarcity conditions.
There is a price to be paid for clean, safe water and this is the sticking point. If water is a human right, as some maintain, can such a right be sold? The harsh truth is that if water provision is left exclusively to private enterprise where cost recovery and profit are the main objectives, many of the world's poorest -- and, for that matter, many of the more affluent -- will be unable to afford it.
As Kristalina Georgieva of the World Bank pointed out, “Water does not pay”. She encouraged the audience to face up to the reality that water infrastructure is not the most attractive choice for investors. She suggested that public-private partnerships offered the best chance of a compromise and would avoid the problem of private companies plucking the low-hanging fruit in supplying only the middle and upper class segments of society capable of paying. In water-scarce regions a minimum amount should be guaranteed for basic needs (drinking, cooking, etc.) and all additional consumption should be billed subject to the law of supply and demand.
In a provocative statement, Bertrand Piccard, scientist-adventurer, psychiatrist and the first man to circumnavigate the earth in a balloon, claimed that human endeavour had always been governed by short-term interests and the desire for profit maximisation. Rather than fighting this tendency, the public should make it clear to politicians that taking water issues seriously is in their short-term interest and would have a direct bearing on their electability. The best way to bring such pressure to bear was through “a massive infusion of information” in the media.
Claude Martin, Director General of WWF, questioned the relevance of the question: “It’s not about who owns water. We are water!” The human body, the biosphere – all are largely composed of water. He encouraged the audience to move away from a compartmentalised view of water “rights”, which he said was counter-intuitive to any “comprehensive understanding of what water actually is” and was responsible for creating the “plumbing mentality” that still existed in many quarters. Ultimately, he contended, water issues have to be dealt with at a regional, river basin level.
Gian Reto Plattner, physicist at the University of Basel and Speaker of the Swiss Council of States, put forward the idea that if water belonged to all living things, it actually belonged to nobody. He supported the view that those who could pay more should, and that whilst it was acceptable to earn a reasonable profit in the water sector, the majority of those profits should be ploughed back into the infrastructure. He added that the rush for privatisation had caused people to forget that some sectors (including water) should remain under government control.
In keeping with the largely hands-on tone of the discussion, Kristalina Georgieva concluded by articulating her hope that the upcoming Third World Water Forum in Kyoto would achieve results that were “humble, modest, but concrete.”
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