AFRICA ACTION
Africa Policy E-Journal
March 17, 2003 (030317)
Africa: World Water Forum
(Reposted from sources cited below)

This posting contains excerpts from the official press release announcing the World Water Forum now taking place in Kyoto, Japan; a longer background article and critique from a civil society perspective, by Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians; and links for additional sources on issues of water and water privatization.
Another posting today contains brief excerpts from The Water Barons, an extensive report on water privatization around the world, including South Africa and the United States, from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

March 10, 2003
Official Press Release (excerpts)
The 3rd World Water Forum Opens March 16th
Crucial Water Issues to be addressed
http://www.world.water-forum3.com

The most important international water meeting ever opens in Kyoto,Japan on March 16th to address life and death issues. These range from helping the 2.7 billion people who will face water scarcity by 2025 and preventing the 5 million annual deaths from water-related diseases, to growing dangers of accelerating conflicts over water and saving the world's lakes, rivers and wetlands. ...
Over the next 20 years, the average supply of water per person is expected to drop by one-third, according to the World Water Assessment Programme, issued by the UN earlier this month. ...
Some 10,000 government officials, representatives of international organizations such as the World Bank, and UN organizations such as UNESCO and UNEP, along with water experts, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the media are slated to attend the meeting, many more than the number of participants at the 2nd World Water Forum (The Hague, 2000).

Nowadays, 800 million people are going hungry because they cannot afford to buy food. More than 1.2 billion people currently lack access to safe water and 3 billion have inadequate sanitation. This leads to diseases that kill more than 5 million people each year, more than 2 million of them children under the age of five who succumb to diarrhea-related illnesses. Poor residents have few options but to live in squalid, unsafe environments. In addition, the circumstances of these poor communities contribute to environmental deterioration, through water pollution and floods in neighboring areas caused by blocked drainage systems.

The 40 worst water-famished countries in the world, in many of which people live on just two gallons a day for all uses, can never escape poverty and achieve sustainable development without first addressing their water scarcity, global water experts say. This amount is far less than the 50-liter (13.2 gallons) per day level that the United Nations says constitutes the absolute minimum for water needs. The daily per capita water requirements include 5 liters for drinking, 20 for sanitation and hygiene, 15 for bathing and 10 for food preparation, per person.

"Only about 60 percent of the 680 million people in Sub-Sahara Africa have ac cess to safe water supplies," says Professor Albert Wright, Chairman of the African Water Task Force and Co-chairman of the UN's Task Force on the Millennium Goals for Water. "Incredibly, people in 13 countries, nine of them in Africa, must try and live on an average of less than 10 liters (2.6 gallons) per day, a truly desperate situation. Poverty and lack of water is inextricably linked for these people (in countries such as The Gambia, Haiti, Djibouti, Somalia, Mali, Cambodia, Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Albania and Bhutan)." In this context, one of the eight United Nations Millennium Goals (MDGs) from September 2000 to "Ensure environmental sustainability," mentions as one major objective "to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water" by 2015.