The issue of water access illustrates the emergence of new regulations for Public Goods at the global scale. It is the first sector where ideas on how to manage Public goods at this scale has emerged.

Context

Figures underline an important water crisis: 1,1 billion people live today with no access to drinking water. The purification situation is dramatic: more than 2 out of 6 people have inadequate access to sanitation, in other words 2,6 billion people worldwide. 3900 children die every day from water-related diseases (WHO 2004) There are important inequalities in water usage.

In North America and in Japan, water use per person per day in residential areas is 350 liters, in Europe 200 liters per person per day, and only 10 to 20 liters in sub-Saharan Africa. Civil society organizations pinpoint the inefficiency of the international community over the last thirty years, as policies have increased water scarcity at a time when the institutions speak of a lack of global governance of water resources and point out the impact factor of demographic increase.

Civil society reacted strongly to water « privatizations » in Latin America in 2005 and, in 2006. At the World Water Forum, held in March 2006 in Mexico City, for the first time actors from private sector as well as governments representatives recognized that Private-Public Partnerships were not the only solution.

On their side, The United Nations Millennium Development Goals, in Objective 7, target 10 for 2015 state « A 50% reduction by 2015 of the percentage of the population who do not have permanent access to drinking water supplies. »

All those actors are debating for a long time without findings points of agreement and thus solutions are difficult to emerge. It is important that all parties understand what are the points of disagreement before they contemplate possible of areas of common action, to improve the most dramatic situations. This confrontation seems to be due not merely to ideological differences, but also to the needs of the poorest people who are not generally taken into consideration with the immediacy and care with which they should be treated.

Activities of the Bridge Initiative water group in 2005

Contrary to other exploratory mediation missions, this particular process was initiated on the request of an institutional body, the Agence Française de Développement (French Development Agency).

An initial meeting took place on November 4th. 2005 in Paris, on the theme « Water for all in the 21st century ». 20 people took part; they represented the following sectors: cooperation and finance agencies, public authorities, universities and research poles, private sector, civil society coalitions, NGOs.

Objectives

1 – To engage a large number of players involved in questions around water management in a dialogue in order to understand the perspectives and expertise of all the different stakeholders.

2 – To uncover points of divergence and possible points of agreement with regards to international policy on water management.

3 – To envision solutions and/or form alliances between actors involved and focus the debate towards the conference in Mexico in 2006.

Results

According to the participants’ evaluation, messages during the November 4th meeting were well received and dialogue established, with general recognition of the role and place for the various stakeholders. The fields of consensus were broad in the discussions moderated by Bridge International, and participants thus reached agreement on the following points:

Water is a public resource, and as such it should belong to public authorities;

Water belongs to all people;

The question of financing universal access to water needs to be posed;

There are different models that can and could work;

It is necessary to be imaginative and creative to invent solutions.

The main point of disagreement was about exoneration of payment. Analysis of the causes of lack of efficiency of the public sector in developing countries as well as the PPP model was also a cause for discussion. Today, civil society organizations propose that water be considered a human right, a common resource, and mooted the idea of a World Water Contract.

There are sufficient themes to allow the group to take the dialogue further. The expectations of participants are about financing of water and the issue of free water. Civil society organizations would like to have an evaluation made on practices in terms of 1) French co-operation and 2) the multilateral institutions such as the World Bank.

Most of the participants expressed an interest in exchanging experience on interesting practice (best practice and failures) and on the various kinds of partnerships between stakeholders. There was also a request for a greater participation of people of the South and poor neighborhoods in future meetings.

2006 Activities

In order to meet the expectations of the participants in the October 4th 2005 meeting, the 2006 meeting was based on the experience of countries confronted by problems of access to and distribution of water, in order to allow participants to reflect on possible solutions. Two countries were selected to facilitate discussion between actors: Morocco, which has a diversity of water management models, and Mali, which provokes discussion on the questions of the price of water, and water for free, while presenting the management models of these countries.

Objectives

For Bridge Initiative, concerned actors in a given sector need to be involved in the identification of the problems and in the search for solutions. Through those meetings, Bridge Initiative tries to bring around the table enough diversity of positions to allow:

- A confrontation of ideas

-Identification of possible points of agreement and confirmation of points of disagreement

- Concluding the meeting by participants expressing their will to continue the dialogue process and to make concrete proposals of action to realize all together.

Participants

This second meeting allowed finding a better representation of actors, with the participation of; -Consumers -Actors from the field, including the presence of actors from Morocco and Mali -Anglo-Saxon NGOs -International Institutions.

In total, 22 participants came and had an interesting debate on financing access to water and water management.

Results

1-The majority of the participants expressed satisfaction with the meeting, even if the objectives were not sufficiently clear at the outset.

2-Several participants feel that they learned things and/or hear things that surprised them.

3-Multi-stakeholder dialogue is necessary and useful even if change is not really tangible.

4-People are interested in developing a better understand of other peoples’ visions and improving understanding

5-We came close to agreement on the question of finance (subsidising access rather than consumption)

6-The idea of creating a preparatory committee for the next meeting was approved by a majority of the participants as well as the idea of a field study by a small group.

In the same time, some participants mentioned their frustration regarding the question related to the Right to Water. They would like to have a deep debate on this specific issue. The purpose is to understand better what each actor mean by the notion of Right to Water, and what should be its concrete implementation.