DEVELOPMENT: Funding a Core Issue at Global Freshwater Conference in Bonn

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Ramesh Jaura

BONN, Dec 3 2001 (IPS) - Some 180 billion dollars a year are required as investment in providing water and sanitation services to about 1.2 billion people around the world, who do not have access to sufficient and hygienically safe water, says a document tabled at a five-day International Freshwater Conference that began in Bonn Monday.

Entitled ‘draft recommendations for action’, the paper is expected to be studied by government ministers and senior officials from some 120 countries – and eventually approved by them before the conference ends December 7.

Present investments in water infrastructure are estimated at 70- 80 billion dollars. The tremendous gap will therefore have to be bridged by mobilising “all sources for funding in developing countries – public funding from general budget revenues, water tariffs and charges, external assistance, and private investment,” adds the paper.

However, the document warns that public funding will continue to be the single biggest sources of investment in water, particularly in poor countries where an appropriate framework conducive to attract private investment may be difficult to implement in the short run.

“Even where the mobilisation of private investment is successful, public funds will be needed to complement such investment,” adds the paper.

Referring to the issue of mobilising additional funds, Germany’s deputy minister for economic cooperation and development Uschi Eid said in keynote address: “We will not succeed in closing this gap if we partner with private players, and this is another area where a solid foundation for action must be laid.”

She assured that the German government was fully committed to the principle of sustainable development. With this in view it was providing annual bilateral contributions of between 300 to 400 million dollars for development of the water sector.

In another keynote address, Environment Minister Juergen Trittin also expressed himself against privatising water the same way as electricity, gas and telecommunications had been privatised.

“Drinking water is as irreplaceable as the air we breathe. Providing citizens with an adequate supply of high quality of water is a public task for services of general interest. And it must remain so,” added Trittin.

The Bonn conference is being co-organised by the German government ministries of environment and of economic cooperation and development to prepare for the World Summit on Sustainable Development next year in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The outcome of the Bonn conference will contribute to both the review process of the implementation of Agenda 21 and to the process of identifying concrete options for the future, said Nitin Desai, Under Secretary General of the United Nations.

Desai is Secretary General of the Johannesburg summit that will take stock of the progress made since the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development held in June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Underlining the importance of the Bonn conference, Klaus Toepfer, U.N. Under Secretary General and Executive Director of the world body’s Environment Programme (UNEP) said water was “a key to development, to social equity, environmental stability and protection as well as a key to cultural diversity”.

Precisely in view of this, a document tabled by the German NGO ‘World Economy, Ecology and Development’ (WEED) expressed serious doubts about privatisation of water. “Development aid for transnational water concerns is not a solution to the global water crisis,” said the author of the paper, Uwe Hoering.

As a pre-condition for private industry’s involvement in water supply, which has so far been provided by governments, municipalities and local communities, governments and development cooperation have to carry out far-reaching structural reforms.

“The monopoly position that the private utilities hold and the important role that the water sector plays in economic development, health and environmental protection make controlling and regulating the companies involved a special challenge,” says the WEED paper.

Echoing similar sentiments, two leading UK charities are calling on world governments, whose representatives are in Bonn, to take urgent action to head off a global water crisis in which two out of every three people in the world will be facing water shortages by 2025.

WaterAid and Tearfund say that some 70 ministers attending the International Freshwater Conference in Bonn – that is developing into a Centre for International Cooperation (CIC) – have “an historic opportunity to take concrete steps towards providing access to safe water and improved sanitation in the world’s poorest countries”.

“Not enough has been done to tackle the scandalous situation of 1.2 billion people in the world living without clean water and 2.4 billion people without adequate sanitation,” says Joanne Green, from Tearfund.

“Some countries have been dragging their feet over the water and sanitation crisis, but the time has now come for meaningful international action.”

Belinda Calaguas from WaterAid continues: “Access to water is a basic human right and not enough is being done to prevent these statistics worsening. As long as water problems of this magnitude plague our planet, poverty elimination targets will be no more than pipedreams.”