World Water Forum 6, Marseille, France, 2012. Flickr. Some rights reserved.This week around 30,000 people will descend on Daegu, South Korea to attend the 7th 2015 World Water Forum (WWF). Often portrayed as a policy-making forum committed to the goal of water for all, the gathering of the international water community is really more of a trade show, dominated by private water companies who promote private-sector solutions to the global crisis. Their solution was happily imbibed by most of its delegates and proclaimed in many of WWF’s previous declarations.
Unfortunately on the ground, the promise of private water services has all too often turned into a mirage. Starting in 2000, increasing numbers of cities (from Atlanta to Accra, Berlin to Buenos Aires) have demanded a return to public water services as prices rose and services declined. A book Our public water future: The global experience with remunicipalisation, published by Transnational Institute and other organisations this month reveals that over the last 15 years, 235 cases of water remunicipalisation have been recorded in 37 countries, impacting on more than 100 million people. Moreover the pace of remunicipalisation is accelerating dramatically, doubling in the 2010-2015 period compared with 2000-2010.
Most notably, even Paris has remunicipalised, even though it is home to two of the largest water multionationals in the world, Veolia and Suez. If even their home-town was turning them down, what did that say about these companies potential to deliver in places where the need for investments in infrastructure was much higher?
