Alternative Approaches to Water Management
Gustavo Capdevila

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 29 (IPS) - Neither private nor public, the grassroots water management schemes currently being implemented in some parts of Bolivia are based on the concept of water as a public good, to which everyone has a right, as taught by the country's indigenous people, said activist Tania Quiroz.

The problems of the scarcity of clean water and water distribution and ownership systems were discussed this week in two radically different scenarios: the World Economic Forum (WEF) held annually in this Swiss Alpine resort, and "The Other Davos", a conference organised by the Swiss affiliate of ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens), in Zurich.

Quiroz, a member of the Coordinating Committee for the Defense of Water and Life, a Bolivian group that successfully fought the privatisation of water, told grassroots activists meeting in The Other Davos about the wave of protests that broke out in 2000, which led to the cancellation of the contracts granted to transnational corporations to manage water in two cities in Bolivia.

The private companies had raised water rates by up to 300 percent, putting services further out of reach of the poor.

The Davos forum, which brings together members of the world's business, economic and political elite every year, discussed the crucial importance of water to human survival. Lester R. Brown, president of the U.S.-based Earth Policy Institute, pointed out that humanity survived for centuries without oil, but that it would survive only a question of days without water.

As the United Nations has warned, the growth of the world population and global production is heightening the pressure on water, which is becoming scarce in many parts of the world, participants observed at the WEF.

For example, fast economic growth in China and India is driving up demand for water, as people in those countries adopt more protein-rich diets.

Jamshyd Godrej, managing director of Godrej & Boyce Mfg Co Ltd of India, underlined that adequate water supplies are indispensable for sustainable economic growth.

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, CEO of the Swiss corporation Nestle, observed that the production of meat and other sources of protein that play a predominant role in today's modern diets requires enormous quantities of water. Although people might drink just a few litres of water a day, they "eat" up to 15,000 litres a day, he said.

The average person needs to drink between four and five litres of water a day, although between 2,000 and 3,000 litres a day are needed to produce the calories necessary for survival.

Walter Fust, director-general of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), said privatisation is not the answer to the problem of making water available to the poor, and added that the provision of water must be done with efficiency and with the best possible distribution at the lowest possible cost.

Zoltan Doka, with Schweizerisches Arbeiterhilfswerk SAH (Swiss Labour Assistance), told IPS that Fust's office is promoting a water management system based on public and private partnership.

Doka, whose non-governmental organisation with ties to Swiss labour unions took part in The Other Davos, said he would not be opposed to public-private partnerships as long as they put people before profits.

In 1997, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded that water services in Bolivia be privatised, as a condition for multilateral aid to the country, said Quiroz.

The Bolivian activist pointed out that the wave of privatisations, which she likened to "plundering," included oil, electricity, social security, pension funds, land ownership and services, as well as water, and had extended throughout Latin America.

The foreign companies whose water management concessions were cancelled were Aguas del Tunari, a consortium made up of Bechtel, Edison and Abengoa, which was operating in the city of Cochabamba, and Aguas de Illimani, owned by the Suez group, which held a contract for El Alto, a sprawling working class city next to La Paz.

Initially, the