Turbulent Water
Water has gone from being viewed as a basic human need and right to become a privatised commodity, over which communities can be sued for millions of dollars. Research Coordinator for Sustainable Livelihoods, Ewa Charkiewicz, traces the water flow from the 1970s:
1970s and 1980s -- UN conferences and the UN Decade on Water and Sanitation placed water and sanitation as basic needs and basic rights.
1992 -- Agenda 21 (Earth Summit, Rio), reconfirmed water and sanitation as a basic need and right and the idea that water should be free for the poor but the wealthy should pay; and endorsed the use of satellite accounting systems to put a price tag on water as a natural resource, to ensure its efficient use.
1995 -- under the influence of the World Trade Organisation, water becomes a commodity and communal water services become privatised. The effects include the people in poor areas of Johannesburg paying more for water than people living in middle class areas.
2000 -- The Millennium Development Goals de-link water from sanitation.
2002 -- at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, water is seen as a commodity, to be privatised, with public/private partnerships involved in providing water to communities. After acrimonious battles about whether the poor should have access to toilets, the CANJUZ alliance relents and civil society groups gain one of their biggest successes at WSSD. Consensus is reached to halve the number of people without access to sanitation by 2015. But this decision has no impact on Millennium Development Goals debates in New York.
2003: At the World Bank Tribunal for Dispute Settlement, the people of Bolivia are sued for 25 million dollars over a failed water privatisation scheme. It has failed because the local community did not agree to the privatisation of communal services. NGOs are barred from participation in the tribunal.

For the 3rd World Water Forum, Kyoto, 16-23 March 2003:
Water is Life - A Civil Society World Water Vision for Action

Untapped Connections: Gender, Water and Poverty,
a report developed by the Women's Environment and Development Organisation, WEDO, in consultation with several women's organisations working on water and sustainable development issues in different parts of the world, with support from the United Nations Population Fund. Untapped Connections presents an overview of the relationship between gender, water, and poverty, explores women's central role in managing water supply and distribution, and examines how access to water and sanitation has implications for women's health, economic activities, and sustainable development as a whole. Central to the report is a compilation of existing commitments on gender, water, and poverty in 16 global conferences.

* Comments on the UN Documents for the 11th Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development, April/May 2003

* World Summit on Sustainable Development

* Seeking a Sustainable Alternative: discussion points on Sustainable Production and Consumption, by Ewa Charkiewicz