Swiss head to Kyoto to talk water

Switzerland wants to see access to clean water recognised as a human right Keystone Archive

Water - how to preserve and guarantee access to it - is to top the agenda at an international summit which has kicked off in Kyoto, Japan.

Switzerland is joining more than 100 countries attending the World Water Forum, which culminates in a two-day ministerial summit at the weekend.

The forum – which will seek to make good on global promises to preserve the world’s water supply – is the biggest political event of the United Nations-sponsored International Year of Freshwater.

Philippe Roch, director of the Swiss Environment Agency and leader of the Swiss delegation to Kyoto, says the forum is a unique opportunity for the international community to discuss how to manage the earth’s water supply.

“There is no United Nations organisation dealing with the overall question of water,” Roch told swissinfo. “This summit is the only chance to have a global view of water issues worldwide.”

“The Swiss delegation is going to Kyoto with two heads: one representing the environmental issue and the other the development issue.”

Ecological debate

Roch believes the forum can only be declared a success if delegates accept that the water-related topics of ecology and poverty are not mutually exclusive.

“My goal is to explain that there is no difference between development and environment, because the risk is that if money is only invested in building pipes and providing the poorest cities with water, then we forget the ecosystems,” Roch says.

“And at the rate at which forests are being destroyed and wetlands drained… we will have the pipes, taps and distribution system, but nothing to distribute,” he adds.

Roch will be joined at the forum by representatives of the Federal Office for Water and Geology as well as the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

Implementing objectives

Thomas Zeller, an SDC water specialist and member of the Swiss delegation in Kyoto, says discussion must focus on how to implement objectives set at previous summits.

At last September’s Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the international community agreed to halve the number of people who lack access to proper sanitation from two billion to one billion by 2015.

“I hope that Kyoto will give us the first steps towards turning the objectives and goals decided in Johannesburg into action,” Zeller said.

“One of the main messages is that though water can be bought and sold, it also has social, cultural, ethical and ecological dimensions, and we should recognise and take into account these values,” he added.

Privatisation fears

Non-governmental organisations attending the conference have expressed fears that multinational corporations may use the forum to promote the controversial issue of water privatisation.

“The World Bank as well as the world’s biggest water companies will be in Kyoto,” says Madeleine Bolliger, who is representing the Swiss Coalition of Development Organisations in Kyoto.

“This is very worrying because they are pushing water privatisation as a solution to the worldwide water crisis, and this is a problem, because it leads to higher prices… and they are only interested in making money.”

Bolliger is calling on the Swiss government to take a leading role in persuading the international community to turn the promises made in Johannesburg and elsewhere into concrete – and viable – plans of action.

“In simple terms, we now need action, not words.”

The Swiss Coalition – together with an international network of other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) – is to campaign in Kyoto for the introduction of a global water convention.

“Water today needs the protection of international law and access to safe drinking water must be recognised as a human right,” Bolliger says.

“We have been pushing the Swiss government to call for this convention, but despite many promises, Switzerland doesn’t seem ready to take the lead.”

Voice for Africa

The SDC says it is keen to ensure that countries from the developing world are also given the opportunity to make themselves heard at the Kyoto meeting.

“We will try to strengthen the voice of less-developed countries,” says Zeller, “because we saw at preparatory meetings for Kyoto that many African countries were not represented by [water] specialists…and that’s why the voice of Africa has been weak.

“So we will be bringing experts from different countries to Kyoto in order to strengthen this voice.”

But the Swiss delegation is also keen to insist that water is not just an issue for the developing world.

“We have a lot of water in Switzerland, but in parts of Africa the scarcity of water is a real problem,” comments Zeller.

“And this will have influences on Switzerland, because if people don’t have enough water, they will try to migrate and these migrants may come to Switzerland or elsewhere in Europe.”

Experts believe water may one day replace oil as the world’s leading source of human conflict: a global state of affairs, argues Zeller, from which Switzerland will not be able to shy away.

“There might be wars which Switzerland will have to get involved in, and so the international community should right now start to deal seriously with water… because there is no time to lose.”

Ministerial declaration

Few participants heading to Kyoto anticipate that the forum will be an occasion to set new targets for the protection of and access to water.

Roch says the event should be used to focus on how countries can implement the final text of the ministerial declaration.

“The declaration has to be strong and clear, but the question is what we do with it after the event,” Roch told swissinfo.

“After Kyoto, we will have to look at who should do what to achieve the targets. I hope we will be able to develop concrete initiatives with partners to deal with water – and the declaration should be a reference point for this partnership.”

swissinfo, Ramsey Zarifeh

Key facts

The international community has pledged to reduce by half the number of people without access to proper sanitation from two billion to one billion by 2015.
If current trends persist, by 2025 two-thirds of the world’s population could be living with serious water shortages.
Water-related diseases kill more than five million people each year.
About 2.3 billion people suffer from diseases linked to dirty water.