The water forum - a class society

(This is taken from the blog of Swedish journalist An-Christin Sjölander, Kommunalarbetaren)

The world water forum is a gigantic performance and it is easy to lose your way. I ended up in the wrong seminar but it turned out to be quite funny.

Photo: Women carry water while the men are deciding about water in the world

On the podium there was a panel of men, dressed in suits, and when the first man started to speak from the rostrum he welcomed women where the decisions are taken. It was a spontaneous laughter in the room. The man was William Gosgrove, the former chairman of the World Water Council that organizes the forum. He has also been the former vice chairman of the World Bank. Here there are a lot of water experts and lobby organisations. At the opening ceremony there were presidents and even princes present. During the forum the ministers are going to agree on a declaration how to best provide people with water and sanitation. The forum is the fifth but still the problems remain and have not become fewer.

In the press room are journalists from the entire world, it might be about 200. Some are eating cookies, bent over their computers. Close to me is a journalist from the television channel Al Jazira, another is from the news agency AP. I suggest some journalists that they should write about shit, which make them laugh. But it is a serious and important subject as over two and a half billion people lack access to toilets while little over a billion people lack fresh water.

The forum is a class society.

World Water Council launches itself in an enormous hall. While organisations like PSI, Public Services International, have got a space in an old building. You have to walk for ten minutes to get there. The theme of the forum is to bridge the gaps.

At a seminar a director from Coca Cola explains that it is necessary to support sustainable development, how could they otherwise sell more Coca Cola.

But at the hotel Crystal in central Istanbul I am confronted by another reality. People are assembled in the basement making strategies in order to reach out with their message at the forum. The messages is to stop privatisation and promote public-public partnership.

Here I meet representatives of PSI, Attac, Friends of the Earth and other non-profit organisations. Even if it is ten o clock in the evening it does not seem to matter. Do they ever eat?

Lance Veotte has a big beard and a cap. He is from the trade union SAMWU in South Africa and carries a red T-shirt with black letters, which belongs to an organisation that is fighting against privatisation. He suggests me to tell the Swedish Municipal Workers Union (Kommunal) that they ought to collaborate with the NGO:s in a similar way. Trade unions shall avoid becoming arrogant, since we all need each other, he explains. But not in my wildest imagination could I imagine Ylva Thörn (President of Kommunal and president of PSI) walking around with a T-shirt from ATTAC.

Photo: Lance Veotte is trade union activist from South Africa

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