Press Room
The El Porvenir Open House
When: Thursday, Sept. 4th, 2008 4:00 - 7:00 pm
Where: New U.S. EP headquarters located at 1420 Ogden St. Suite 204, Denver, CO 80218
RSVP: By 9/2/2008 to info@elporvenir.org or by calling 303-861-1499
Free and open to the public
Annual Friends of El Porvenir Fundraising Dinner & Auction
SAVE THE DATE
When: Saturday, Oct. 18th, 2008 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Where: Denver, Colorado. Location to be determined
RSVP: By 10/9/2008 to info@elporvenir.org or by calling 303-861-1499
Projects: Upcoming 2007 / 2008
We will be transitioning out of Ciudad Darío over the next three years, and into Terrabona, a contiguous municipality which is very poor and has great need for water and sanitation. In the Boaco region we will continue operations in Camoapa and expand into the contiguous municipality of San Lorenzo, adding a complete new staff for that region. In both new regions, the mayor's office has provided a list of water and sanitation projects which are needed but for which they have no funding. Few or no other NGOs operate in these regions. We expect to develop approximately 70 projects per year once expansion is complete.
Water: Economic Good Or Human Right?
The Kyoto World Water Forum
The third meeting of the World Water Forum, held in the three neighboring cities of Kyoto, Shiga, and Osaka from March 16-23, 2003, was hailed as the most important international water meeting ever held. More than 20,000 participants from 182 countries attended the Forum, which was called to stimulate global awareness of water problems, discuss policy issues concerning water, and to ensure compliance with the United Nations’ goal to “reduce by half the number of people with no access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015”.
The conference produced a 6- page Ministerial Declaration which was supposed to translate ideas to concrete action and outline specific agreements, but was so vague that many critics have labeled it a “model of blandness”. Most of the commitments described in the declaration had been heard at previous conferences and added nothing new. Reference to water as a “basic human right”, which was approved by the UN last November, was completely omitted from the declaration. In addition, the ministers of nearly 100 countries failed to establish concrete plans or to commit money to the water problems of the world.
By far the most controversial segment of the declaration was a call for cooperation between the public and private sectors in the financing of water projects. To bring in these private sector funds, the privatization of the management of water services was considered. There was much op position to privatization on the ground that privatization would make it more difficult for poor people to have access to safe drinking water. Protesters noted that the sessions on financing were being hosted by the World Bank, the IMF, and other regional development banks so that they could push their own agendas at the expense of the poor. These agendas include large projects such as dams and other major water diversion schemes, instead of simpler and more appropriate technologies which can be used to conserve water more effectively for the world’s poor and the environment. Although the UN played an important role at the Forum, many felt that representatives from the World Bank and the IMF, and CEOs from the world’s largest water corporations had too great an influence in the Forum.
Meanwhile, a different and much smaller water conference was simultaneously occurring in Florence, Italy, known as the First People’s World Water Forum. Representatives from environmental, development, farmer, and other NGO’s gathered to provide concrete solutions for the world’s poor and the environment at the grass-roots level without privatization and deregulation of the world’s water. Participants in the Peoples Forum claimed that higher consumer prices, bulk water exports, lack of regulatory oversight, and corruption make it very difficult to justify water privatization in the developing world. A commodity that is a “basic human right” should not be in the hands of those who think of it as an “economic good”, they say. The famous case in Cochabamba, Bolivia, exemplifies their point that poor people will not be better served if they can no longer afford to pay their water bill due to a dramatic rate increase. There, massive protests, resulting in one fatality, forced the government to reduce the water rates and prompted the cancellation of a contract between the government and a consortium, led by the San Francisco’s based Bechtel Corporation.
Those opposed to privatization believe that policy makers in the developed countries should stop requiring Third World countries with crumbling economies to give access to private companies as a condition for receiving development aid, grants, and loans. Instead, these policy makers need to focus on enabling local governments to serve the poor by working with local communities and NGOs whose sole interest is in serving poor people’s needs.
Newsletters & Reports
- Fifteenth Annual Report
- Annual Report: July 2004 to June 2005 doc pdf
Newspaper Articles
...It's summertime, and odds are that at some point during your day you'll reach for a nice cold bottle of water. But before you do, you might want to consider the results of an experiment I conducted with some friends one summer evening last year...
Do You Think About What You Drink?
...So when a hydrologist with worldwide experience happens to agree on a point that coincides with a dearly held theory based on no known scientific evidence, well, who can say no to that?...
