A step towards nowhere

The Global Water Partnership (gwp) was launched with the first consultative group meeting held in Stockholm on August 9 this year. The idea of the gwp was conceived at the fifth Stockholm Water Symposium held in August, 1995. The meeting was attended by 184 participants from 57 countries. While the developing countries were represented by 70 delegates, 114 participants hailed from developed nations. It is hoped that membership to the gwp will continue to expand and become more inclusive.

The key speaker at the inaugural meeting was Kader Asmal, the South African minister of water affairs and forestry. He outlined the gwp 's aims of leadership, coordination and action to achieve the sustainable and equitable development of water resources. Asmal urged the gwp partners to be particularly attentive to the issue of equality if the organisation was to succeed in fulfilling its declared aims.

However, the gwp 's support to the Dublin Principles, also incorporated in Agenda 21 -- as declared by its chairperson Ismail Serageldin, who also happens to be the vice president of the World Bank (wb) -- leaves little hope for any clear-sighted perspective or action. This is because these Principles, over four years after their adoption at the Rio Summit in 1992, have failed to generate new approaches to the sustainable and equitable development of water resources. The appointment of the wb vice president as chairperson of the gwp for the next two years, gives little hope for new thinking to develop on the subject as multilateral organisations like the wb have hardly come up with any substantial solutions to such problems.

The purpose or the immediate provocation for the creation of the gwp is also not clear when another global organisation, the World Water Council (wwc), already exists. It was clarified at the Stockholm meeting that "the wwc will act as a forward-looking think-tank, while the gwp will be action-oriented and would work on the ground." For instance, the wwc will work globally to raise awareness about issues concerning water at the highest political levels and prepare a vision of the water situa- tion in the year 2020, according to the wwc chairperson Mahmoud Abu-Zeid. Inspite of these clarifications, it was suggested at the Stockholm meeting that the two bodies should merge. That suggestion, in the light of the ambiguity that surrounds the role to be played by this new global water body, may actually materialise.