World water forum diluted.

Water has been called "the next oil," the commodity over which most future wars will be fought. According to the 2003 United Nations World Water Development Report: Water for People, Water for Life, the demand for sanitary and potable water is increasing with the world's population. In 2000, according to the report, water-related diseases killed more than 3 million people and affected more than 2 billion, particularly children under age 5. Furthermore, within the next 20 years, the amount of water available per capita worldwide is expected to drop by a third. These and a myriad of other water-related issues were raised at the 3rd World Water Forum, held 16-23 March 2003 in Kyoto, Japan, and attended by 24,000 scientists, activists, and government representatives--who, some say, arrived with radically varying goals in mind.

Kenzo Hiroki, a vice secretary general of the Secretariat of the 3rd World Water Forum, says the planners relied on an open, bottom-up process that accepted virtually any water-related topic, rather than forcing an agenda. The result was an increase to 351 sessions from the 87 at the 2nd World Water Forum, held in 2000. Individual sessions ranged from "Groundwater Governance in Asia" to "Observing Global Rain from Space," from "Voices of the Grassroots: Women" to "Protecting the Dead Sea."

Some attendees saw this sweeping scope as a strength, highlighting the importance of water in the international sphere. Others said it was a weakness; many felt the forum was too unfocused and had too many sessions. Ultimately, says Paul van Hofwegen, a senior water management expert for the World Water Council--an international think tank headquartered in Marseilles, France, and the forum's driving force--because so many stakeholder groups had the opportunity to organize their own sessions, the integration, discussions, and debate among groups that should have taken place did not materialize to the extent the planners hoped for.

Some experts believe that what many countries really fade is not a water crisis but a governance crisis, and that good water governance requires effective and accountable systems imbued with transparent and participatory processes that address both ecological and human needs. Rather than spread itself across all things water, World Water Forums would better serve the public by concentrating on immediate, pressing needs, says Stephen Turner, deputy director of WaterAid, a London-based health organization working in Africa and Asia--and by getting real, binding commitments from the 130 governmental ministers who attend a concurrent, although separate, conference.

"The idea of the forum is that ... the ministers can actually push the agenda and agree to make change," says World Resources Institute scientist Carmen Revenga. "If there's not going to be any political commitment and real change in the way we manage water to benefit both people and ecosystems, then what is the point of having the forum?" Adds Turner, "I think that perhaps one of our difficulties in the water sector is that we tend to talk [just] to each other." Perhaps, he says, the meeting shouldn't have been called the 3rd World Water Forum, but rather the 3rd World Education Forum--"because that's where we can build allies."