Meera Karunananthan is the National Water Campaigner at the Council of Canadians.

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We are starting to see more and more cracks in this farce of a process that pretends to be democratic. Governments wanting their comments to be made public are now awaiting the permission of the corporate-run World Water Council. Sources inside the meetings tell us that Switzerland was appalled. Uruguay declared even before the opening of the Forum that they would call for a counter declaration if the right to water was blocked.

The sense is that this time around, they will be able to get many more than the four countries that signed the counter declaration calling for water to be recognized as a human right. At the last WWF in 2006, Cuba, Venezuala, Bolivia and Uruguay signed on to the counter declaration.

Access to sanitation reserved for the VIPs at the World Water Forum

Yesterday, I picked up my media accreditation for the World Water Forum.  I now don't need to pay the exorbitant fee of 100 euros a day, which has kept so many of our comrades from having their voices heard at the international conference which is being promoted as open and democratic.

Maude, Wenona Hauter, the Executive Director of Food and Water Watch, and I needed to use the bathrooms at the World Water Forum and discovered that there were separate bathrooms for the VIPs which we were not allowed to use. When we finally made our way to the ordinary people's bathrooms, we discovered there was no running water, so the toilets wouldn't flush and we couldn't wash our hands.

The symbolism is hard to ignore. It's a perfect statement about the World Water Forum's agenda serving the rich and powerful while the poor are denied access to water and sanitation. The VIPs have a special space reserved for their sanitation purposes, while the rest of us have no running water.

Our Water Commons Panel

The Council of Canadians held a panel at the official Word Water Forum yesterday with Our Water Commons, Food and Water Watch and other organizations to launch a report that highlights success stories of communities working to protect the water commons through a communitarian approach to water management.

Given we had secured one of the few World Water Forum spaces reserved for civil society, which we were told many groups were denied, we held a guerrilla press conference before the actual panel discussion at which Maude and colleagues from the Uruguayan delegation at the World Water Forum, who have been working on the inside to promote water justice, called for the recognition of water as a human right.

There were hundreds in the room including Water Forum participants who hadn't heard a critical perspective and seemed generally impressed. Foreign English media included Al jazeera and the Christian Science Monitor.

The panel itself featured powerful testimonials about the success of the commons approach in many parts of the world.

Here are some highlights:

A representative of the Uruguayan government, Jose Luis Genta talked about the recognition of water as a human right in Uruguayan domestic law.  “Water should be delivered according to social principles not economic principles,” he stated. Uruguay was one of the countries that drafted a counter declaration at the 2006 World Water Forum along with Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and others, when the official ministerial declaration did not include water as a human right. They are now working within the forum to bring more countries on board.

Activists from India including Rajendra Singh, who works with communities to revive traditional rain harvesting techniques,  delivered a powerful message about the rejection of the corporate agenda by implementing indigenous knowledge. Speaking of a community in India whose land was  transformed from barren and arid to a water-rich environment that sustains a thriving subsistence agriculture, Singh stated:, “It was traditional knowledge that served the community. University knowledge serves corporate interests and imposes one system on all. Traditional knowledge, which is about everyone sharing what they know, helped us find a solution."

Oscar Olivera, whose success in kicking Bechtel  out of Bolivia is well known, spoke about the need to  see humans as part of nature and the importance of returning to a place where nature can take care of our needs rather than one where we see ourselves as dominating nature.

Adriana Marquiso, President of the Public Water Union in Uruguay stressed the importance of redefining the meaning of public so it extends beyond state control. “There are forms of public management that recognize other structures of governance. The public interest can also be promoted through models of public communitarianism.”

Wenonah Hauter used the U.S. example to expose the myth of private sector efficiency being advocated by the World Water Forum. “We did a survey in 20 States that have privatized water services and found that private companies charge more than public utilities. The difference was stark in many states. In Delaware for example, privatized water is 80% more expensive.”  Wenonah explained that private companies typically add 20 to 30% to operation costs in order to make a profit. She also discussed the tendency for corporations to favour greater consumption of their product rather than green infrastructure and conservation strategies that would prevent them from making profits.

They were protesting the construction of the Ilisu dam project on the Tigris River which would destroy the 10,000 year-old city of Hasankeyf. So far 350,000 people have been displaced by dam projects in Turkey.

This morning the foreign activists were deported to their respective countries.

At the press conference, the room was packed with journalists from around the world.

Peter Bosshard of International Rivers called on the World Water Council to stand up for freedom of speech by demanding that the Turkish government allow for peaceful demonstrations. He elaborated on the devastation caused by dams which have led to mass opposition around the world and highlighted the fact that from the perspective of those who are pushing the development of dams that, "if freedom of speech is not supressed, large dams are not possible."

Maude told the media that the situation exposes the nature of the WWC and the lie that it is an open and democratic organization that welcomes diversity of opinion. She said, "The WWC is a partnership of an elite group of water corporations and World Bank officials bent on one future for the world's water: private control. Decisions about the world's water should return to the world's people and the General Assembly of the UN."

Also present at the press conference were the drummer of a famous rock band, Kerem kabadayi, and a Turkish MP Ufuk Uras. Uras denounced the police action saying he was ashamed of the message this sent about Turkish democracy.

Maude and I landed in Istanbul around 1pm today. We are here to join Blue Planet Project organizer Anil Naidoo and hundreds of other activists from around the world who are here to expose the forum's illegitimacy and oppose its agenda.

I gave a live interview to Radio Canada from the cab on the way to the hotel for the Ottawa morning show Bernier et cie. They had just spoken to Loic Fauchon, President of the World Water Council, who had told them the forum was to address the water crisis caused by excessive waste. I told them the real crisis was the 1 billion or so people who lack access to clean safe drinking water and that  the solution proposed by Mr. Fauchon and the corporations whose interests he represents will only make the situation worse.

Turkey was not a random choice. Turkey's Environment Minister recently called on foreign investors to invest in dams and water services in the country. According to the Minister, there is a potential market  for investments in dams and water services is about 60 billion euros.

According to the government there are currently 600 dam projects under way and approximately 14,000 licenses for dam projects being considered. Earlier today, activists from around the world joined Turkish anti-dam activists and were met with brutal violence. Many Turkish comrades were arrested and injured.

Maude was invited to speak at a press conference in the evening by Turkish activists to denounce the police violence. She told Turkish media: "I have been at every World Water Forum meeting and we have protested at every single one because the WWF pretends to be a UN conference, but it is not. We call the World Water Council the lords of water. Although unelected they have taken for themselves the role of speaking for the whole world. They are pushing one development model a model through which all water is privatized and the market  determines allocation. Unfortunately for them there is a a powerful group of international activists who have come to speak for the people of the world. We speak for the majority when we ask for water to be considered a human right and public trust. We stand in solidarity with Turkish activists who oppose the WWF and we stand in solidarity with the people who protested peacefully for something we all believe in."

International organizations have produced a joint statement drawing attention to the message this sends about the oppressive nature of the World Water Forum and the relationship it seeks to create between people and their governments.

Earlier in the day, at a strategy session for activists, Maude also had a message of hope: "My feeling is that we are winning around the world. Between our work and the collapse of the financial system, they are up against a wall. This  is an opportunity for us to be heard over them. We. call for this to be the last world water forum. The self-appointed lords of water are not legitimate and they should not meet again. This should be the last one!"

And we will spend this week trying to make that happen.