By Brent Patterson, Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

The Council of Canadians has been challenging the World Water Forum for more than 12 years. The 6th World Water Forum will take place March 12-17 in Marseilles, France. To reflect our work in this area, we have launched a new campaign web-page at http://canadians.org/wwf.

What is the World Water Forum? Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow explains, “The World Water Forum is convened by big business lobby organizations like the Global Water Partnership, the World Bank, and the leading for-profit water corporations on the planet. The discussions focus on how companies can benefit from selling water to markets around the world. While governments are present, they are not in charge.”

How will we counter this agenda? The Council of Canadians is participating in the organizing of the upcoming Alternative World Water Forum (in French, Forum Alternative Mondial de l’Eau, or FAME), which will take place on March 14-17, 2012. We will also be launching right to water reports from several countries that build on Barlow’s Our Right to Water: A People’s Guide to Implementing the United Nations’ Recognition of the Right to Water and Sanitation. And we will be organizing an ‘Activist Summit to Implement the Human Right to Water and Sanitation’ to strengthen the global water movement’s ability to implement these hard-won rights.

Please go to the website noted above to see all of the available information.