Experts gather at World Water Forum in Kyoto

WORLD WATER FORUM: Access to water should be seen as a fundamental human right, France's President Jacques Chirac told the opening of the World Water Forum here yesterday, by Patrick Smyth in Kyoto

Mr Chirac, speaking on a video link, insisted water must remain a public good that can not be privately appropriated. However, new and innovative partnerships would need to be developed with the private sector to get investment in water infrastructure.

The triennial forum is the largest gathering ever of hydrologists and water policy experts, bringing together up to 10,000 officials, politicians, scientists, and environmental campaigners from 165 countries to debate such water-related issues as poverty and disease to flooding, drought, climate change and transport.

One of its key themes will be progress, or the lack of it, on the pledge made at the last forum in The Hague in 2000 to halve in 15 years those without access to minimum water requirements for nourishment and hygiene. According to the UN that is the current plight of some 20 per cent of the world's population - 200 million people this year will contract water-born diseases such as cholera, resulting in 5 million deaths. By 2025, on current trends, 4 billion, or, then, half the world's population will face severe water stress as the average supply of water per person declines by a third.

In the 40 worst water-famished countries today many millions live on just two gallons a day for all uses, far less than the 13.2 gallons a day per person which the UN considers the absolute minimum for health.

Mr William Cosgrove, vice-president of the World Water Council, warned that "our discussions will have far more effect on humankind for the 21st century than the current crisis in the Middle East, or any other political problem of the day".

Industrialisation, with its pollution and migration, climate change driven by global warming, and grandiose dam and engineering projects which will drive many more off the land, will all contribute to worsening pressures. Mr Gordon Young, of the Paris-based UN World Water Assessment Programme, said 270,000 people will have to be given safe drinking water and 340,000 people would have to see improvements in sanitation every day to meet the UN goal.

It will be expensive. Experts estimate nations need to add another €100 billion to the roughly €80 billion spent a year on water to be successful.

Views differ on how such cash is to be raised with water privatisation projects in the developing world the source of bitter controversy - in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2000, a revolt over the US company Bechtel's doubling of water rates left seven people dead, and water services in a shambles.

Environmentalists also claim that many of the large-scale dam projects do little for rural communities.

Among other initiatives launched here is a new Water Poverty Index, ranking 147 countries by their access to and efficient use of water. The index, which shows a close relationship between income-poverty and water-poverty, ranks Finland top, and Haiti bottom, with Ireland eighth.

Ireland will be represented later in the week at the ministerial part of the forum by the Minister of State for Agriculture, Mr Liam Aylward.