WATER ABLAZE - Patagonia Sin Represas

epresents the Federal Republic of Germany at the WTO negotiations
and is therefore actively involved in the drawing up of GATS and other
agreements.
8.7 Multistakeholder Review (MSR)
One of Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul’s initiatives demonstrates how the
liaison between politics, the business sector and NGOs can develop
into an extremely dynamic eternal triangle. At the International Fresh
Water Conference in Bonn in 2001, the minister had announced that
an international study would be carried out to evaluate the experiences
hitherto gained with regard to water privatisation. Two years later, at
the end of 2003, the so-called Multistakeholder Review (MSR) was
launched. At that time, however, asking naive questions about such
experiences was no longer justifiable because there were already
enough hard facts on the table to substantiate a negative assessment.
All the same, an international team was lined up – including some
well-known and “appropriate” names, such as the GTZ (see chapter
on Bolivia, page 71), various NGOs and RWE, at that time still one of
the biggest water companies in the world. How a giant concern, which
is flagrantly interested in privatisation, can possibly be of any help in
an “unbiased” study like this, is a question which only the Ministry for
Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) will be able to answer.
Political foundations, too, such as the Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBS)
or the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES) frequently get themselves
involved in double-edged initiatives like this. In one particular case,
the HBS cooperated with the large NGO “Bread for the World” at an
international water function, promoting the Multistakeholder Review
and inviting others to join in.
The operational day-to-day running of the MSR lies in the hands
of a British organisation called WaterAid, which regularly passes
itself off as an NGO. Technically speaking, this is true, but WaterAid
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