WATER ABLAZE - Patagonia Sin Represas

main building and some of them were very seriously injured by the
police in the process. The director of the WWF, Gerd Bergkamp, had no
words of condemnation at all for this brutal action.To cut a long story
short: the World Water Forum (organised by the “Water Council”) is a
lobbying event, a kind of “contract market” for the key players in the
global water business, a meeting where large projects are discussed and
negotiated. EU and U.S. companies dominate the scene in a very onesided
manner. A completely different image of the forum is conveyed to
the public, however. These giant projects and privatisation schemes are
all embedded in euphemistic expressions such as “problem-solving”,
“achieving the millennium goals”, “responsibility towards the
environment” and “working together as partners to solve problems”.
What this last phrase really means is that the large companies call the
tune and the local population loses all control over its own resources –
and this book describes what happens in such cases! The activists who
took part in the alternative forum or “People’s Water Forum” stated
their position on the matter in a declaration which they sent to the
press:
People’s Water Forum Declaration 2009
After Mexico City 2006, which was an important milestone of the
continuous work of the global movement for water justice, we have
now gathered in Istanbul to mobilise against the 5th World Water
Forum. We are here to delegitimise this false, corporate-driven World
Water Forum and to give voice to the positive agenda of the global
water justice movements!
Given that we are in Turkey, we cannot ignore that this country
provides a powerful example of the devastating impacts of destructive
water-management policies. The Turkish government has pushed for
the privatisation of both water services and watersheds and has plans
to dam every river in the country. Four specific cases of destructive
and risky dams in Turkey include the Ilisu, Yusufeli, Munzur and
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