The first day of an international summit on the world's water crisis ended with rage and frustration as some 10,000 demonstrators -- many of whom say their lands or livelihoods are threatened by water policies -- were blocked from marching to the meeting site.
Police stopped a massive march late on Thursday about a mile from the convention center where representatives of some 130 nations are attending the fourth World Water Forum. No major incidents were reported.
The forum pledged to focus on the world's poor, many of whom live on less than 20 liters of water per day -- one-thirtieth of the daily usage in some developed nations. But protesters said the conference represented big corporations interested in running water systems for profit.
PHOTO: EPA
Demonstrators came from the ranks of those who live daily with sewage pollution, Indians whose water is being diverted to supply big cities and farmers whose lands are scheduled to be flooded by hydroelectric projects.
"You feel rage, you feel sadness," said Delfino Garcia Velazquez, a construction worker from the town of Tecamac on the outskirts of Mexico City, where tens of thousands of new housing units have sprung up in the last few years.
Officials took over Tecamac's formerly community-managed water supply -- already over-stretched -- to supply the new developments.
"We just want to have a say over our own water and manage it ourselves, like we always have," Garcia Velazquez said.
Local initiatives and community-level projects to supply, conserve and treat water were supposed to be at the heart of the water summit, but the larger, international dimensions of the problem often overshadowed that.
The forum heard a proposal for an international peacekeeping force to deal with future conflicts over water, as well as a call for massive donations to rebuild water systems in poor nations, in part to keep people from migrating to richer nations.
"A lot of poor people are leaving their countries to go to rich countries," said Loic Fauchon, president of the non-governmental group the World Water Council.
"Isn't it preferable, isn't it cheaper, to pay so that these people have water, sewage, energy, to keep open the possibility for them to stay in their [own] countries?" he asked.
He suggested the creation of a peacekeeping force -- modeled after the UN "blue helmets" -- to intervene in water conflicts, but said "we don't want to override national governments, we just need a force that will take over."
Mexico is no stranger to clashes over water. In 2004, armed Mazahua Indians took over a treatment plant and cut off part of the capital's supply to protest water extraction from their land.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
The US will help bolster the Philippines’ arsenal and step up joint military exercises, Manila’s defense chief said, as tensions between Washington and China escalate. The longtime US ally is expecting a sustained US$500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview in Manila on Thursday. “It is a no-brainer for anybody, because of the aggressive behavior of China,” Teodoro said on close military ties with the US under President Donald Trump. “The efforts for deterrence, for joint resilience
RSS