Read on-line: http://www.world-psi.org/en/world-water-day-2015 PSI commemorate World Water Day 2015 by celebrating the struggles and
victories of the global water justice movements. These achievements are a
testament to the strength of our ties of solidarity and the resolve of
communities to protect watersheds and maintain control over water services.
We supported campaigns instituting the right to water and sanitation in
national constitutions; reclaimed public water through remunicipalization and
public-public partnerships; developed democratic models of water service
provision, resource management and watershed protection, and helped elect
progressive political parties with pro-poor and anti-neoliberal water
policies.
In Lagos, trade unions, environmental and social movements helped block
the World Bank’s attempts to privatize the public water utility serving more
than 20 million people. Their challenge is to create the conditions for
an effective public utility, free from corruption.
In Greece, after a Supreme Court decision to stop the privatization of
Athens water, water justice activists celebrate the election of a government
committed to resist the IMF and European Union’s harsh austerity measures that
put public services for sale and allow mining companies to circumvent
environmental assessments by fast-tracking permits.
The newly elected government in New Delhi has pledged to eliminate deep
inequalities by declaring water a human right, rejecting private for-profit
services and providing free basic water for the city's residents.
We hold these and other victories as signals to our fellow water justice
activists around the world to continue to fight for public and community
control of water and sanitation services, to battle the contamination of watersheds,
resist water grabs and demand water justice for all.
We see new attempts at privatization, which will try to financialize the
sector and bundle assets to financial actors such as insurance companies, hedge
funds, pension funds, etc. We will challenge this head on. Not only
because of the necessity to provide water to the poor and waterless but also of
our collective aspiration to change the dominant corporate water discourse and
the ‘flow’ of governance.
We call on the member states of the United Nations to deliver the Human
Right to Water and Sanitation as it negotiates a 15-year plan for Sustainable
Development Goals. Member states must not fall for the false promises of
private sector investment for infrastructure, as pushed by the G-20 and the
OECD. The Financing for Development Summit in Addis Ababa in July 2015
will need to send a strong signal.
We join the fight in El Salvador for the constitutional
recognition of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation, and against Oceana
Gold’s attempt to use the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement
of Disputes to impose a mine, which will pollute the Lempa river watershed, the
country’s main source of potable water.
We stand with residents of Detroit where water cut-offs
are part of the city's bid to privatize the utility.
We support the struggles against privatization in Nagpur, Manila, Sao
Paulo, Nairobi, Osaka and Daegu.
Without clean, safe, publicly controlled and collectively managed water
and sanitation for all, there can be neither justice, nor sustainability.
Blue Planet Project; Focus on the Global
South; Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Public Services
International; Transnational Institute; Food and Water Watch; Aigua és Vida and
Federación española de Ingenería Sin Fronteras
Public Services International is a global trade union federation
representing 20 million working women and men who deliver vital public services
in 150 countries. PSI champions human rights, advocates for social justice and
promotes universal access to quality public services. PSI works with the United
Nations system and in partnership with labour, civil society and other
organisations.