(By Elisabeth Malkin, New York Times,  March 20, 2006)

MEXICO CITY, March 19 — For more than a decade, the idea that private
companies would be able to bring water to the world's poor has been a
  mantra of development policies promoted by international lending
  agencies and many governments.

  It has not happened. In the past decade, according to a private water
  suppliers trade group, private companies have managed to extend water
  service to just 10 million people, less than 1 percent of those who
  need it. Some 1.1 billion people still lack access to clean water, the
  United Nations says.

  The reality behind those numbers is sinking in. At the fourth World
  Water Forum, a six-day conference here of industry, governments and
  nongovernmental organizations, there is little talk of privatization.

  Instead, many people here want to return to relying on the local
  public utilities that still supply 90 percent of the water to those
  households that have it.

  There is a "big-time shift" in tone, said David Boys, a water policy
  expert with the Public Services International labor federation. Mr.
  Boys is a member of an advisory panel appointed by United Nations
  secretary general, Kofi Annan, that presented its recommendations at
  the forum, beginning with a call to strengthen local public utilities.

  "The companies have lost tons of dough and tons of respect," Mr. Boys
  said. "They are pulling out."

  Nowhere has that been more evident than in Bolivia, where, in the city
  of El Alto, residents have been fighting a subsidiary of the French
  company Suez. The government is now negotiating for Suez to leave,
  arguing that it did not extend service to people too poor to pay
  enough to make it profitable.

  "The water rates have to conform to reality," said Abel Mamani, an
  activist from El Alto who is now Bolivia's new water minister.

  An uprising in the city of Cochabamba five years ago chased out a
  subsidiary of the United States company Bechtel after it raised rates
  but failed to improve service.

  Bolivian officials at the World Water Forum admitted that the old
  public municipal water systems were mired in corruption, bureaucracy
  and nepotism.

  "The solution is for the community to get involved in water
  management," said Pablo Solón, an economic adviser to the government.

  That kind of citizen oversight is already in place in many cities,
  like Porto Alegre, Brazil, which created a permanent council of 12
  citizens' groups to oversee its water utility.

  Even officials of the World Water Council, the organization that runs
  the forum and is heavily weighted toward multinational water
  companies, appear to be giving up on wholesale privatization.

  "Let's finance infrastructure for the 50 countries most in need and
  the twenty poorest megacities through a more intense donation policy,"
  said Loïc Fauchon, president of the council, in his opening speech
  last week.

  The debate over privatization is driving the controversy inside and
  outside the forum, which ends Tuesday. Across town, international and
  local groups held an alternative forum for activists opposed to
  privatization, who are unconvinced that governments and organizations
  like the World Bank have given up on the idea.

  "The state does not assume its responsibilities properly," said
  Cuauhtémoc Abarca, a Mexico City activist. "In many cases there is a
  deliberate intention to show that public utilities work badly" as an
  excuse to privatize them.

  For all the focus on privatization, much of the serious work of the
  forum was rooted in heart-wrenching statistics.

  One in three people in the world, 2.6 billion, does not have access to
  any kind of toilet or latrine, according to a United Nations report to
  be presented at the conference on Tuesday.

  Water-related diseases cause more than three million deaths a year,
  mostly of children younger than 5. Unicef, the United Nations
  children's agency, estimates that women and girls in the poorest
  countries and regions walk nearly four miles a day to carry water.

  Only $3 billion in aid a year goes to improve water access and
  sanitation, the United Nations World Water Development Report said,
  and very little of that gets to the people who need it most.

  But there was encouraging news, too, that local activists, even very
  young ones, could make a difference.

  "We were scolded for being young people with big ideas," said Suresh
  Baral, 13, who organized a sanitation club in his school in rural
  Nepal. With help from Unicef, the children set up a microfinance
  program to help villagers pay for installing toilets.

  Dolly Akhter, 15, started a hygiene group for adolescent girls in her
  slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Many teenage girls stayed away from school,
  too embarrassed by the lack of privacy for hygiene.

  But when the group brought in new latrines, the girls returned and
  several were able to avoid early marriages by continuing their
  studies.

  As her news conference ended, she looked up and said in broken
  English, "I hope water for all in the world."