Preparations towards an alternative World Water Forum to be held in Dakar, Senegal are far advanced, following a confirmation by organizers that the forum will go ahead as planned at a Steering Committee Meeting held on 15th March, 2021.
According to the Regional Coordinator of the Forum, Leonard Shang-Quartey, “The Alternative World Water Forum is a resistance space to corporate water and power-grabbing and a platform for democratic alternatives to water governance, management and its delivery, organized by water justice activists across the globe to counter and expose the undemocratic and illegitimate claims of a “World Water Council” and “World Water Forum” of “ Banks, transnational water companies and unelected heads of multilateral agencies”.
In view of this objective, the Alternative World Water Forum is organized every three years and coincides with an official event held by the World Water Forum, which water justice groups claim lack legitimacy.
The World Water Forum is founded by the World Water Council and organized in partnership with a host country every three years. Eight forums have been organized by the Council since the first forum in 1997 at Marrakesh, Morocco.
Water justice activists have since mobilized and gathered in host cities challenging and contesting the legitimacy of the World Water Forum and its privatization of water prescriptions to governments around the world. In addition to meetings in Dakar, some national-level mobilisation and policy dialogue activities have also been planned for this year’s Alternative Forum.
The ninth World Water Forum and the Alternative Forum will take place in Dakar, Senegal from 21st to 26th March 2022.
The lead organizations in the 2022 Alternative World Water Forum include the Blue Planet Project (BPP), Africans Rising (AR), and Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA).
Source: Publicagendagh.com
