SP(2009)3244

Results of vote in Parliament

Following the debate which took place during the sitting of 11 March 2009, the European Parliament adopted by 550 votes to 37, with 6 abstentions, a resolution on water in the light of the 5th World Water Forum to be held in Istanbul on 16-22 March 2009.

The resolution recalls that the shortage of water and sanitation is causing eight million deaths a year , that more than one billion people have no convenient access to drink water at an acceptable price and that around two-and-a-half billion have no access to sanitation. Today, 2.8 billion people live in places affected by water stress and this figure will rise to 3.9 billion by 2030.

The Parliament declares that water is a shared resource of mankind and that access to drinking water should constitute a fundamental and universal right. It calls for all necessary efforts to be made to guarantee access to water for the most deprived populations by 2015. Water should be considered as a public good and should be under public control, irrespective of whether it is managed partly or entirely by the private sector.

Therefore, the Parliament calls on the Presidency to represent the Union at the Istanbul Forum, with a mandate to treat access to drink water as a vital and fundamental human right, and not merely as an economically tradable good, subject only to the rules of the market. It also calls on the Presidency to defend the following positions:

any water management policy should cover the protection of public health and the environment. The World Water Forum should help in a democratic, participative and consensual manner to develop strategies conducive to a type of economic and agricultural development that can guarantee a high level of water quality; the abandonment of systems of general water distribution subsidies, in order to free up funds for targeted subsidies, in particular for poor and rural populations, aimed at affordable access for all; the establishment of shared water management bodies where countries share a common basin in order to create or strengthen forms of solidarity conducive to the appeasement of tensions and the resolution of conflicts; the creation of guarantee mechanisms that can be set up by financial and development institutions to counter investors' caution on the water mark; water resource management should be based on a decentralised, participative and integrated approach involving users and decision-makers in the definition of water policy at local level; support for local public authorities in their efforts to implement a democratic water management policy that is efficient, transparent, regulated and respectful of sustainable development objectives; increased efforts to engage the private sector in water distribution, in order to benefit from its capital, know-how and technology; the promotion of new approaches such as the irrigation of rural areas and the creation of green belts around towns, in order to strengthen food security and local autonomy; the introduction of cross-subsidies to enable the most disadvantaged, in terms of access to water, to be supplied with water at an affordable price, as well as the use of local savings.

The Parliament calls on the Member States to increase their contribution to ODA in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goal relating to supplies of drinking water, for which the investment requirement amounts to an annual sum of USD 180 billion. It calls for the resources of the European Water Fund for African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries to be strengthened within the 10th EDF and for new forms of funding, including private funding and innovative partnerships, in particular solidarity-based financing, to be developed.

The Commission and the Member States are called upon to:

develop water awareness programmes in the Union and in the partner countries; recognise the vital role of local authorities in water protection and management, so as to ensure that they are given responsibility in all countries for management of the water sector; encourage EU local authorities to devote a proportion of the levies collected from users for the water supply and sanitation services to decentralised cooperation measures; adopt a water management aid policy, based on the principle of universal, fair and non-discriminatory access to safe water; facilitate and support the efforts of developing countries in adapting to and reducing the impact of climate change.

The Parliament calls for the issues relating to water management, water resources and the right of access to water for all to be included on the agenda of the COP 15 agreements in Copenhagen (7-18 December 2009) regarding the future of the Kyoto Protocol. It also wishes to see the opening of negotiations, under United Nations auspices, on an international treaty recognising the right of access to drinking water. Member States and the EU Presidency are called upon to take political and diplomatic initiatives in this direction in the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council.

T6-0137/2009

B6-0113/2009

Debate in Parliament

B6-0015/2009