Water, once so abundant on our planet, is now rapidly becoming a scarce resource. Water-related conflict is already beginning to erupt from the desperation of deprivation, not only among states and territories but also within communities. And, as usual, the poor are paying the heaviest price for it, both to get it and because of the lack of it.

Water, particularly drinking water, is a basic human right. As such, it is unquestionably the responsibility of governments (both at the national and the local level) to ensure that everyone has access to his or her minimum requirements.

Public systems are not always efficient, and there is growing desire among economists and decision makers to hand over the responsibility of delivering water to private companies. The trouble is that the primary job of private companies is to make money, and they are not usually concerned about the rights of individuals or of the need for equitable distribution of their products. There clearly is good money to be made in delivering water and the private sector is ready and willing to add this vital resource to its range of products, as indeed they have already done in huge quantities with bottled water. But efficiency alone is not enough to justify handing over such a resource to an outside agency unless it is willing to take on the universal service obligation to ensure that all basic needs are met, on a transparent, accountable and permanent basis.

If the private sector is to be a part of the solution, rather than an additional cause of the problem, a whole new kind of public-private partnership is needed, far more complex than the simplistic solutions so far mooted – mostly by vested interests. Corporations recognize the opportunities when they see them. A group of them has pronounced, at the World Water Forum that "water lies at the heart of protecting the global environment, promoting social progress and nurturing economic growth." They have also presented a number of projects on education, sustainable agriculture and forestry, financing water development and valuing water for better governance.

Naturally, their pronouncements are met with some scepticism in the environment and development communities, where they are seen as disguising the business community’s real agenda: to deregulate the water sector and treat water as an economic good subject to the laws of supply and demand and profit-making, rather than as a human right and environmental necessity. Moreover, the very people most directly affected by water crises around the world are conspicuously absent in most such partnerships and international meetings.