Several thousand people are expected to attend. What we have seen during the 1990s has been the setting-up of a kind of global high command for water.
Private capital is thus solidly entrenched at the heart of the decision-making process.
And this all takes place in a context of struggles for market hegemony and power struggles between national governments. For those in charge of the world's water, water has to be treated as an economic commodity. They argue that this is the only effective way to combat shortages and rapidly rising prices. Within this perspective, direct public management is increasingly seen as being inadequate and ineffective. Thus management should be transferred to private companies, preferably following the French model of delegated management.