In this task, you are given a sentence in Spanish and your task is to translate it into English. In translation, keep the numbers and capitalization (capitalize only the first word of each sentence and name).

En este contexto, el agua no es un producto comercial: es un elemento esencial para la vida y las personas tienen que tener libre acceso a un abastecimiento suficiente para su vida cotidiana normal
Water, in this context, is a commercial commodity. It is an essential to life itself and people must have free access to sufficient supplies for normal daily life.

No es algo nuevo.
This is not new.

Quisiera responder a la Sra. Isler Béguin sobre el primer punto y recordarle que la mejora de la base científica y de las capacidades técnicas de las regiones para aumentar su competitividad constituyó una de las prioridades comunitarias durante el anterior período de programación.

On Mrs Isler Béguin' s first point I must remind her that the improvement of the scientific basis and technical capacities of the regions in order to increase their competitiveness was one of the Community' s priorities during the previous programming period.