Budapest Water Summit offers mirage of water for all

It had been billed as a summit to push for universal access to water, but attending the Budapest Water Summit held last week felt like grasping at a mirage of water in a desert. The slogans and appearance were attractive, but held no prospect of delivering the human right to water for all.

Behind the mirage of the Budapest Water Summit, held in Hungary from 8-11 October 2013,  lay the same corporate players and market-driven processes that continue to deny access to the world’s most critical resource to millions of people.

The mirage was evident firstly in the process. The conference constantly emphasised its participatory nature, encouraging different stakeholders to produce recommendations for the 'Budapest Water Summit statement' that could also act as a basis for governments’ commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (due to replace the Millennium Development Goals in 2016). But this façade of consultation merely hid the real drivers of discussions and debates.

Read more on the website of the TransNational Institute