No safe water for the poor; companies wary
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Ten years ago, many poor countries hoped private cash would bring safe water to the 1 billion people in the world who lack it, but now corporate interest is drying up.
After pumping about $25 billion into water supply and sanitation in developing countries in the 1990s, many companies have retreated or reduced their presence in places ranging from Bolivia to Indonesia.
Delegates at the World Water Forum that started in Mexico City on Thursday said new investments and ideas are needed to meet a U.N. goal of halving by 2015 the number of people without safe drinking water.
Relying on private business to reach that target, one of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, is increasingly difficult, said Daniel Zimmer, a senior member of the body organizing the meeting.
"The hope that we had in the 1990s that the private money would really substantially help the achievements of the MDGs has obviously been seen now as something unrealistic because of the opposition to private participation," he said.
"We have to invent new partnerships, he said. "Only if we are able to have strong public services, only then can we have strong partnerships with the private sector."
