Global Water Conferences: A Personal Reflection

Abstract

This analysis contains personal reflections on some global water conferences that took place from 1997 to 2003. This period witnessed an unusually large number of such conferences that, taken together, not only made a lot of progress on establishing global aims and priorities for the water sector but also received a lot of criticism for their high cost and low impact. My own background is in the NGO sector, working in drinking water and sanitation in developing countries, and I was fortunate enough to attend several of these global conferences. I have not attempted to write an objective evaluation of them all, but a subjective narrative.