Outcomes: Ministerial Conference
The Dialogue between Forum Participants and Ministers provided an opportunity for NGOs to meet with their ministers, who under normal circumstances they would have not have had direct access to, and talk about the issues that were concerning them. However the meeting itself was not strategic and was too informal to achieve any progress on commitments.
The Ministerial Conference came too close after the Johannesburg World Summit and, being outside the UN system, did not carry sufficient weight. Although reference was made to the WSSD Plan of Implementation in the final Ministerial Declaration, there was little effort to make promises to go beyond it.
The Ministerial Statement did not advance the Bonn and Johannesburg commitments into action. Ministers were unwilling to be bold and move the agenda forward. It neither tackled existing policy discussions, nor included clear moves to get from planning to action. This was especially disappointing as the promise in the run up to the Forum was that it aimed to translate visions in concrete actions.
NGOs criticized the governments at the Forum for their failure to commit to a sustainable approach to ensure adequate water supply and sanitation. WWF questioned the credibility of a Forum as it failed to draw on the 12, 000 water specialists gathered together to identify common sense solutions to water problems, but instead it continued to promote massive infrastructure as the sole solution to the worlds water crisis.
Two significant omissions are, lack of reference to the UNs statement on the right to water [November 2002], and lack of commitment to the World Commission on Dams report. These both represent recent policy successes and for them not to be acknowledged is disappointing and a cause for concern given that this Forum was intended to be one of implementation.