It’s a fact: disease decreases when people’s access to safe water increases. Yet the majority of the world’s people have ever less access to enough safe water to meet their daily needs, and we are being asked to swallow a global water policy promoting the privatization of water. Jeff Conant, coordinator of Hesperian’s environmental health book project, traveled to Mexico City for the 4th World Water Forum, March 16-22, 2006. You can find Jeff’s account of the Water Forum and the international campaign to defend the human right to water in the June 2006 issue of Earth Island Journal as well as in Upside Down World, an online newsletter covering issues and activism in Latin America.

Hesperian’s booklet Water for Life was distributed at both the World Water Forum and at the alternative parallel forum. A chapter in Hesperian’s forthcoming Community Guide to Environmental Health, it can be found as a PDF on our website.

Hesperian is also active in the Peoples’ Health Movement campaign (in the US and internationally) to defend the right to water http://www.righttowater.net/