Water’s Slippery Seduction: Investors Flood Sector
Water may be the world’s most critical commodity. But it has been a tough market for many investors to tap profitably lately.

A new journal is being promoted, called 'Water Alternatives'.
www.water-alternatives.org states it is co-sponsored by the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement of France.

Eric Servat of IRD is Co-Chair of the 13th WRDA World Water Congress.
The WWC includes several IRD permanent staff along with Veolia and Suez staff:
http://wwc2008.msem.univ-montp2.fr/index.php?page=NOC

IRDparticipated in the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City, sponsored by Coke, Suez, and others:
http://www.ird.fr/us/institute/report/2006/AR2006_partnership.pdf  (p.40)

The IRD Annual Report includes financing from private sector contracts, and the World Bank.

Here is the announcement of the upcoming August WWC conference in France,
including Servat along with Exec. Dir.Daniel Zimmer of the WWC, Jacques Labre of Suez, among others.
http://www.cig.ensmp.fr/~iahs/conferences/2008Montpellier.pdf

It is quite clear that we are going to be seeing an even greater barrage of journals and conferences bemoaning the world water crisis, promoting so-called 'alternatives', sponsored by those hoping to control and profit from it.

I notice in the WWC call for abstracts here that they've already co-opted the term 'participatory'.

FourWinds is an investment management company specializing in commodities and natural resources. The company manages investment vehicles that cover energy, metals, agriculture, timberland, water, waste, and alternative energies.

Water shortage is already a serious problem in many regions of the world, as underlined in a December report from Zurich-based Sustainable Asset Management (SAM), which manages about 8.5 billion Swiss francs in assets.

Most of the length of China's five main rivers is unsafe for direct human contact, and the country will have to build 1,000 wastewater treatment plants between 2006 and 2010 to meet national pollution targets, Citigroup analysts say.