Activists from seven of the world's poorest countries have called for access to water to be made a fundamental human right and brought under the democratic control of those dependent on its use.
Meeting in Brussels early July, the so-called P7 Summit - which groups together politicians, academics, aid workers and environmental campaigners - issued a declaration roundly condemning the use of water as a commodity.
Treating water as a kind of petroleum to be traded according to market principles would lead to further environmental degradation, wasteful and inefficient farming methods, greater water poverty and an increased risk of conflict, the conference concluded.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 1.7 billion people do not have access to drinking water and half the world's population lacks access to sanitary services.
The three-day conference, which was hosted by Green members of the European Parliament (MEPs), rejected the conclusions of the second ministerial World Water Forum in the Hague in March this year, which treated water primarily as an economic commodity and refused to consider access to water as a human right.
This ran counter to the conclusions of the UN "Earth Summit" in 1992, which declared that "all peoples. have the right to access to drinking water in quantities and of quality equal to their basic needs".
The P7 meet concluded that "all living beings have a right to water as water is part of humanity's common heritage".:
