On Saturday and Sunday this week (22 and 23 March) an international conference entitled “Water: Under the Yoke of Capitalism” will take place at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul.

Speakers from Turkish NGOs, trade unions, and from professional chambers, as well as from Italy, Mexico, Urugay, Ghana, Italy, the USA, Bolivia, Great Britain, Egypt, the Philippines, India and Thailand will discuss the growing commercialisation of water.

The press statement for the conference reads:

“We were saying that they sold everything except air…It seems that our clouds are next.

The most fundamental natural event which makes resources of clean water around the world sustainable is the vaporization over the seas and oceans, namely, the rain clouds which are floating around the sky. Nobody is able to know when and to where these clouds are going to fall down in the form of rain.

Indeed, clouds do not have a fixed space; they circuit without caring about the political borders;

Moreover, there are no concepts like property, price, auction, competition, trade mark, patent, bribery or corruption for the clouds.

It is therefore both forms of the clouds, either gas or liquid, namely water, which are the common good of humanity and natural life.

For that reason, water itself is not a need, it is a universal right for all.

Before it is to late, before corporates take hold of it, let’s claim our water and the clouds which are the basic source of our water.

• If you consider water a basic right against the claims raised by WWC (World Water Council), WWF (World Water Forum) and those who created these two institutions that water was a commodity,

• If you wonder about why Turkey was chosen as the host country for WWF-5; and would like to take part in struggle against WWF-5 in Istanbul in 2009,

• If you would like to know which capitalist interests exist behind the commercialization of water, which is the most fundemantal source of life for all humanity,

• And, if you want to listen to concrete examples of water struggles around the world directly from the activists who actively take part in these struggles,

Then let's meet at the International Conference.”(AG)