Matter
Free water!
IPN Opinion article
Poor management and inefficiency plague government water programmes but the oil market may provide examples for improvement.
World Water Day: Governments cause, and markets solve, problems with access to water and sustainable use
IPN 
Press release
Water for African cities
IPN Opinion article
The fact that the poor often pay so much for water seems to add weight to complaints by major groups like Oxfam and Friends of the Earth that water is being made a commodity for sale, when it should be \"a global human right.\" These groups, under the banner Eco-Equity, demand that privatization should be reversed and that aid should be increased to prevent so many deaths from water related diseases.
However, Richard Tren a writer on water and a consultant to the South African Government\'s Water Research Commission criticized the approach of the U.N. Foundation and the major groups saying it was very northern focused. It was true that water access was a problem in urban areas, he said, but the main reason for this was because so much water was used in agriculture.
