The mayors explained the water services management situation and the actions they are carrying out in their respective municipalities in defence of the 100 percent public management of these services in a transparent, participatory manner that ensures the human right to water. Finally, Inés Sabanés reach a declaration signed by the participating mayors, the text of which is as follows. The text was distributed in Castellano, Catalan and Euskera.
DECLARATION FOR THE PUBLIC MANAGEMENT OF WATER
The mayors who are present in the Meeting of Cities for Public Water, held in Madrid on 3rd and 4th November 2016, manifest our commitment to the public, transparent, participatory and sustainable management of the integral water cycle and we commit to ensuring the following principles as well as the fulfilment of any commitments deriving from them to guarantee their real and effective implementation.
1. We believe that water and its associated ecosystems are a common good that cannot be appropriated for the benefit of private interest. All of nature’s good and resources form part of the natural patrimony of the planet and are indispensable for the sustainment of life, which obligates us to preserve and protect them. We therefore defend that they be managed with criteria of solidarity, environmental sustainability, mutual cooperation, collective access, equity and democratic control, without contemplating profit.
2. We fully assume that the provision of water for human consumption and sanitation is a human right which, in accordance with the doctrinal body of the United Nations, is indispensable for a dignified life and a precondition for the realization of other fundamental rights. As a result, supplies must be provided on a universal basis, guaranteeing a vital minimum for all people and ensuring that any supply cuts for economic or social reasons are prohibited.
3. We understand that the management of supply and sanitation services must, in addition to being necessarily public, promote new forms of social control that guarantee transparency, information, accountability and effective citizen participation. As a result we are committed to a management model in which the public entity responsible for these services accounts for their activities and actions, both to public authorities and citizens, and that, both in day-to-day management, in planning and in decision making process, instruments of citizen participation are established in the services, linked to the urban water cycle, promoting the necessary consensus.
4. As a result, we reject the privatisation of the integral urban water cycle services and we support the re-municipalisation processes that are being carried out in numerous cities and towns to recover the public, democratic and transparent management of water to guarantee a rendering of accounts to the citizens.
5. We assume that the Local Administrations have the responsibility to adopt opportune decisions to ensure the sustainability of the integral urban cycle, according to the European Water Framework Directive in the environmental, economic, social, structural spheres and in management. We will provide the necessary means so that, from public management, services are provided that meet the most demanding standards of quality and efficiency, guaranteeing a public management with citizen participation.
6. We support the constitution of the Network of Cities for Public Water which, through a horizontal management model involving all actors interested in the integral water cycle (public officials, public operators, social organisations, experts, citizens) permits access to information and knowledge, placing in common all existing problems and experiences that have been carried out as well as proposed activities of common interest.
Madrid, November 4, 2016
Manuela Carmena, mayor of Madrid; Ada Colau, mayor of Barcelona; Joan Ribó, mayor of Valencia; Pedro Santisteve, mayor of Zaragoza; María Isabel Ambrosio, mayor of Córdoba; Oscar Puente, mayor of Valladolid; Xulio Ferreiro, mayor of A Coruña; Jordi Ballart, mayor of Terrassa; Martiño Noriega, mayor of Santiago de Compostela; Guillermo Hita, mayor of Arganda del Rey.