March 15, 2012

Mid-week Stress Relief

COA Admin March 15, 2012 0 Comments

After a long Tuesday sitting in very tense debate sessions regarding private sector partnerships, Wednesday was the opposite. Our hostel knows a local guide who takes tourists into the nearby mountains to hike and talk about the local ecology of the area, and luckily Lisa found out about him and got him to give us a tour. The area is in the last stages of becoming Calanques National Park, and...

Thoughts on grammar at the World Water Forum

COA Admin March 15, 2012 2 Comments

Ken Cline I have developed an adjective-noun problem. I wrote in an earlier entry that “words matter.” I was thinking about that even more today. It wasn’t even because we have been discussing the wording of proposed statements late into the night or that I have been spending time with Rachel (for whom English grammar is a contact sport). No, I was just sitting in a presentation...

Outlining the Panels

COA Admin March 15, 2012 1 Comment

- Robin Owings As I sit in long meetings on water privatization, scarcity, and ethics, I have taken to documenting panelists (government officials, NGO heads, citizen leaders) with blind contour drawings. I look directly at the subjects and record them using a continuous line. Each line forms a caricature, reflecting the elements of those figures such as slouching shoulders, facial expressions,...

The Perils of Privatization

COA Admin March 15, 2012 0 Comments

-Rachel Briggs Earlier in the week several of us attended a debate on whether water supply should be private or public: Is it appropriate for private, for-profit companies to allocate a resource essential to life, or is that a role only public providers can play ethically? The panel included Gerrard Payen, president of AquaFed, a consortium of private water providers. As he suavely spun his way...