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THE grand ambitions of the World Water Forum trickled down the drain at Kyoto this week – dashing any immediate hopes of a “blue revolution” that might keep the world water crisis at bay. So riven with compromises was the forum’s final declaration that it could not even use the word dam. It talks about reservoirs instead.

Water ministers from more than a hundred countries passed up the chance to compose an action plan for supplying basic water services to the world’s poorest people. They also failed to endorse demands for a more ecological approach to managing the world’s water.

“There is nothing here that will make…

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