"The lack of water or its poor quality kills 10 times more people than all the wars combined," Loic Fauchon, the head of the France-based World Water Council, said in opening a ministerial session.

The ministers are to continue their discussions Wednesday, the final day of the Fourth World Water Forum, which aims to help shape global strategy to improve water distribution and eradicate waste of the precious resource.

Wednesday's closing coincides with World Water Day, a UN observance launched 13 years ago. The UN Millennium Development Goal aims to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015.

According to the Mexican environment minister, Jose Luis Luege Tamargo, 140 countries have sent a senior delegation to the forum, which is co-sponsored by the Mexican government and the World Water Council. Some 70 water or environment ministers are participating.

Fauchon reminded the ministers that more investments were needed.

He also said political will and "transparency" in management were required, as management was "often incoherent" and tended to favor other sectors.

"Let us declare the right to water, without ambiguity, as an essential element of human dignity," Fauchon said. The World Water Council is seeking to have the right to water recognized as a "human right", much the same as the right to education.

A ministerial declaration to be published Wednesday will show whether Fauchon's appeal was heard.

However, Argentina's environment minister, Atilio Armando Savino, said the final declaration would not explicitly declare a right to water. For that reason, Bolivia and Venezuela have announced they would not sign it.

The government of Bolivian President Evo Morales, a leftist and indigenous leader, is planning an alternative text.

For the first time, the forum in Mexico -- which follows those in Marrakech, in 1997; The Hague, in 2000; and Kyoto, in 2003 -- reserved a significant place for the role of local communities.

The theme of this year's forum, "Local Actions for a Global Challenge," is to be reaffirmed Wednesday by a final declaration by the United Cities and Local Governments, which has members in 127 countries.

While reaffirming that "the public authority and it alone holds the primary responsibility" of water service, the UCLG insists on "the right of each human to water of sufficient quantity and quality" and calls on governments to "favor decentralization, to increase the financing of local infrastructures and to support international cooperation with local governments."

The mayors and local leaders also are seeking, for "local powers who want to", the possibility of spending a portion of tax revenues from water users on programs for developing countries. Such an approach has already been adopted by several European countries -- including France which has a specific law to this effect -- and Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States.

The World Water Council said that the Turkish city of Istanbul had been shortlisted as the venue of the next World Water Forum, in March 2009.

The council said its final decision would be made after three months of negotiations with the Turkish government. If those negotiations fail, the council will start talks with the runner-up candidate, Qatar.

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