Water Ministers Enter Second Week of Talks With Reservoirs Still Falling

GENEVA — The Global Concordat Council's emergency water session, opened on 22 July as reservoirs slipped across three continents, entered its second week with delegates trading cautious optimism about process and blunt realism about the underlying shortage. Secretary-General Ingrid Halvorsen framed the week's work as building the machinery of allocation, not the water itself. "We are agreeing how to share less," she told the floor. "That is harder than agreeing to share more, and it is the only honest thing on the table." Delegates from the water-stressed megacities pressed for binding transfer rules; others resisted ceding control of their basins. No allocation formula has been ratified. Camille Fontaine's reporting from the hall found the mood sober rather than fractured — the delegates arrived expecting a hard session and are having one. Halvorsen set no deadline. "Reservoirs do not adjourn," she said, "so neither, really, do we."