Water Session Enters Its Second Week With No Communiqué

GENEVA — The emergency water session the Global Concordat Council opened on 22 July has now run past a week, and on Tuesday it produced what long sessions usually produce first: exhaustion, and no communiqué. Secretary-General Ingrid Halvorsen kept delegates in closed sitting through the afternoon as reservoir levels continued to slip across three continents, the same conditions that summoned the session. No allocation formula has been agreed. "We are not here to announce a deal by a deadline," Halvorsen told reporters in the corridor. "We are here until the arithmetic of the reservoirs and the arithmetic of the room meet, and they have not met." Among those waiting is Tomas Herrera, a water-district engineer flown in from a drought-stressed basin to brief negotiators on what a shortfall looks like at the tap. "They ask me how many days," Herrera said. "I tell them the reservoir does not round up." The session continues. So does the falling.