Original article (in Croatian) was published on 16/05/2023
World Economic Forum (WEF) spokesman Yann Zopf confirmed that the WEF has never announced that governments should restrict water use.
“Water is not a human right” – The World Economic Forum advises governments to start limiting the use of water”, this is the title of the text (archived here) published on the web portal Epoha, which Faktograf has repeatedly found to be spreading disinformation.
Information taken from a web portal that often spreads conspiracy theories
According to data from the CrowdTangle platform, the post was shared on several Facebook pages and collected 113 shares, 68 comments and 176 other reactions.
“As you are probably aware, the global elite are taking steps to make people “own nothing and be happy”. The world will be controlled by one authoritarian government and humanity, according to Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, will be enslaved in a totalitarian system that includes mass surveillance, compulsory vaccinations and desperate slavery”, the author states in the introduction of the text.
The author then continues:
“The World Economic Forum and the UN have ordered world governments to prepare for human water supply ratio as part of their ‘Great Reset’ agenda for humanity”.
Epoha, although it is not stated, has taken the text from the web portal The People’s Voice (formerly NewsPunch) known for spreading disinformation about which Faktograf wrote on several occasions. It should be mentioned that the World Economic Forum is a non-profit organization that does not have the authority to issue orders to independent countries, and that is why it is a frequent target of conspiracy theorists.
Several English-language fact-checking web portals dealt with this disinformation – Lead Stories, USA Today, Logically Facts, Snopes and PolitiFact.
“Globalist organizations are hosting a water conference in New York as part of the UN’s efforts to achieve its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, a list that, if fully implemented and adopted, will give globalist elites total control over all human activity. “The conference aims to raise awareness of the global water crisis and decide on actions to achieve internationally agreed water-related goals”, the World Economic Forum wrote in a recent statement. “The Global Commission on Water Economics, launched at the World Economic Forum’s 2022 annual meeting, presented a plan to change the way water is valued and managed as a common good”, the World Economic Forum wrote in the same recent announcement.
…
“It is clear that we need to rethink our approach to how we can best allocate and value water”, the World Economic Forum wrote. “How can we share the costs of preventing or mitigating droughts and floods exacerbated by global warming?”, the text continues.
Epoha quoted a section from the World Economic Forum website, but it was not written by the Forum team or contributors. It was written by representatives of the two nations that organized the United Nations Conference on Water in 2023. Highlighting the current challenges, the article described the goal of the upcoming event and talked about water as a “common good”. The article acknowledges that “our global water system is in crisis” and that “billions of people do not have access” to water. It describes better water management practices rather than externally imposed extreme limits on household water consumption.
In the continuation of the text, the author answers the last question in the statement published on the website of the World Economic Forum with the following: “This is the question that global bureaucrats want to answer in this way: by handing over all human activities to the control of the United Nations and its selected partners in the global politics”.
However, nowhere on the websites of the World Economic Forum can one find a claim that one should start limiting water use. “I can confirm that this claim is false and fabricated. The World Economic Forum has never published such a thing or made such statements”, Forum spokesman Yann Zopf told USA Today.
The UN continues to recognize access to water as one of the fundamental human rights
It should also be noted that the list of UN Sustainable Development Goals also does not talk about limiting water, and the United Nations still recognizes “access to water and sanitation” as human rights, according to Lead Stories.
That “the elites have long since set the goal of taking control of the water supply” the author of the article from Epoha tries to illustrate with the example of the interview of the CEO of Nestle Peter Brabeck-Letmathe which, the author claims, “unintentionally exposed elite’s psychopathic way of thinking”.
“At a time when inflation has reached double-digit levels, food production facilities are on fire, the supply chain is in crisis, and food shortages are on the horizon, we now understand that elites are making moves behind the scenes to take control of the planet’s waters”, states the text.
It is not entirely clear why the author chose to refer to the controversial statement made in the 2005 documentary “We Feed the World” and what it has to do with the conference held in 2023. In an interview that Brabeck-Letmathe says was taken out of context, he suggested that the view that water is a human right is “extreme”.
Although he never directly stated that “water is not a human right”, internet memes have paraphrased such a statement for years. In response to the controversy, Nestle released a statement in which it noted that Brabeck-Letmathe “passionately believes that water is a human right”. More importantly, the alleged statement has nothing to do with the 2023 UN Water Conference and is not the position of the WEF, Snopes points out.
In conclusion, the World Economic Forum did not say anywhere on its websites or in its statements that governments should start limiting water use, and the Forum’s spokesperson himself confirmed this. Epoha also reported the statement of the CEO of Nestle, which was taken out of context and has absolutely nothing to do with the water conference that was held in New York. Due to all of the above, we rate this post as inaccurate.