William Cosgrove

William Cosgrove is a former vice-president and president of the World Water Council – a pro-privatisation think tank with close ties to business and global governing and financial institutions. His work as the council’s director of the Vision for Water, Life and the Environment in the 21st Century was published in a report he co-authored along side Frank Rijsberman entitled “World Water Vision: Making Water Everybody’s Business.” The report was presented at the 2nd World Water Forum in The Hague.

As a member of the World Water Council since its inception in 1996 Cosgrove has played a significant role in the formation of the council’s vision and has made significant contributions to their policy platform. In addition to serving as director of the Vision exercise he supervised a two year action monitoring program that was presented at the 3rd World Water Forum in Kyoto entitled, “World Water Actions Making Water Flow for All.” The report aimed to formalize the council’s water vision. Cosgrove also had a varied career with the World Bank. He initially joined the bank as a Water Resources Specialist and retired as Vice-President in 1989 after 26 years of experience.

Cosgrove is founder and former president of the Ecoconsult Inc. consultancy firm. Ecoconsult Inc. offers water-related services including: services in multi-disciplinary project management; strategic analysis and development planning; policy analysis, policy and institutional reform; project financing, capital flows, trade agreements; socioeconomic and environmental impact studies; post evaluation of programs and projects; development of indicators and monitoring systems; and visioning and scenario development. Ecoconsult has worked with Global Water Partnership (GWP) - particularly on the “Dialogue on Effective Water Governance”, and consulted with UNSECO and the World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) on a project entitled, “From Potential Conflict to Co-operation Potential” which “facilitates multi-level and interdisciplinary dialogues in order to foster peace, co-operation and development related to the management of shared water resources.”