This article discusses the evolution of water resources management and policies since the early 1990s. Changes are due, in particular, to two international conferences both held in 1992 (Rio and Dublin), which laid the groundwork for an integrated approach to water management. Reformers concentrated on creating a coherent policy that would take into account environmental concerns. This paper focuses on the World Bank as one of the most important actors in the formulation and financing of water policies. Indeed, the World Bank has developed, as a result of these conferences, a new policy that regroups different water projects into one single concept: water resources management. It turns out, however, that water resources management in essence just means water privatization.

This article addresses the transformation of the role played by environmental nongovernmental organizations in global politics. Such a change is placed into a larger framework of growing ecological concerns, the evolving political means to address them, and the overall mutation of the global state system. The relationship among environmental organizations, states, and intergovernmental institutions is framed as being an increasingly strategic one, where states seek to instrumentalize environmental organizations in order to prevail, while environmental organizations seek to take over functions previously held by states.