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INTERNATIONAL
YEAR OF FRESHWATER
2003
World’s spending must double to meet water, sanitation goals
set at 2000 Millennium Summit, Sustainable Development
Commission told
To meet the
goals set at the 2000 Millennium Summit, [...] the international
community must double the $15 billion annually it was currently
spending for potable water and sanitation services, the
Commission on Sustainable Development was told this morning
To meet the goals
set at the 2000 Millennium Summit, halving the number of
people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation
services by 2015 and devising integrated water management in
all countries by 2005, the international community must double
the $15 billion annually it was currently spending for potable
water and sanitation services, the Commission on Sustainable
Development was told this morning.
Addressing a panel being held to commemorate the International
Year of Freshwater, Albert Wright, Co-Chair of the Water and
Sanitation Task Force of the Millennium Project, added that,
by the close of the day an estimated 7 million children would
die from water scarcity and water deprivation was, thus, as
destructive as any major weapon. Diarrhoea-related deaths
resulting from unsafe water claimed the lives of three million
people in 1990, mainly children.
Other panel members included: Nitin Desai,
Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs;
Prince Willem Alexander of the Netherlands; Commission
Chairman Ronnie Kasrils, Minister of Water Affairs and
Forestry of South Africa; Koichi Haraguchi, Permanent
Representative of Japan; William Cosgrove, Vice Chairman of
the World Water Council; Rashid Alimov, Permanent
Representative of Tajikistan; Jennifer Francis, Executive
Secretary of the Gender and Water Alliance; and Richard Jolly,
Chairman of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaboration
Council.
Panelists addressed a wide range of topics, among them
sustainable water management policies, monitoring and
assessment; links between water resources, education and
gender equality; sanitation; and finance strategies. Following
the discussion, the Commission was presented with an overview
of the first World Water Development Report.
Echoing Mr. Wright’s concerns, Mr. Desai called for scaling up
water conservation and development, bringing freshwater to an
additional 200,000 people and sanitation services to 400,000
people daily. Moreover, integrated and sustainable management
of all uses of water resources, from drinking and sanitation
to irrigation and industrial uses, was required. That called
for innovative organizational and technological solutions,
better information exchange, capacity-building in developing
nations and greater financial resources.
The just released World Water Development Report, he
continued, was a good example of integrated water monitoring
and assessment at the global level.
Prince Willem said that there would be little hope of
providing sanitation to the world’s poor if the international
community merely carried on with business as usual. He
stressed the importance of linking water management to other
issues, such as education and gender equality. Turning to the
fight against hunger, he called for an agricultural
revolution, featuring new technologically enhanced crops
capable of thriving with less water. He also stated that,
despite this year’s emphasis on freshwater, the international
community should also focus on protecting its oceans. He
praised the United Nations’ involvement in water issues,
noting that 23 United Nations agencies were working in that
area, with the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) acting as coordinator.
Mr. Kasrils stressed the need to link people of the planet
with water targets made during the
2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg, and the
World Water Forum in Kyoto, which was held 16-23 March
this year.
During the Kyoto ministerial forum, ministers concurred that
good governance at the grass-roots level, with greater
emphasis on household and community-based water management
approaches, was indispensable for health and welfare, said
Mr. Haraguchi. That required capacity-building. Ministers also
agreed to set up an online water network clearinghouse. Japan,
he said, was doing its part to shore up funding for water
sustainability, creating its own official development
assistance scheme, including grants and low-interest loans for
water resource development for developing countries.
Mr. Cosgrove lamented that the major outcome documents of the
third World Water Forum failed to elaborate on future
commitments. Few pledges had been made by developing countries
to move ahead with respect to water. Referring to the
World Water Development Report, he said references to
water were missing from poverty-reduction strategies
throughout the developing world. Water management must be
decentralized and locally owned, rather than imposed from the
outside, which had been a recipe for failure in the past.
Moreover, international donors must step in to help countries
that had identified water as a priority.
Mr. Alimov said his country, home to more than half of Central
Asia’s water resources, was partnering with neighbouring
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to improve interstate
regulation of transboundary water resources. In the past, poor
management of the Aral Sea, the region’s main water body, had
led to widespread pollution and devastating effects on the
local economy. The
10-year-old international fund to shore up the Aral Sea Basin
could be a good launching pad for dealing with Aral Sea Basin
concerns in the United Nations. In August, Tajikistan would
host the International Forum on Freshwater, which would
address subregional and regional water problems in interstate
cooperation, health, sanitation, and agriculture, with an
emphasis on strengthening water partnerships.
Ms. Francis said women’s empowerment and gender equality
should be integrated in the Millennium Development Goals concerning water. That
required greater involvement of the poor in water development
projects through equitable contributions in capital costs,
operation and maintenance, as well as water infrastructure and
system management. A research project in India involving the
Alliance’s grass-roots partners and communities had
demonstrated that improved water supply coupled with
micro-enterprise development could potentially reduce poverty
in semi-arid areas. The project found better domestic water
supplies not only led to better health, hygiene and
sanitation, but also economic gains, such as increased women’s
earnings and girl’s school enrolment.
Decisive roles for women in management and planning, and
people-centered approaches, using children as agents of
change, were also vital, said Mr. Jolly. In Kyoto, ministers
had stressed the importance of education and communication,
small-scale and low-cost approaches for the poorest of the
poor for sustainable development. The United Nation’s goal of
cutting poverty in half by 2015 was enormously ambitious, but
still not enough. Commitments were needed to help the
remaining half, he said, calling for greater social
mobilization, media involvement, and a focus on households and
communities.
During the ensuing discussion, the representative of Lebanon
shared his country’s experiences with the seeping of seawater
into underground coastal aquifers and requested advice on how
to combat the water crisis in the Middle East. In response,
Mr. Desai said the United Nations, in spite of the region’s
political turmoil, had set up and would continue to support
several
capacity-building programs.
Regarding a question from the representative of Bhutan on the
need for more aid to build proper water collection, management
and distribution infrastructure throughout South Asia, Mr.
Desai said the future was bright with respect to overseas
development aid, with several international donors poised to
contribute more.
To the International Council for Local Environmental
Initiatives’ complaint that governments were deleting
references to local and sub-national funding in water-related
strategy implementation documents, Mr. Cosgrove said at the
national level water was often lumped together with other
issues. A greater emphasis on local implementation and
financing was needed. Mr. Jolly and Mr. Wright agreed, calling
for new financing strategies and solutions at the local level.
For her part, Ms. Francis noted that local communities were
not just beneficiaries, but also equal partners in water
resource management.
The World Water Development Report, entitled “Water for
People, Water for Life”, was presented following the panel.
Produced by 23 United Nations agencies and convention
secretariats, it offers a global overview of the state of the
world’s freshwater resources. Gordon Young of the
World Water Assessment Program; Pradeep Aggarwal, of the
United Nations Inter-agency Committee on Water Resources of
the International Atomic Energy Agency; and Andras Szollozy-Nagy,
Assistant Director General of UNESCO, described the Report’s
findings and how it could be used to move the sustainable
water management strategy forward.
The Commission will meet again at a date and time to be
announced.
Author(s)
UN Departmente of Public Information (DPI)
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