Toespraak van de Prins van Oranje, 15 juni 2007

Can we do it?

Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

It is a very special privilege to address you here today. There are more than 13,000 UNESCO-IHE alumni and I was a member of the class of 1998. You have now come to the end of three intensive days and I promise to keep my speech short. Yet I want to seize this opportunity to express my great personal appreciation for IHE. This is where the foundation was laid for my international water management activities. But that is not all. My most cherished memories are of the contacts I made with my fellow students, both during the course and later. So I know from personal experience that IHE is not only a training institute, but also an important network organisation.

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give UNESCO-IHE is that I come across the institute all over the world. Ever since I began getting involved in water management I have had many highly inspiring meetings with other IHE alumni – sometimes in the most unexpected places. I have met alumni who are now ministers, directors-general and university professors. Many now work for the World Bank, for regional development banks, river basin authorities and the various UN agencies. And of course I have met them on the ground, in the water organisations and projects I have visited in all those years. In other words, IHE alumni are everywhere. But in fact, that is logical – because there are so many of us.

It will come as no surprise to you that this makes me feel proud, not only as a former IHEstudent, but also as a representative of my country. The Netherlands has a long record of international cooperation in the field of water. It goes back as far as the early twelfth century, long before the Netherlands became a nation state. At that time, a priest by the name of Heinricus who lived in what is now the Netherlands was responsible for a large scale land reclamation project in the valley of the River Weser in present-day Germany. His statue still stands in the German town of Steinkirchen. Another famous example is the hydraulic engineer Johannes de Rijke, He was responsible for several renowned large-scale water management projects in Japan in the late nineteenth century. His grave in Amsterdam and his birthplace Colijnsplaat in the province of Zeeland still attract a steady flow of Japanese admirers.

So the Netherlands has long had quite a reputation for its expertise in the field of water. It was therefore logical that the IHE should open its doors in Delft in 1957. It is interesting to note that the then Ambassador of Pakistan, Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, played a key role. She was a remarkable woman who is remembered in Pakistan as a campaigner for women's rights. In the Netherlands too she conquered the male strongholds of politics and hydraulic engineering. She did so by asking the Netherlands to share with other countries the knowledge it was gaining with the Delta project. It is because of her request – and the response to it – that we are here today. The symbolism of this story is obvious. From the start, IHE was a Dutch institute set up to work for the entire world. That was true then, it is true now, and it must continue to be true in the future too. In this respect, gaining UNESCO status in 2003 was an important milestone.

Ladies and gentlemen, for the past three days you have celebrated fifty years of water education, but with the future in mind. I believe that that is only fitting because the world may need IHE even more urgently in the next fifty years. Water education doesn't only disseminate knowledge about technology. It also ensures widespread adoption of the principles of integrated water resources management – IWRM. It is about capacity building and – perhaps most importantly – about training responsible water managers. Because above all, the water crisis is a crisis of governance and political commitment.

So what we need are well-educated professionals to change the world’s water future. It cannot be denied that this need has grown in the past fifty years, and will continue to grow. After all, the field is becoming increasingly complex, because the various interests at stake – water, food production, energy and ecosystems – impact much more directly on each other. I am convinced that that is a major barrier to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. I like to make the comparison with Rubik's famous Cube: everything depends on everything else. One twist in the right direction – for food production, for instance – may have an immediate, negative impact on the other side of the Cube, on the environment or drinking water supply. That makes matters so difficult.

As chairman of UNSGAB – the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation – my key message is that it would be smart to sort out the blue side first. Because however you look at it, access to safe water and basic sanitation is an essential condition for human health, dignity and development. Once you have met this condition, the prospect of achieving the MDGs on health, education and women’s participation comes into view. What is more, in developing IWRM in the past ten to fifteen years, the water sector has adopted an approach that seeks to create sustainable links between the various interests. So water is the key, but you don't need convincing of that.

The big question is, can we do it? With all our expertise in the field of water, do we have the answers to the major challenges confronting us now, and in the future, in the wake of climate change, population growth and economic trends? Take, for instance, the current discussion on biofuels. Rising oil prices have made them booming business. Given the prospect of climate change, that sounds like good news. And in some ways it is. But it puts enormous extra pressure on ecosystems, on available farmland and on water. In Brazil, for instance, the production of sugar cane for ethanol entails using 23,000 cubic metres of water for every hectare harvested.

Those are huge quantities – especially if you also consider that worldwide demand for food – and thus for water for irrigation – is increasing. The bottom line is that humanity has survived for tens of thousands of years without fossil and other fuels. But we can survive no more than a few weeks without food, and only three or four days without water. Yet with current farming methods, it takes as much water to produce enough biofuel to fill the tank of a Sports Utility Vehicle as it does to produce the grain that would feed a person for an entire year. So we require nothing less than a new green revolution to make more water available. The need to produce more crop per drop is more vital than ever before!

So, ladies and gentlemen, can we do it? Can we strike a balance between all those interests, with the water sector in the lead? The answer is that we must. ‘No' is not an option. But it will not be easy. First, and above all, we will have to convince the other sectors, the water users, that integrated water planning is vital. That applies in particular to the agriculture sector, since the production of food and other agricultural products accounts for seventy per cent of freshwater withdrawals from rivers and groundwater. But given the example of biofuels, which I have already cited, and the fact that ninety-five per cent of Africa's hydropower potential still remains unused, we should not lose sight of the energy sector either.

IHE and its alumni have a key role to play all over the world. And they do, because, unlike other fields, IHE circles are not affected by brain drain. After their graduation, most students return to their countries of origin, and they are ready to make a difference. They have the latest scientific knowledge at their fingertips. They are trained in integrated thinking and working. And above all, they have learned to take a broad view, and to be open to new ideas. So they have got everything it takes to involve other sectors in sustainable water management. That, I am convinced, will be the greatest challenge facing us in the years to come.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Benjamin Franklin once said that ‘an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.’ UNESCO-IHE has been proving him right for the past fifty years. And I hope you will continue to do so, because the challenges we face will only become bigger and more complex. So developing new knowledge on water issues, sharing it, and putting it into practice in a responsible, sustainable way will become even more important than in the past. I wish UNESCO-IHE every success in doing so. And of course I wish you many happy returns!

Thank you.

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