No Water No Future
Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address this meeting. Although I speak here on my own behalf and not as a member of the Secretary Generals Panel of Eminent Persons, The Panelmeeting has asked me to convey their best wishes to the multi stakeholder Dialogue and pledges to take into account the outcome of this multi stakeholder process, when preparing it's report to the Secretary General for the Johannesburg Summit.
Water was not at the top of the agenda in Rio, but I will argue to you that it should be in Johannesburg. I chaired the 2nd World Water Forum, held in The Hague in March 2000. This conference put the world water crisis squarely on the international agenda. Over 5000 water stakeholders, including more than 100 ministers and 600 journalists, came together to call the world's attention to the many urgent water issues.
Today's water crisis is mostly about access to safe and affordable drinking water. People in the worst-off 50 countries must try and meet all their water and sanitation needs on an average of 30 liters or less per day, far less than the 50-liter per day level that the United Nations says constitutes the absolute minimum for water needs. Incredibly, people in 13 countries must try and live on an average of less than 10 liters per day, a truly desperate situation. People that live on less than 10 liters of water per day can never escape poverty and achieve sustainable development without first addressing their water scarcity.
Water is crucial to development. This can be seen by the fact that while the world population tripled in the 20th century, the use of renewable water resources grew six-fold, mostly for use in agriculture. We have seen that no single type of intervention has had greater overall impact upon economic development and public health than the provision of safe drinking water and proper sanitation. In health alone, improved water and sanitation can reduce morbidity and mortality rates of some of the most serious of water-related diseases by up to 80 percent.
When Secretary-General Kofi Annan invited me to serve on the panel that is helping him prepare for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg later this year, I gladly accepted. Because of my special interest in water issues, I prepared a contribution to Mr Annan's panel that focuses on water and I am very pleased to present the key recommendations and actions contained in this document to you today. The document has been available on the Internet in English and French. Some three thousand people have now visited the site to read or download the text and provide me with their comments. In addition, I have received valuable comments and suggestions to improve the document from key organizations in the water sector and through a meeting of over two hundred African water stakeholders that met in Accra, Ghana, in April.
The Accra meeting was opened by President Kufuor of Ghana and attended by water ministers from seven, and representatives of over forty, African countries. The Accra conference, and the subsequent conference of African water ministers in Abuja, Nigeria, strongly emphasized the crucial importance of improved management and development of water resources for sustainable development in Africa. In addition, last week, ministerial delegations from ten Asian countries held a policy roundtable in Asian water issues and discussed my document as an input into their preparations for Johannesburg (a) .
I know that there will be many, many issues competing for attention at the Johannesburg Summit and there is a risk that attention will be so divided that concrete results are difficult to achieve. It is therefore important to focus the attention clearly on priority issues, and recommend a small number of high priority actions.
In No Water No Future I have proposed a small number of water targets and actions that could, in my view, go a long way towards solving the water crisis at a global level. The targets and actions are organized in the four key areas identified by the panel of the Secretary General as follows: (1) shared values, (2) the public-private sector nexus, (3) global governance and (4) science and technology.
My three recommended targets on "shared values" start with the target adopted by the Millennium Conference on safe drinking water, add a similar target for sanitation and propose a new target focused on water for productive use. The targets are:
- Halve the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water resources by 2015.
- Halve the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford sanitation by 2015.
- Increase water productivity in agriculture (rainfed and irrigated) to enable food security for all people without increasing water diverted for irrigated agriculture over that used in 2000.
The corresponding recommended action is to mandate the World Water Assessment Programme of the United Nations to establish a baseline and monitor progress towards these targets and report to the Ministerial Conferences associated with the World Water Forum series or to the UN CSD.
Related to the public-private sector nexus my recommended target is to have at least 20% of all water infrastructure investments funded by alternative forms of financing by 2015.
The corresponding action is to build capacity in local government to assess alternative forms of financing for infrastructure, including capacity to identify, develop and negotiate sound projects that are financially feasible and environmentally sustainable as alternative solutions to large-scale investments.
Concerning global governance my recommended target is to assess virtual water imports and exports through agricultural products for each country by 2015. In other words, to analyse the impacts of the changes in the subsidies in agriculture and the international system of trade in food and fiber on national and local water demands by 2015.
I recommend that in the international trade negotiations on agricultural subsidies and trade in agricultural products the World Trade Organisations should consider the impact on water use in countries importing and exporting food.
Finally, related to science and technology my recommended target - among many other issues that are important and outlined in No Water No Future - is to develop, by 2010, an agreed strategy for the use of molecular biology to increase drought tolerance and water productivity of crops to achieve water, food and environmental security. Please note that this recommendation does not imply support for genetically modified organisms. Our improved understanding of the genomes of many organisms, and the availability of tools at the molecular level, enables us to advance in many directions, including for example marker-aided-selection that can help speed up traditional plant breeding methods. We urgently need a strategy that brings people together to capture the potential of these advances in science in a manner that is environmentally sustainable and socially acceptable.
The corresponding recommended action is to have the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research - the CGIAR - assess the potential for increased drought tolerance and increased water productivity in agriculture, including the potential of the use of functional genomics and other tools of modern molecular biology.
The water crisis that is affecting so many people is mainly a crisis of governance - not of water scarcity. Overcoming the world water crisis - achieving water, food and environmental security simultaneously - is one of the most formidable challenges on the road to sustainable development. More and more people, organisations and governments are becoming aware of this challenge. The World Summit on Sustainable Development should reaffirm the importance of achieving water security and adopt targets and actions that will allow us to meet this challenge jointly. I think that the WaterDome that will bring people together around water issues in Johannesburg will be an excellent platform and I invite you to join me there. I would like to conclude by saying that in my opinion, Sustainable Development will remain a far away dream, if nations and communities are unable to achieve water security.
I thank you.
(a) For information: Ministerial Roundtable Discussion on May 23 in Bangkok, organized by ESCAP, IWMI and ADB, where Frank Rijsberman will present No Water No Future recommendations and actions and will moderate the discussion. Minister Kassrills of South Africa is the keynote speaker in Bangkok, on his way to Bali, and links the Africa, Asia and PrepCom meetings.