Speech on the occasion of the opening of the 8th ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly by His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange in the Dutch Congrescentre in The Hague on November 22nd 2004
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
It gives me great honour to formally open this 8th ACP - EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. Please bear with me for a few more minutes before you really can get started. A glance at your draft agenda and work programme shows that in the next few days you will, amongst others, be discussing the impact of hurricanes on the Caribbean and the situation in the African Great Lakes Region. Those are regions of the world where natural disasters like droughts and floods can cause terrible havoc, threatening development. As a matter of fact, all nations represented here have to deal with one or more of the three basic pillars of water management: too much, too little or too dirty. Cooperation between the EU and the ACP can mitigate the more extreme effects and help countries prepare for disasters, and I will address this later on.
Water management is a major instrument for international cooperation, since it presents a means of achieving genuinely sustainable development. To most people, water means household water for drinking cooking and sanitation. And indeed, for many people, supplies of this water are not of sufficient quality or available at reasonable price and within reasonable time or distance, to satisfy their needs. Today, over a billion people have no access to safe and affordable drinking water, while over 3 billion people have inadequate sanitation. These are indeed top priorities for action. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development identified targets for improving this situation, which were incorporated into the UN Millennium Development Goals. But the real water crisis looms in insufficient quantities to ensure food security, to feed the estimated 10 billion people living on our planet by the second half of this century. The UN specifies a minimum requirement of 50 litres of water per person per day to cover drinking, cooking and sanitation needs, which is almost 11 percent of the minimum of 1700 cubic meters of water per person per annum which is required for a country not to be water stressed.
No wonder, then, that many see agriculture as the main target for water conservation efforts. Increase the efficiency of irrigation from say 40 to 80 percent and the world water crisis could be solved. And research into new technology shows that this might be possible.
At the same time, it is an established fact that the water needs of people in urban areas, both for household and industrial use, will rise sharply in the coming decades. If we extract more water for agriculture, industry and cities from our rivers and aquifers, nature will pay a heavy toll. More than half of the world's wetlands were destroyed in the 20th century. The quality of the water in the rivers is so poor that they have become a source of disease rather than a source of life.
And apart from the shortage of safe drinking water and sanitation, Europe and many other countries are experiencing an increase in water-related hazards and disasters due to climate change. Many institutions and insurance companies have produced reports on the subject.
And some alarming facts emerge from them. The number, the scale and impact of natural disasters in recent years have led to massive loss of life and long-term negative social, economic and environmental impact for societies throughout the world. It is crucial for neighbouring riparian states to work together to prevent hazards becoming disasters. And I am pleased to say that within the European Union the necessary steps have been taken to encourage them to do so, for example in the Rhine basin. I am also pleased to say that the EU is willing to support similar efforts by ACP countries to work together in regional river basins.
Climate change and sea level rise do not only effect the EU. Many Pacific islands are low-lying or have coastal features that make them particularly vulnerable to climate change & variability and sea level rise. They will be among the first to suffer the adverse impacts of climate change.
But apart from these physical problems, we must face the fact that more and more economic activities are taking place in areas at risk when water levels rise. So when a flood occurs, the social and economic impact is immense.
Small island states are especially vulnerable and it is commendable that the Cotonou Agreement recognises this and includes specific provisions and measures to support island ACP states in their efforts to overcome the natural and geographical differences and difficulties hampering their development.
These multiple demands on an increasingly scarce resource reflect a terrible dilemma. How do we provide water for food security and a decent income for hundreds of millions of poor farmers while increasing water supplies for cities and industry without causing even more damage to our ecosystems? Given these many water-related problems, I was somewhat surprised to note that water issues do not seem to rank highly as a priority in the poverty reduction strategies that many countries have drafted. Since these strategies are at the basis of international cooperation, water issues should be given higher priority. And this will free up more funding for water-related investments.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Up to now I have only talked about the problems and challenges facing Europe and the rest of the world. I am aware that many countries and organisations are actively addressing them. Earlier this year, the European Commission announced the establishment of the EU Water Facility. Through it, funds can be released for partnerships and investments in transborder river basin management, for water and sanitation, for better irrigation and many other activities associated with water management.
During a recent trip to Africa I saw that major efforts were being made to ensure capacity building for Integrated Water Resources Management in the SADEC region. I was briefed by ministers from 10 countries cooperating in the Nile Basis Initiative, a region which was highly volatile until very recently and where any alteration of the use of Nile water was a causus belli and I attended the meeting of the African Ministers' Council on Water. And I noted with pleasure that during this meeting in Entebbe, the African Ministers endorsed the development of National Roadmaps to achieve the MDGs. These are action-driven national planning instruments, developed in partnership with the EU Water Initiative and the global Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) administered by the World Bank.
Integrated water resources management is a way to solve these complex problems. It has become the cornerstone of the European Water Framework Directive and is being promoted world-wide by the Global Water Partnership. IWRM entails a holistic approach to water management and inspires different institutions within a country to coordinate their water management efforts. At the same time, it brings neighbouring countries in a river basin around the table to discuss common interests and to share the benefits from the use of river waters.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
In 1991 an international television series was produced called Spaceship Earth. It pictured our planet as an inside-out spaceship with a living crew. The gas and water tanks of Spaceship Earth are the air, the oceans and the fresh water systems. The top layer of ocean beds, the mud of estuaries, and the soil are active surfaces, like the absorbers and filters in a man-made spacecraft. Human beings are the crew members, dependent for their survival on using these vulnerable systems in a sustainable way.
In the past few minutes I have confronted you with many of the water-related problems facing our 'spaceship'. My aim was not to discourage you, but to bring to your attention the major challenges the world faces. I also highlighted the many actions that are under way in partnership between the EU Member States and the ACP countries. Much remains to be done. I hope you will take this on board in your deliberations. But, as so often at these conferences and other large assemblies, we, and I am just as guilty, manage to perfectly identify the problems, discuss them at length with all possible stakeholders and finally fail to execute, at least at the scale required to make a difference. Ultimately, we are the United Nations that is not only a building in Manhattan, we are the United Nations and we have all signed up to the Millennium Development Goals. And yes, miracles do happen, as long as we want them to happen and I believe we owe that to the crew of our spaceship, that majority that still lives in poverty and which we cannot leave behind in outer space!
And now I declare the 8th session of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly open.
Thank you.