PRESS CONFERENCE ON WATER MANAGEMENT

PRESS CONFERENCE ON WATER MANAGEMENT

A panel of resource conservation and development experts warned at a Headquarters press conference today that there was little chance of meeting the long-term development goals of the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development without ensuring safe water and sufficient sanitation.

Sir Richard Jolly, Chairman of the Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), stressed to correspondents how crucial it was that the world’s deepening water management and sanitation crisis be given top billing at the Summit, scheduled to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September.  While goals for poverty eradication and ensuring an adequate water supply had been set, no international obligations to ensure sufficient sanitation had been included in the 2000 Millennium Declaration, he said. 

In response, he continued, the International Freshwater Conference, held in Bonn, Germany, last December, called for such a target –- halving the 2.5 billion people without access to adequate sanitation by 2015, and achieving universal access by 2025 –- to be formally endorsed at Johannesburg.  To facilitate that initiative, the WSSCC launched a global advocacy campaign at Bonn –- “Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for all”, or WASH –- in order to mobilize attention, support and action towards efforts to improve environmental sanitation, hygiene promotion and the provision of safe water supplies. 

The campaign’s motto, “Sanitation is not a dirty word”, was a reminder that the simple act of washing hands with soap and water could reduce diarrhoeal and other water-borne diseases by one third, he added.  For those that worried that the poor could not afford soap, washing hands with ash or even dirt had proved equally effective in countries like Bangladesh.

Mr. Jolly hoped that suggestions emerging from Bonn, including the notion that people needed to be at the centre of water management and sanitation activities, and that efforts should focus squarely on the urgent needs of the urban poor and the empowerment of women, would be discussed at a round table, “From Bonn to Johannesburg: Putting Water and Sanitation on the Political Agenda”, taking place at Headquarters today.

Mr. Jolly was joined at the press conference by Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), who said that providing safe water was one of the main impediments to delivering the Habitat Agenda in the developing world –- providing adequate shelter and sustainable human settlements.  “Water is our defining challenge”, she said.  In fact, the availability of water and sanitation dictated settlement patterns and defined health.  They also brought out sharply the poverty and inequity in many urban areas.  To women, water and sanitation gave dignity and productivity, she added.

Ms. Tibaijuka said what was needed was a fundamental change of approach.  The time had come to shift gears from a needs-based approach to a rights-based concept, which ensured access to safe water and sanitation and ensured that governments and civil society actors made certain those rights were protected and fulfilled by the proper authorities.

Margaret Catley-Carlson, Chair of the Global Water Partnership and facilitator of the Bonn Conference, was also on the panel.  “If we don’t get water management right”, she said, “we won’t get the other elements of sustainable development right”.  That was not to say that other issues like curbing air pollution, ensuring the survival of species and forest protection were not important, but water was most often the key to achieving those goals.  By example, she said that 28 per cent of the world’s freshwater fish and 75 per cent of coastal reefs were currently menaced by poor water management policies.

While noting that the achievement of many of the Johannesburg issue areas depended on managing water well, Ms. Catley-Carlson said that halving the number of persons without sanitation by 2015 would be difficult, because the world population would grow by roughly that amount during the same period.  “What we’re talking about is an extraordinary race against some fast moving and very diverse phenomena”, she said.  So, determination was needed to find new ways to approach the problem, namely convincing governments to move away from the service provision business, and into the enabling business, so that community groups were encouraged to act and new players were brought to the table.  

Responding to a question, she said that the private sector also had a role to play in efforts to ensure safe water and sanitation.  But, in countries with limited financial resources, regulatory and monitoring authorities were often hesitant to support privatization initiatives.  Ms. Tibaijuka added that in many cities in developing countries, municipalities were often unable to control water wastage and illegal tapping from water pipes.  So, initiatives aimed at ensuring water must balance willingness to pay with ability to pay.

Another correspondent asked what could be done to mobilize the African-American community, particularly educators, to take up the concerns of water management in Africa and other developing countries.  Ms. Tibaijuka said positive response to the WASH initiative itself was a manifestation of broad goodwill towards solving those problems.  She said attitudes must also be changed, so that it became unacceptable to imagine that there were people in the world without access to toilets, forced to hold their bodily functions for hours at a time. 

She also said that UN-Habitat had initiated a school programme in Africa aimed at raising awareness about the problems surrounding sustainable water supplies.  Focusing on the future leadership of the country was critical to foster a culture of “willingness to pay” for water.

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