Co-authored article by UNEP Executive Director, Klaus Töpfer and Minister of the Environment Norway, Børge Brende, Chairman of CSD (30.04.04)

Reaching the targets on water and sanitation – difficult, but doable!

Mark Twain, the American author and wit, once remarked:“ Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it”.

Many might say the same about water or more precisely society’s efforts to deliver the Millennium Development Goals of halving, by 2015, the number of people without access to healthy quantities of this most precious resource

Gloomy figures abound. More than one billion people lack access to safe drinking water. At least 2.4 billion lack access to basic sanitation. Millions of women and girls spend long hours every day fetching water from distant sources.

If nothing is done, two thirds of the world’s population is expected to live in areas of water scarcity by 2025 making it even tougher to reach other key goals relating to poverty, hunger and the environmental sustainability or future of the planet.

Small wonder that many imagine that the water and sanitation Goals, alongside the targets and timetables drawn up at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) two years ago, stand little chance of success. That Governments are simply paying lip service to unreasonable aspirations.

This, however, is not the view held by the Government of Norway and the United Nations Environment Programme.

Human beings thrive on challenges. The water and sanitation targets are tough, but they are doable.

Events, such as the Millennium Assembly where in 2000 the Goals were announced, and the WSSD do not come in isolation.

Other stops on this railway line to a better and more sustainable world have been the March 2002 Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development. Here countries pledged to significantly increase overseas aid, reversing years of decline.

Just before WSSD, Governments also agreed to a $3 billion replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Many of this fund’s projects involve water and water related projects in the developing world including rainwater harvesting schemes on continents like Africa.

Th 12 ^th> Session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), taking place in New York in mid-April, aims to keep up the political pressure. We will use the meeting to identify obstacles and constraints as well as success stories to pave the way for effective implementation of the water and sanitation targets.

Some weeks before, environment ministers will meet in Jeju, Korea, for UNEP’s Global Ministerial Environment Forum.

Here concrete studies, detailing where water supplies and sanitation have been improved for communities such as the Massai in Kenya and cities like Singapore will be discussed for replicating elsewhere. The outcome will bring the environment pillar to CSD, so it can be combined with the other two pillars of sustainable development, namely social and economic issues.

Countries have been far from idle over the past 12 months. African ministers recently met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Political will and the good governance needed to tackle the water crisis on this most vulnerable of Continents has been lacking for many years. But this, we believe, is no longer the case.

Ministers committed themselves to establishing National Task Forces aimed at not only meeting the Goals, but delivering safe and sufficient drinking water and sanitation for all 300 million Africans in need by 2025.

A new Regional Water Facility, established last year in Tunis, Tunisia, with a plan to raise $650 million for low cost loans and grants, will play an important role.

Meanwhile the European Commission announced 50 million Euros to help Chad carry out its new Water and Drainage Strategy that will help provide reliable drinking water for over 2,200 villages.

There are many more examples, including assessment of water sector reforms in 16 African countries including Uganda, following moves in South Africa.

So there are real signs of hope and real examples of progress both nationally and internationally. But we need to keep the pressure up if we are to reach the winning tape.

A key reason why so many people lack access to clean water and basic sanitation is the lack of an integrated approach to water resources management (IWRM).

In other words the needs of different sectors such as agriculture, industry and consumers are often treated in isolation. So to are river systems, lakes and underground aquifers and springs.

At WSSD countries committed to prepare IWRM plans by 2005. How are we doing in terms of meeting this goal?

A preliminary survey by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) of 108 developing countries indicates that around 10 percent have made good progress towards more integrated approaches, 50 percent have taken initial steps in this direction but strongly need to increase their efforts, while the remaining 40 percent remain locked in fragmented decision making.

The report clearly shows that water resources management and development in most countries remains fragmented, and few countries have made substantial progress towards developing and managing their water in an integrated way. This reinforces the need for all countries to reinvigorate their efforts in this direction, starting with the preparation of IWRM plans as agreed in Johannesburg.

Our concern is that if we miss the 2005 target this might defuse the gains being made and take the wind out of our collective sails to meet the 2015 targets on water and sanitation.

Managing water supplies and boosting sanitation is inextricably linked with fighting poverty and delivering sustainable economic growth.

Indeed the water crisis is very much a governance crisis rather than a scarcity crisis. A UNEP study has shown that it is not water scarcity per se that defines whether a country and its citizens are short of water. Rather it is closely linked to wealth, with the average share of the population with access to improved water supplies increasing with a nation’s Gross Domestic Product per capita income.

Safe and sufficient water supplies can also be at the root of a modern peace policy. Indeed water, it emerges, can be a source of co-operation and resolution to difficulties rather than a source of conflict as was once widely thought.

UNEP’s recently published Atlas of Freshwater Agreements shows that the world's 262 international river basins account for nearly one-half of the earth's land surface, generate roughly about 60% of global freshwater flow and are home to about 45% of the world's population.

Over 3,000 treaties have been signed between nations since 2,500 BC. Importantly, since 1948, only 37 incidents of acute conflicts, such as those involving violence, have occurred over water.

However, the past is not necessarily a guide to the future especially in a world of six billion and counting.

Around 150 river basins, upon which millions of people depend for drinking water, irrigation and in some cases energy, have no treaties or agreements and could be the flashpoints for future disputes.

Many are in Asia, Latin America and Africa where tensions over water for drinking supplies, irrigation, fisheries and hydropower may be aggravated by rising populations and existing political, social and environmental upheavals.

Water and sanitation are complex and controversial issues that need creative thinking and cooperation among all sectors of society including those directly suffering the shortages.

We need to improve the management of water utilities to generate secure revenue for their improvement. And we need to reform how water is valued and priced, especially in agriculture.

We need to deploy technologies, both high and low, we need the financing, both macro and micro, and we need the political will at the international, regional, national and local government level.

Releasing our fellow human beings from the misery of inadequate supplies of water and sanitation is an exciting challenge. It is doable.

Like the water, upon which all life depends, let’s not waste it.