Check against delivery

Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues and friends,

More than 2 billion people worldwide do not have access to adequate sanitation. More than 1 billion lack access to safe drinking water. Every year more than 3 million people, mostly children, die from water-related diseases. This is an unnecessary and shocking situation, which can and must be resolved.

Increasing people’s access to safe drinking water is of vital importance for poverty eradication. Without safe drinking water, our health is under continuous daily attack. Water is also an essential ingredient in life-sustaining production processes such as agriculture, as well as in all life-sustaining processes in ecosystems.

The Norwegian Government welcomes the agreement reached at the World Summit on Sustainable Development to launch a global programme of actions, intended to halve, - by 2015, - the number of people without access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. It was a significant step forward that the provision of adequate sanitation was added to the UN Millennium Development Goal on water.

Mr Ghosh,

Norway is pleased to be hosting a seminar on a people-centred strategy for

rainwater harvesting so soon after the Johannesburg summit. This topic is not just another narrow, esoteric, technical issue. This meeting is a real opportunity to make progress towards the water and sanitation target.

At the University of Bergen, I recently described what we see as some main challenges involved in providing water and sanitation for all people everywhere. I will briefly repeat some of them here, and then outline what Norway is doing in the area of water resources management.

What are the main challenges ahead?

Water management strategies must give priority to the fight against poverty. This means that a concerted effort must be made to ensure that they benefit the poor, both directly through targeted efforts, and indirectly by contributing more generally to equitable economic growth.

However, water has often been viewed only as a social good. This perception has had unfortunate consequences. In many cases it has resulted in inequitable subsidy regimes that ultimately favour those already better of. In other instances it has led too unsustainable attempts to provide free water.

Water is a scarce commodity, with competing users. The time has come to recognize its economic value. Fortunately, people in various parts of the world have repeatedly shown their willingness to pay for adequate water and sanitation. To achieve efficient and sustainable water resources management national governments must recognize the economic value of water. Only then will it be possible to design equitable and sustainable systems for the delivery of water and sanitation.

Efficient coordination

Water-related issues are dealt with by a host of UN organizations, a number of regional economic organizations and some financial institutions. There are also several international bodies that are working specifically on water-related issues. More and improved coordination in the water and sanitation sector is essential if we are to reach out to the poor.

The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council is doing an important job in encouraging international and local collaboration, but there is no single body with overall responsibility for coordination. Considering the large number of international institutions and programmes involved in this area, we must do our utmost to ensure coherence and to achieve synergies.

To help us achieve the global target for water and sanitation, closer coordination of the work of all these bodies is needed to improve their efficiency. And coordination is also needed between these institutions, NGOs and other actors in civil society. In our view, the UN should take the leading role in this process.

Coordination is even more important at the national level. National governments must promote cooperation to ensure equitable access, adequate supplies and sustainability. Recipient countries should make sure that water-related issues are integrated into poverty reduction schemes, such as PRSPs. We must all do what we can to make this happen, and we must insist that the various parties involved in the water sector cooperate.

Public-private partnerships

Another challenge in the water sector is the inadequacy of financial resources. It is estimated that annual global investments of USD 180 billion are required to meet the needs of the world's population for water supplies, purification, and irrigation systems. Actual annual investments are estimated to be only about USD 70-80 billion. The urgent need to seek alternative sources of funding was underlined in the joint declaration by African ministers issued at the International Conference on Freshwater held in Bonn almost a year ago.

Similarly, there is an urgent need to develop alternative and cheaper, more cost-effective solutions.Norway believes, as a general rule, the large investments can, and should, be obtained from the private sector, and that ODA should be used primarily to create conditions that will attract such investments. To ensure that the interests of poor people are safeguarded, it is important to obtain the optimum mix of private sector efficiency and public sector legal and regulatory mechanisms.

However, in order to reach poor and dispersed communities where the private sector will never find it attractive to invest, there will still be a need for ODA and public investment, for example, for drilling and rainwater harvesting schemes. Furthermore, it is important that we know how to make better use of local capital to support water projects, in addition to seeking available funds from government and international donors.

Norwegian policies

Norway makes use of two main avenues for its international water-related efforts, development assistance and participation in international processes.

Norwegian development assistance

The overall orientation of our work in relation to water is targeted towards poverty eradication. Norwegian assistance aims to encourage the development of integrated water resources management for sustainable development. Norway can offer a great deal of accumulated expertise in the development of legislation, planning, and management at the national and local levels. We can also provide decentralized environmental management and technology for water conservation and re-use.

Our cooperation is also guided by a number of other principles, including:

• recipient responsibility
• transparency in development co-operation
• facilitating private sector involvement, both local, national and international
• maintaining key ecological functions of forests, wetlands and streams to secure safe water supplies
• peaceful resolution of conflicts related to competing demands for water
• allocation of responsibilities at national level, and between international bodies

We also focus on decentralized approaches and demand-driven solutions. These give priority to involving users, particularly women, who often bear the bulk of the responsibility related to the use of water. This is not least relevant for rainwater harvesting.

Rainwater harvesting is an important example of decentralized water management. It has proven to be successful in providing water security both for agriculture and for domestic water supply. Perhaps the main key to its success is the participatory aspect. It is based on traditional approaches and basic principles that make it possible for people to participate in the whole process from planning to construction and maintenance. Rainwater harvesting involves people in the centre of water management.

Participation in international processes

Norway is actively involved in international processes on water-related issues. We took part in the Commission on Sustainable Development, which laid down the general principles of strategic approaches to freshwater management for the international community. We were also involved in the two triennial World Water Fora organized by the World Water Council in Egypt in 1997 and The Hague in 2000.

One of the main issues in these processes has always been how to ensure the best possible coordination and coherence of international efforts. The Ministerial Declaration on Water Security in the 21 ^st >Century, adopted in The Hague in March 2000, called on the UN Secretary-General to further strengthen coordination and coherence within the UN system. This call was reiterated in the Ministerial Declaration from the International Freshwater Conference in Bonn. We hope that progress will be made at the next World Water Forum, which will take place in Kyoto in March next year.

It is essential that Kyoto be a real step forward towards operationalizing the commitments from the WSSD. The World Water Forum will be an important opportunity to make real progress in following up the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation and the WEHAB initiative which was launched by the UN Secretary-General in the run up to the Johannesburg Summit. The WEHAB initiative focuses on five strategic sectors for achieving sustainable development, namely: water, energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity. Water resources management is an essential element of all these sectors. Unless we fully understand this, we will fail in our efforts to achieve sustainable development.

The Johannesburg agreement to launch a global programme of actions on water and sanitation is ambitious, but needs to be further developed. We will do what we can to make sure that the political results of the Kyoto meeting are concrete and action-oriented. We must not focus primarily on what needs to be done, but rather who needs to do what, how and when.

Conclusion

While the primary responsibility for ensuring equitable and sustainable management of water resources rests with national governments, the international community has a special responsibility to mobilize the political will to take action, and to provide technical and financial support to countries that need it.

Effective and sustainable water resources management will require new initiatives and perhaps an even stronger emphasis on international cooperation than we have seen so far. We need to build partnerships of committed individuals, groups and institutions, to identify realistic solutions, and to create the necessary public support to transform them into reality.

More than anything, however, I believe that we have to empower local communities in such a way that they themselves can identify and implement appropriate solutions. In this context rainwater harvesting is particularly important.

I hope that this seminar will bring us closer to achieving these important goals.