Toespraak van de Prins van Oranje bij de 15e bijeenkomst van het Global Water Partnership (GWP) in Stockholm, 19 augustus 2011

Toespraak | 19-08-2011

GWP Chair, Friends of GWP, your Excellencies. Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends!!

It is my great pleasure to be with you here today to celebrate the Global Water Partnership's 15 year anniversary. I would like to congratulate all of you who have contributed to the important work and impressive achievements of GWP. I know many are here today, but so many more are unable to join us in Stockholm as the GWP family has grown to vast proportions.

Today you truly have a global reach, and are active in every corner of the world. Your partners work for government, businesses and NGOs. Members of the GWP family come from different sectors and traditions but they are united by this concern - how can we develop, manage and share our increasingly scarce supplies of water.
During the last 15 years you have built an impressive network of Regional and Country Water Partnerships. These networks lie at the heart of the organization and they work close to the ground, where water challenges are played out. At the local level it is abundantly clear that water security is a development imperative, without which all sectors of national economies will sooner or later fail.

I am proud to have been patron of GWP since 1998. Taking on this role was one of my first steps into the international water arena. Another important step was chairing the 2nd World Water Forum in 2000 in The Hague. During the Forum, GWP really came of age, with the network and the partnerships coming together under the public eye for the first time. During that same Forum however, many participants questioned the need and relevance of yet another international organization in the field of water. You have proven the relevance and uniqueness of GWP in such a way that today nobody could envisage an international water world without GWP!

My patronage of GWP, that first step, ultimately led Kofi Annan to ask me to chair his Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation. Our task is to galvanize governments, international organisations, NGOs and development banks to work together to meet the Millennium Development Goal targets for water and sanitation.

The Board and GWP are closely related. For example, our esteemed member Margaret Catley-Carlson chaired GWP for 8 years and is now one of your other Patrons. Our objectives for water resources management are closely aligned and through the Commission on Sustainable Development we put integrated water resources management planning on the international stage together.

The Board's objectives are set out in our central mandate, the Hashimoto Action Plan. Instead of sharing all these objectives with you, I will outline our current focus areas - sanitation, innovation in wastewater management, water efficiency in agriculture to ensure both water security and food security. These are the messages we are promoting in the Rio 2012 process with the hope that the Summit next year will help frame the development agenda for the foreseeable future. I fully expect that GWP will be working closely with UNSGAB now and in the future to implement these messages.

Our central message focuses on basic sanitation. Despite impressive development gains since 2000, we are simply not making enough progress - 2.6 billion continue to lack adequate sanitation but also the knowledge to understand the importance of sanitation to their potential development and dignity.

We are not keeping pace with demographic growth, which means that according to current trends, by 2015, more people, not fewer, will lack safe sanitation facilities. Daunting statistics, and behind them, immeasurable human suffering, a disheartening case of global inequity, lost opportunities for economic growth, and growing environmental degradation.

If only that knowledge can be disseminated, a far cry from the MDG's actual intentions, the demand will rise for action from their governments and maybe a television or mobile phone could be swapped for a toilet in the home. In close collaboration with UNSGAB the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation recently launched a US$ 42 million grant inviting 22 universities to submit proposals for how to invent a waterless, hygienic toilet that is safe and affordable for people in the developing world and does not have to be connected to a sewer. The target is to operate these units at less than 5 dollar cents per person per day. Let's hope this courageous initiative will provide the world with what it needs and give the 2.6 billion unserved an option!

Recently, the United Nations demonstrated a genuine willingness to push sanitation to the center of the international development agenda. Countries have recognized that access to sanitation is a human right.

Last December, UN member states unanimously passed a GA resolution calling for an end to open defecation, increased funding and coordinated action through the Sustainable Sanitation: Five-year Drive to 2015 .

This Drive to 2015, which will build political will for sanitation, was officially launched by the Secretary-General on June 21 at the United Nations in New York. I encourage GWP to become an active partner in this effort, for as we all know, water and sanitation are intimately linked challenges.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our second Rio +20 message is the urgent need to revolutionize the way wastewater is treated. Our Board is making better wastewater collection, treatment and reuse a priority issue. In most parts of the world, only a fraction of wastewater is treated, and even less is reused. We extract massive amounts from rivers, lakes and aquifers and return them to our ecosystems full of waste: from our industries, from our farms and from ourselves. Better wastewater management protects human health, builds vibrant cities and reduces threats to vulnerable ecosystems.

In other words, there is no wastewater, only water that is wasted! This is a concept we all need to promote. To achieve water security we must share the common view that wastewater is a resource. It is a resource that deserves more attention from politicians, decision-makers, and policy planners.
Let's all join in a concerted effort to ensure polluted water is treated before it's returned to the environment. But we need a 21st century model. Business as usual is not the answer. Over-engineered massive trunk and branch systems which are prohibitively expensive, difficult to maintain and prone to break-downs are not the answer. Given the mind-boggling price tags for many of these systems, it is not surprising that often the work never even gets started.

Our Board believes that the technology currently available creates exciting new possibilities. And many of these new technologies are being used around the world. For example, membranes which can decontaminate water in a single step are advancing and becoming less expensive.

21st century systems should employ cascading use - cleaning water for drinking and personal hygiene, cascading down to grey water which can be 'cleaned enough' for industrial use, environmental recharge or agricultural. Do you know that about 50 million hectares of agriculture currently depends on wastewater? We have to expand this practice while doing it better by promoting the guidelines of WHO for the safe use of wastewater, excreta and greywater in agriculture.

Let's take advantage of the triple benefit afforded by building wastewater systems that save energy, lower construction costs, and harvest nutrients. Moving water creates a lot of greenhouse gases. The energy required runs as high as 35 to 40 % of many municipal energy bills. New systems should use less water and be much more energy efficient thereby contributing to our climate change efforts. We need more affordable systems adapted to local conditions that are as small as possible and as big as necessary. For example, small-scale aerobic ponds, with bio-digesters that allow for biogas recovery, not only remove deadly pathogens from water, they produce affordable fuel which can be used for cooking and safe, cheap fertilizer.

But, this waste water revolution will not happen naturally. It will require a dedicated movement and constant engagement with engineers, city and regional planners, mayors, local officials and bankers with governments taking a proactive role in stimulating structural change and technological progress. This is an area where developing countries can seize a real opportunity for green growth and sustainable jobs.

Which brings me to the third Rio +20 message directly linked to the focus of this meeting "Water Security as a Catalyst for Achieving Food Security".

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Recent events have placed food security issues at the centre stage once again: rising food prices, the financial, economical and debt crises, the growing awareness of climate change impacts on food production, and concern about the effect of political turmoil in the Middle East and Northern Africa on energy supplies and prices.
The scarcity of water available for agriculture, coupled with the impacts of water-related disasters, are fundamental to this drama. However, in many global policy discussions on food security, water does not yet receive the attention it deserves.
World food prices have reached their highest levels ever. Five years ago one ton of maize cost around 100 U.S dollars. Now, the world price of maize fluctuates around 310 U.S dollars per ton. We are seeing similar price hikes for other staple food commodities.
The hardest hit regions are Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where the majority of the world's poor reside. Food price increases affect the poor the most, since they spend a disproportionate share of their meager income on food. Considering the challenges faced by these two regions shows how water and food security are intricately connected.
Both regions are under threat by climate change. This is already manifesting in more extreme events, warmer temperatures, increases in temperature-related diseases and pests, and increased risks and uncertainty from temperature and precipitation variability.
Flooding is on the rise causing immeasurable human suffering along with devastating economic impacts. Last year flooding in Pakistan along the Indus River severely affected 20 million people with an economic impact of nearly $10 billion U.S. dollars. By the way, this week more than 700 thousand people have been affected by rain and floods in Pakistan and we hardly even hear about it in our media anymore!

Sub-Saharan Africa is already encountering increased temperatures and evaporation rates, greater rainfall variability along with more pests and diseases. In this region we have proof that Gross Domestic Product and rainfall are closely correlated, with GDP falling dramatically in drought years, as well as in flood years. As we sit here today, drought is contributing to a terrible tragedy in the Horn of Africa. Some 10 million people are at risk in this region as two years of drought and poor governance have forced food prices beyond the reach of most families.

In South Asia, an overwhelming 85% of total water use goes towards agricultural needs. At the same time, agriculture is also an extremely inefficient user of water: water productivity, measured as crop per drop, is one of the lowest in the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, 97% of agricultural production is dependent on rainfall and only 3% of the cultivated area is irrigated. This has led to urgent calls for greater investment both by governments and donors.
Rapid population and economic growth along with urbanization are changing political dynamics in the developing world. Increasingly people prefer water-intensive staples such as meat, fish, fruits and vegetables adding to the pressure on water resources. For those working to instill better water management globally, it is critical to remember that these challenges play out in vastly different ways from nation to nation because of differences including governance, natural resource endowments, and population density. These on-the-ground realities and their implications for development strategies must be understood if governments are to find realistic solutions.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Moving towards a water and food secure world cannot be realized by one sector. As our chair Ms. Obeng states "sustainable water management should be a concern for all development sectors: agriculture, industry, water supply and sanitation, health, education, transport and tourism". Ownership by decision makers of the water security agenda is thereby of paramount importance.

While the Advisory Board influences decision makers to prioritize water and sanitation challenges, the Global Water Partnership provides a network along with practical steps to help countries in designing their food and water security strategies. These steps are based in knowledge, information, investments, infrastructure and institutions.

Water is the medium that links the challenges of food security, energy security, climate change, economic growth and human livelihoods.

On the way to Rio+20 convincing and shared messages are required to convince leaders of this truth. The deliberations at this Annual GWP meeting and the World Water Week are critical moments to define this common vision. I'm sure many of us in this room remember the global commitment to forging a better future that was expressed in 1992. There is good reason for the Dublin Principles to be the cornerstones of GWP, even in 2011! Let's work together to ensure that Rio+20 lives up to and even exceeds the Earth Summit's legacy.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Has anyone tried Googling "Global Water Partnership" lately? Yesterday morning, when preparing for this speech, I got 15 million hits. Even if one tenth would actually be GWP related, this is an amazing number, and it is one example of how vast GWP's network has become. Through this growing web of connections, the Partnership is building a more secure future by helping countries to managing the world's water resources.

Let me close by wishing GWP a happy 15th birthday! Your hard work and dedication have made GWP vibrant and effective. It is an honour for me to be patron to such an influential organization dedicated to ensuring every child, woman and man can look forward to a water secure future.

Thank you.