Water For Peace - Opening Plenary Session

   Key Issues

·      Water availability is not the major problem. Rather it is the distribution of the resource at a global level and the resulting lack of access suffered by a large proportion of the world’s population.

·      The rapid rise in the world’s population will, by 2020, ensure that some 50% of all available water will be consumed, increasing the severity of future access problems.

·      The combination of lack of access and inadequate management contributes significantly to the poverty of millions of people. In order to address this problem a number of approaches are necessary.

·      Better management of water is a necessity, but needs to be combined with attention to the ‘health’ of the resource—i.e. it’s quality. Conserving river and lake quality is one of the least expensive ways of contributing to the need for greater resource availability in the long term.

·      In addition, the protection and conservation of wetlands is critical, from where many rivers derive their source.

·      The legal environment for water management is important. UN recognition of the right to water as a human right (November 2002) significantly increases the pressure on government to take action towards increasing access in the future. But at the wider basin-level, further mechanisms are required in order to balance national sovereignty and the basin-wide need for cooperative agendas. The dominance of single states needs to be avoided.

·      To address poverty and implement the MDGs major financial resources are required. Various ways of raising the financial resources exist, including the possible contribution from local communities—end users themselves—and the private sector. But a balance needs to be struck between human needs on the one hand and the participation of profit-seeking business on the other.

·      Popular participation based on a realistic, local-level view can be improved through the active support of Non-Governmental Organizations. They can help to ‘propel’ forwards the national and international efforts at finding solutions.

·      As well as contributing to peace, for effective water resources management peace itself is a necessary condition at both national and regional levels.

·      To avoid future conflicts the PCCP programme can help to provide ‘early warning’ of possible future water-related conflicts.

·      Part of the major challenge lies in incorporating cultural values into our understanding of water management at the transboundary level and into our processes of problem-solving and solution-seeking.

Actions

·      International organizations should promote raising the status of access to water as a basic right to the status of an inalienable human right.

·      The international community should reaffirm its commitment to UN Convention on Watercourses and be urged to ensure that all countries move to convention ratification.

·      The level of cooperation over shared international aquifers needs to be increased.

·      In situations of conflict, international consensus should be sought on methods and means of protecting water supplies and wider water resources from damage during conflict. This should be deemed inadmissible.

Commitments

·      The international community should commit itself to a new ‘culture of consumption’ in which people combine care and concern for the resource with more equitable distribution.

·      There should be both increased integrated management of the resource itself and within national economic planning and policy processes.

·      As tabled at the WSSD by GCI, a special fund should be supported in order to provide financial assistance to the development and management of water resources in countries limited by severe financial constraints.

·      To ensuring the conveyance of these ideas and proposals to the next G8 meeting in France, 2003.

Recommendations (in addition to those in the Draft Water for Peace statement to Ministerial Conference)

·      Taking a benefit-sharing approach will provide an effective basis for future cooperation and development in shared river basins and aquifers

·      Understanding the needs of the environment should be seen as a high priority in basin management processes

·      Participation and capacity building by/of all stakeholders is an important part of the moving to effective processes of peace-building and cooperation in transboundary resource environments.

·      The is a need to strengthen and improve international commitment to legal instruments on water sharing and transboundary resource development.

·      A basis for future financial support should be established through a new financial support facility.

·      An international mediation facility for the resolution of water-related disputes is required and should be established at a global level.