The NGO and Trade Union Major Groups do not accept the mandate of the World Water Commission, the World Water Council Vision document and express serious concerns about the process and contents to date of the Framework for Action.
Oral Statement:
Water is life says the Vision document. But for many millions of people in the world the quest for clean water and the management of sanitation is not a joy of life. It is a daily struggle and burden to obtain what should be a right for everyone. Drought, shortages, pollution and unfair allocation of resources blight and prejudice the achievement of this right.
Here at this Water Conference the powerful of the world are gathered to address these issues. Governments and funding agencies, professionals and administrators. You are being brought face to face with he urgency of the problems and needs in all their starkness. Here is your opportunity to take action together to transform the situation.
It should not be beyond you. There is widespread understanding of the nature and severity of the problems. The principles on which solutions should be based have been established and reaffirmed at conference after conference for the last ten years or more. The resources and the organisation needed ought to be well within your grasp. But action and implementation drags along at a painfully slow pace, condemning millions to continue with non-existent or unsatisfactory water services and all the death, ill health and struggles for water which result from this failure.
What the NGOs look for now is real commitment and determination to change matters. We need reform of the governance of water based on the skills, experience and legitimacy of local people and communities, on recognition of the primacy of human needs and rights, and on sound understanding of ecosystems and river basin management. We need targets and timetable for improvement. We need substantial uplift in the water investment programmes of all countries, and particularly in the developing countries where the problems are the most acute. We need a substantial increase in the levels of multilateral and bilateral assistance from the developed countries to assist this process. By the time of the Rio + 10 Summit in 2002 you could achieve, if you so wanted, a fully worked up global strategy and committed fund flows to bring about these improvements.
We have to say that the draft declaration which has been prepared by your officials to express the conclusions of this conference, falls woefully short of this goal. It is a document which is full of reservations and escape clauses. It conveys no real sense of urgency and no real determination to increase efforts in the world to deal with water problems. Ministers, it is not too late for you to reject the weak document which has been placed before you, and to resolve to make some real commitments to action, not to endorse a transparent attempt to avoid real commitment.
I must of course make reference to the report of the World Water Commission and the Vision Document which have been produced just in time for this conference.
I have to inform you that the majority of the NGO and trade union major groups who are represented here do not accept the report of the World Water Commission and the Vision Document produced by the World Water Council as the basis for further action.
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These are important reservations about the work to date of the World Water Commission and the Global Water Partnership. But the most fundamental point that we wish to emphasise to you is that you should not use reservations about aspects of the work of those bodies as an excuse for inaction, or for merely proceeding with business as usual.
The demand for action which we represent is real and growing around the world. NGOs, community groups, women’s groups around the world are already actively engaged in playing their part in highlighting the problems and in developing solutions. We stand ready to do more, much more, if only governments and aid agencies will work with us in an open and transparent way to help build on these locally based and legitimate solutions.
We pledge to work with you on these solutions. Will you rise to the same challenge? Will you pledge yourselves now to work intensively over the next two years to establish precise targets for improvement, and the organisation and funding programmes to deliver them. Can we resolve together that by the time of the next Earth Summit in 2002 we must have got the measure of the water problems of the world, and have set action in hand to resolve them within a generation? We look to you, Ministers and heads of delegation to put us on that track this week.
