Netherlands Congress Centre, The HagueLet me start by saying what a great pleasure it is to welcome you to the Second World Water Forum, and how honoured I am to have been invited to act as its chair. But I extend this welcome not only in my capacity as Chair, or as an honorary member of the World Commission on Water in the 21st Century and Patron of the Global Water Partnership. More importantly, it is as a stakeholder in the Netherlands' water resources that I welcome you - stakeholders in the world's water - to this Forum. For we share a mission, and that is to make water everyone's business.
Thanks are due to the World Water Council, in particular its President, Dr Abu-Zeid. They were responsible for convening the first World Water Forum in Marrakech, and now this second Forum here in The Hague. I thank them too for inviting me to be your Chair.
Many of us - and I am no exception - have been preparing for this Forum for as long as two years. I am delighted to see so many familiar faces here today - people I met during preparatory meetings in places as far apart as Brazil, China, Poland, Sweden and southern Africa. I was highly impressed by the great interest, and the many ideas that emerged during these meetings. It is therefore with a sense of excitement and anticipation that I look forward to participating in many of the sessions here in The Hague.
As your Chair, I call on you to keep the spirit alive that inspired you in preparing your many Visions and Frameworks for Action - the spirit of openness, transparency and participation.
We recognise that there are many different visions on water in the twenty-first century. You have your vision, I have mine, and your neighbours have theirs. Look to your right, look to your left - and think of the many stakeholders who could not join us here in The Hague, but who are here in spirit. During the preparations, we started to practise what we preach on integrated water management. We started to work together, regardless of sectoral interests.
This is no ordinary conference. Nor is it the end of the story. This Forum, and the Ministerial Conference, mark a new beginning. And we need a new beginning if we are to avert crises in the century ahead. This does not mean we will be starting all over again. Instead, let us take the positive elements from the past and incorporate them into our new approach to Integrated Water Resource Management. It is up to the new generation of water managers to work hand in hand with members of the older generation. By working together, we will make a difference.
This Forum is unique because it gives everyone an opportunity to join in the debate. We have not left anyone out. We respect everyone's opinion. So please feel free to express it. As your Chair, I will pass on your messages and the outcome of your sessions to the Ministerial Conference. Our Vision is a plural Vision. Our strength is that we work together.
Yesterday I visited the Fair, and I will be there again in the next few days. There are so many exciting things to do and see that I am convinced it will be a great success. I have gone through the final Forum programme, and I am amazed at the number of high-quality sessions. We asked you to make this conference special. And you have certainly succeeded.
There are some exciting presentations. But there are also many debates, panels, interactive events, workshops and so on. We will be hearing from specialists, from stakeholders from many regions and from representatives of key groups in society. I will be working behind the scenes with the session coordinators and rapporteurs, and I will be visiting as many sessions as possible. Let us make sure we share what happens here with people outside The Hague. You have been asked to make brief reports of your sessions. We will put them on the Forum website immediately. And we will ask people from all over the world for their comments. I will report back to you on the outcome of the Forum on Wednesday morning at the session called The Way Forward.
Let us remind ourselves why we are here.
Too many people in the world have no access to clean water or adequate sanitation. Millions of people - many of them children - die each year of water-related diseases: diseases that could easily be cured. Water resources are in danger of drying up - water that is needed to produce food and give people sustainable livelihoods. Half of our wetlands were destroyed in the last century. Half of the world's rivers are polluted, their ecosystems dead before they reach the sea.
This is simply not acceptable.
Let this not be just one more conference. We have to make a difference. Gathered here in this hall we cannot help the victims of the Mozambique floods. But we can make a difference to water management in that country, and in others too, so floods will claim fewer victims in the future.
The Ministerial Conference, chaired by Eveline Herfkens, the Netherlands Minister for Development Cooperation, plans to adopt a Ministerial Declaration. It is my hope that this Declaration will express a clear Vision and a commitment to Action. It will not solve the water crisis on its own. But governments are important actors, they have an important responsibility. I hope that governments will enter into a dialogue with the major groups represented here at this Forum, and that they will decide to make a commitment.
I am pleased to announce that the government of the Netherlands has decided to respond to the recommendation put forward in the World Water Vision that investment in the sector needs to be doubled. It has decided to double its own investments through international cooperation, with an annual increase of one hundred million guilders, some forty-five million U.S. dollars - for water.
But governments are not the only actors in the sector. If we are to achieve a water-secure world, we need to make water everyone's business.
Critics of conferences like this say that we should not be spending millions just bringing people together to talk. The money could have been better spent bringing water to people who desperately need it. Are they right?
By the end of the Forum, I want to be able to look these critics in the eye and tell them they were wrong.
This is a challenge to all of you. As your Chair I ask you - participants in the second World Water Forum - to prove your critics wrong. Show them that The Hague was a watershed. That here, water was put firmly on the political agenda. That millions of ordinary men and women were made aware of the issues that face us all - and will face our children if we do not act now.
At the end of the day, we will all have to make a commitment if we are to solve the water crisis. Our pledge is to achieve our Vision, to set a sea-change in motion. Let us make a difference. Let us make water everyone's business.
