World Water Week– the Stockholm Statement, just hot air?
Posted on 27. Aug, 2009 by annied in UNEP, climate change, water
At the end of World Water Week in Stockholm, delegates sent a “unified message” to world leaders participating in Cop15 negotiations in December. The Statement makes it clear that infrastructure management needs to be at forefront of climate adaptation policies, with attention to field implementation.
Are you thinking what can be more boring and ineffectual than a room full of officials agreeing to agree to manage water and sanitation better? Well actually, the end result is worth shouting from the rooftops about.
Snooze, right? Wrong– infrastructure is possibly the key to all the world’s little problems. Keep reading and you’ll see why: The most obvious things to talk about around water are conservation and preventing disease.
It’s easy to toss out stats like:
1.1 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean water
water usage will increase by 40% by 2020
70% of the earth’s surface is covered in water and
97% of that water is undrinkable
One gram of human feces can contain 10,000,000 viruses, 1,000,000 bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, 100 parasite eggs
Statistics no matter how outrageous are useless without understanding the trends behind them. Why don’t people have access to clean water? Infrastructure is one big reason. Will this likely get worse in the future as climate change alters living conditions first and foremost for those in the global south? Definitely, especially now that developing countries are selling off their land to countries that can afford (or have the freedom to go into debt) to insure their food security.
The big deal to be made about infrastructure is this: In the 1990’s, the population living in urban areas increased 80% world wide. Cities are where the jobs are, especially in developing countries. This is the case whether the country is still heavily dependent upon primary product (agriculture) exports or an emerging market with value added manufacturing and services. Rural families will send one or two family members to a large city or even export a family member to a city in a more developed country to send home remittances.
Moreover, indigenous and rural communities are losing resource rights to governments strapped for cash (see SAP’s, Good Governance programs). A coalition of 65 Amazonian Indian tribes say the Peruvian government usurped their land, leasing it to international companies under a trade agreement with the US. Agribusiness operating in the coastal Peruvian desert wants to channel water from aquifers that supply Quechua Llama herders in the Andean mountains.
When people migrate to cities, especially in developing countries they tend to end up living in “slums” or “squatter settlements.” And “squatters,” according to expert Robert Neuwirth “are building the cities of tomorrow.” But far from ramshackle construction, slums (mostly) look like regular housing. By 2001 almost 1 billion people or well over 30% of the world’s population lived in slums. By 2020, that will double. Slums aren’t “on the grid” and they aren’t well planned.
Say China, India, and Brazil establish efficient, clean water filtration for their cities. Will slum dwellers receive that benefit? Likely not, not unless an agreement at Copenhagen is equitable and addresses poverty. And not unless there are national structures in place to insure water infrastructure delivery is managed fairly.
Luckily the folks at WWF made sure World Water Week addressed this as well: WWF and its Climate Saver partners in business announced a “Water Stewardship Roundtable” to establish standards for freshwater delivery. Just incase you’re on the fence about water privatization, check out this article about how the market can exploit natural resources like water.
Now all we need is an army of social justice trained civil engineers! The nature of slum construction means they are highly adaptable– which is advantageous as changes in the climate will be somewhat unpredictable. Speaking of which, look for our forth coming series on the most glam green jobs of the future, in time for back-to-school in September-October.
In the meantime, check out some films about water on green.tv’s water channel
Senegal where the ocean encroaches
great animation about people and urbanization
Sign up to participate in World Water Monitoring day taking place Sept 18th!
And check out our Act page for other ways to get involved!
(please note: this post updated and the language cleaned up 30 Aug, 2009)