Report by Linda Witong, SI Advisor to Advocacy

In a somber but riveting session, our audience learned about how challenging our future is in relation to the water crisis. H.E Mr. Volkan Bozkir, the President of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, began by relating how we were a long way from reaching our goals even before the COVID 19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, some 2.2 billion people –almost a third of the global population – continued to lack access to safely managed drinking water while 4.2 billion people – more than half of the planet’s population – lived without safely managed sanitation; 2 billion people didn’t have a decent toilet of their own. Moreover, according to Ms. Amina J. Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary General, the planetary crisis, including the interlinked threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, would increase water scarcity. By 2040, one in four of the world’s children under 18 – some 600 million– would be living in areas of extremely high-water stress.  These challenges were all in need of urgent action – a tragic fact made even more obvious by the current pandemic which represented a stark example of global inequality.

Bozkir added that he considered it to be a moral failure that, although we lived in a world with such high levels of technical innovation and success, the fact that 3 billion people had to face this pandemic without basic handwashing facilities and that health providers in some of the Least Developed Countries did not have running water was impossible to reconcile, especially when we lived in a world of such abundance and of such profound innovation.

Bozkir added a ominous warning:“when the next global pandemic or crisis strikes, and we know that it will, we will have no excuse for having not acted now.” Scientists back up his warning. A statistical estimate is “that the world’s mammals and birds are host to between 700 000 and 2.6 million as-yet unknown species from families of viruses that have shown the potential to cause zoonotic disease in humans. Of these, between 350 000 and 1.3 million could have zoonotic potential “[1]

Representatives of Member States joined Bozkir and Mohammed in agreeing that water was crucial for  life. We simply could not live on this planet – and certainly not in any healthy capacity – if we were deprived of this most basic human need. Our entire agricultural system – all of the food we consumed – was dependent upon water supplies. The same extended to all other life on this planet. Every ecosystem, every species, depends upon water. Safe drinking water systems and adequate sanitation was also essential to ensure cities and towns grew sustainably. Unfortunately, the future did not look promising as, according to Mohammed, more than 90 per cent of natural disasters were water-related and increased flooding threatened to destroy water points and sanitation facilities and contaminate our water sources.

Without these core services and needs met, our ability to provide education, healthcare, and jobs and livelihoods would suffer. Member States also  joined Bozkir in acknowledging that an adequate provision of safe and clean water was empowerment especially for women and girls across the globe whose daily trek to collect water continued to be an impediment to accessing education, healthcare, or work. We could not empower people or raise them up when they were held back.  While women’s central role in the provision, management, and safeguarding of water was acknowledged, the implementation of this core principle remained far from adequate. Mohammed agreed with this assessment. She also observed that women and girls still suffered disproportionately when water and sanitation were lacking, affecting health and often restricting work and education opportunities. This was unfortunate as  women were also the backbone of agriculture and key stewards of natural resources. The COVID-19 response had also highlighted the power of women’s leadership. As such, Mohammed argued, we needed to draw from women’s experience with water and put more women decision-makers at the table as policies were put in place to build a green economy.

Other speakers also expressed concern that, by 2050, more than half the global population would be at risk due to stress on the world’s water resources. Desertification alone would threaten the livelihoods of nearly one billion people in 100 countries and intense water scarcity may displace as many as 700 million people by 2030.  With 40 per cent of the world’s population living within shared river basins, trans-boundary water corporation, would become more important as without it “inclusive sustainable development is severely curtailed, and the potential for threats to peace and security are ever present.”

So why wasn’t anyone paying attention? Gilbert F. Houngbo, the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development who also chaired UN Water observed that one problem might have been that “when we talked about the water crisis in global terms, it could seem abstract, and difficult to visualize”. Yet, by using an analogy, an excellent point was made.  if a water crisis had been occurring in our own homes, he argued that it would have become our top priority to fix the problem. If our toilet or sewerage system broke down, we would also act quickly and decisively. And if the stream in our local park became polluted or our streets flooded, or if service providers made crucial decisions with no consultation – we would definitely work individually and collectively until the issue was resolved. According to Houngbo, we needed to “do on a global scale what we would do in our own homes. The world is getting smaller and our lives are all connected. The COVID crisis has shown this to be true.”

States agreed that human health, productivity, food, energy and the natural environment all depended on a well-functioning, sustainable water cycle for everyone, eveywhere. We still had time but we needed to accelerate our efforts “and do it fast – in some areas up to four times faster – if we want to meet our SDG 6 commitments.”  And we needed adequate financial support e.g. while official development assistance to the water sector increased by 11 per cent from 2015 to 2019 disbursements increased by only 3 per cent.

The COVID-19 pandemic was described as being human tragedy. But it had also created an opportunity to build a more inclusive and sustainable world and make peace with nature. But Governments alone would not achieve the 2030 Agenda, strong engagement of stakeholders, including women and girls were essential for the achievement of all SDGs.

 

Watch at: http://webtv.un.org/watch/general-assembly-high-level-meeting-on-water/6241754531001/?term=

 

[1] https://earth.org/project-working-to-predict-pandemics/