Interactive Discussion on Water

Thank you Mr. Chairman. After two very busy weeks here in New York City -- whose Catskill, Delaware and Groton watersheds deliver up to 2 billion gallons of pure, clean, great tasting water every day of the year -- it is important to recall why we are here. It is because 6,000 people elsewhere in the world, overwhelmingly children, die every day due to water-related diseases.

That’s a tragedy. So we are anxious for immediate results. Thus we have advocated for hygiene promotion and point-of-use water treatment at the household level to demonstrate the links between clean water and health and to achieve results today.

At the same time, we need to build the framework for long-term infrastructure development for water supply and sanitation for hundreds of thousands of people each year. This means:

• Creating the enabling environment for local entrepreneurs;
• Building capacity for city and town water utility managers;
• Hygiene education to develop demand and support for clean water; and
• Developing financial institutions and networks to mobilize resources at the local level.

The challenge now is how to do these things. There is no one global template. Each country and each partnership is unique. Heading toward CSD 13, we should waste no time in assembling the myriad presentations and initiatives made at CSD 12 into a user-friendly toolbox of success stories -- “how-to’s” -- drawn from the best practices we have heard.

We should also think on how:

• We work on a country-by-country basis to support the development of Integrated Water Resource Management plans by the year 2005;
• We integrate these plans into national development plans and strategies, such as PRSPs;
• We make UN Water into an effective mechanism for promoting coordination;
• We institute innovative policy reforms, such as those mentioned by Australia today;
• We expand development credit authority type loan guarantees and credit enhancement to water utilities;
• We establish sub-sovereign clean water revolving funds, like those that have been used in the United States since 1989 to finance local water and waste water treatment facilities; and
• We develop partnerships with people, and organizations, of good will who offer their resources to address this public health tragedy of 6,000 deaths a day due to the lack of clean water.

The time to act is now.