World Water Week opens in Stockholm

By Mohammad Ghazal

STOCKHOLM - Water experts from across the globe convened in Stockholm Monday at the opening session of the World Water Week 2010 with calls for addressing “pressing” global water issues and ensuring clean water access and safe sanitation to people.

Over 2,500 leading experts, practitioners, decision makers and business innovators from over 130 countries along with 200 organisations are participating in the event taking place at the Stockholm International Fairs premises.

During the event, held under the theme: “Responding to Global Changes: The Water Quality Challenge”, participants will look into a number of issues, including food security, climate change, the right to water access and sanitation, urbanisation, water governance, and the strategic water concerns of businesses.

Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute which organises the meeting annually, said in his opening address that water quality will be the main topic to be discussed in addition to other related issues.

Stressing the high importance of preserving the adequate quality of water and ensuring adequate sanitation and personal hygiene, Berntell said: “Bad water kills more people than malaria, AIDS and wars combined.”

“In 2009, over 50 countries still reported cholera to the World Health Organisation (WHO), something we will hear more about later. Two-hundred million people are infected with schistosomiasis, also known as bilharzia. Every year 1.8 million people die from diarrhoeal disease attributable to unsafe water or poor sanitation and hygiene, mostly children under five,” he added.

According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, freshwater ecosystems have degraded more than any other ecosystem, including tropical rainforests. Several studies indicate that more than 40 per cent of fish species and amphibians are threatened with extinction, he said.

“Polluted freshwater ends up in the oceans, causing serious damage to many coastal areas and fisheries, thereby constituting a major challenge to ocean and coastal resource management,” he said.

In her speech at the opening session, Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson said: “A great deal has happened since World Water Week was launched 20 years ago.”

“Today, almost two billion more people have access to safe drinking water compared with 20 years ago, and around 1.5 billion more people have access to sanitation. The provision of safe water has actually outperformed global population growth and given more than eight million people, roughly the population of Sweden, access to safe water every month - for 20 years!” she said.

In seminars held during the day, experts underlined the importance of addressing global water challenges, including water scarcity, pollution and equity, with calls for focusing on providing people with access to sanitation and clean water, a matter they said reflects positively on the overall development of each country.

“Lack of sanitation has a cost on the country’s gross domestic product as due to lack of sanitation in a certain country, this country will lose in being able to attract tourists and in spending more on health. Not having sanitation has also an impact on the environment and there is a cost for that,” Jaehyang So, manager of the Water and Sanitation Programme, which is a multi-donor partnership administered by the World Bank to support poor people in obtaining affordable, safe and sustainable access to wate? and sanitation, said in one of the seminars.

According to Berntell, a supporting statement will be completed by the end of the week to be later presented to the high-level plenary meeting on the Millennium Development Goals in the United Nations that will take place in New York on September 20-22.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of both the World Water Week and the Stockholm Water Prize.

A majority of the previous Stockholm Water Prize laureates are present in Stockholm in observance of the jubilee to share their solutions to future water challenges at a special laureates’ seminar later during the week in the presence of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

This year’s World Water Week in Stockholm, which is the first European Green Capital, will run through September 11.