Water is life. Photo: Jose Carlos Norte

Among the events presented at Rio+20, the UN Water Day is of noteworthy importance. The event is organized by UN Water with participation of other UN agencies who are working on water and water-related areas. The main function of the program is to launch the UN-Water Status Report on the Application of Integrated Approaches to the Development, Management and Use of Water Resources. UN Water chair Michel Jarraud handed over the report to Brice Lalonde, who is the executive coordinator of Rio+20. The UN-Water status report focuses on the most critical areas for integrated water management in almost 143 countries. Peter Koefoed Bjornsen, who is the director of UNEP-DHI Centre for Water and Environment, pointed out that the study was based on three structures. They are

1. Policies, laws and plans

2. Instruments of governance and management

3. Infrastructure development

According to the report, some of key findings are

• Water-related risks and the competition for water resources are perceived by a majority of countries to have increased over the past 20 years;

• Domestic water supply is ranked by most countries as the highest priority for water resources management;

• The majority of countries reported an increasing trend in financing for water resources development, although obstacles to implementing reforms remain;

• Progress on water efficiency is lagging behind other water management reforms, with less than 50 percent of national reforms addressing water efficiency. (UN-Water report 2012)

Ibrahim Thiaw, who is the director of the Division of Environmental Policy Implementation (DEPI), in his keynote speech explained that sewage water discharge and untreated waste-water produce methane, nitrogen oxide and other detrimental bacteria. As a result of that, one child dies every 28 seconds. H. E. Rashad bin Fahad, Minister of Environment and Water, United Arab Emirates, affirmed the UAE’s committment to protecting water resource and water for all in countries under vulnerable climate situations.

UAE depends on three means of water sources.

1. Mainly groundwater

2. Artificial sea water treatments

3. Waste water treatment

H.E. acknowledges that water scarcity leads to a way of thinking about efficient water usage with better water management. Peter Kovacs, State Secretary for Water of the Ministry of Rural Development in Hungary, reconfirmed the EU’s great commitment to ensure strong public participation in river basin management. Dr. Alexander Müller, the assistant director-general for Natural Resources, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) illustrates four factors to describe the importance of the extended and intensive discussion with regards to water in the Rio+20 meeting:

1. Growing competition of utilization of water

2. Climate change scenarios

3. How to manage water

4. What are the institutional setup or governance mechanism

The second part of the program stands under the title “A push toward global commitments on universal access to water and sanitation”.Joan Clos, Executive Director of UN HABITAT, shared the insight that growing unplanned urbanization is a major issue in the mismanagement of water and the main cause of water-related diseases. Due to the growing number of slums or Favelas in the megacities of developing countries, waterborn diseases spread and lack of access to clean water easily leads to epidemics.

Maria Neira, who is the director of Public Health and Environment of World Health Organization (WHO), points out that WHO recognized four pillars to ensure better and sustainable world for all people.

1. Food security

2. Health Security

3. Safe energy

4. Water security

H.E Fatim Badjie, Minister of Health and Social Welfare in Gambia, emphasizes that the failure of IWRM in some countries may arise as the result of miscommunication among ministries in said countries. In particular the ministries of finance tend to pay little attention to water-related or environmental questions.