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 Loïc
Fauchon, president of the
World
Water Council, delivered
this
address to the opening session
of the
4th World Water Forum on March 16, 2006.
Mexico City, Mexico, March 17,
2006 On behalf of the World Water Forum,
co-organizer of this Forum, please allow me to address my kind regards to
the 11,000 participants
registered in this Forum and also to express my
gratitude to all the working teams,
here in Mexico city, at the Council Headquarters
in Marseilles, and everywhere in the world, which have contributed over
the past two and a half years, to the preparation of this Fourth Forum.
To know how to bring together men and women, as we are doing
today, is a pressing duty, especially when the future of mankind is
involved, our future, the future of our children and the future of our
children’s children.
Water, which has brought us together here, is a topic of major
subject of concern, a subject of worry, and sometimes even a subject of
discord.
Water is endangered, and with it, so are we.
For the situation made for water in the world is unacceptable.
Unacceptable is the lack of water or its poor quality which, last
year, caused 10 times more deaths than all the wars waged on the planet
together.
Unacceptable are the hundreds of millions of women and children
who, each morning, must walk many hours in search of water that is too
scarce, distant or contaminated.
 Fauchon
addresses the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City, March 16, 2006.
Who can submit to accepting
this? There is certainly much water on our Earth. Sometimes too much, as
we know. But year after year, per capita resources are steadily
decreasing. And many people throughout the world still only have barely 20
liters of water per day for
food and hygiene.
What is responsible? We all know: uncontrolled demographic growth
and its uncontrollable and sprawling megacities. There, more than anywhere
else, overcrowding, water shortages, lack of sanitation, lead to
malnourishment, disease, ignorance, poverty and inequalities of every
kind.
Increasing pollution, deforestation, soil degradation and
salinization is also responsible. This all threatens the balance and
sometimes even the survival of land and fresh and sea water ecosystems.
Climate changes that take time to understand are also to blame.
They reinforce extremes, bringing increased rainfall in some places and
long droughts in others.
All this is devastating, all this causes ruin, all this forces us
to make costly efforts to safeguard against nature’s extremes. No country
can escape these excesses, nor these imbalances that man, through his
inconsistency and lack of foresight, has himself engineered and provoked.
All of us here today, ladies and gentlemen, and many others
throughout the world, only wish for one thing: that man again becomes a
friend to water. The task is immense, you will tell me. Undoubtedly, but
it is necessary. We need time, you will tell me. Undoubtedly, so let’s
pick up the pace, let’s speed up. For we must no longer speak of a
priority, but about an emergency, an extreme emergency. So let me speak to
you of this emergency.
First, yes, let’s give back
to water
its crucial place in our
culture, for
water is one of the
foundations of
the world’s heritage, and
that asks
for and deserves respect. To
do this, let’s finally stop wanting to solve the
issue of access to water for
based
on
theoretical macroeconomic
Free running stream in North England
reasoning, on abstract
mathematical
models, or on inhumane
reorganization plans. Certainly water necessitates intelligence and
reason, but above all, it calls for heart and solidarity.
Yes, let us assert unambiguously that the right to water is an
indispensable element of human dignity. Let us etch in the constitutions
of each state, let us engrave this right in the facade of each national
and municipal palace, let us write this right in our children’s notebooks
in every school, where civic responsibility is learned.
Yes, let’s offer those in need in rich countries the guarantee of
a minimum daily amount of water sufficient for meeting their essential
needs.
And for
the others, for all the rest, the poorest, the weakest, the "condemned of
the earth," let’s bring money. Much more money. Today, only five percent
of public aid is allocated to water. That is charity. Today, only five
percent of investments are dedicated to water. This is a major economic
error.
There are too many rifles and cannons in the world, but there
will never be enough faucets.
Yes, ladies and gentleman, at the risk of angering, we must say
it strongly - mobile telephones, that we always have, are fine, but
drinking water is better.
Yes, let’s finance infrastructure for the 50 countries most in
need and the 20 poorest megacities through a more intense donation policy,
but which is infinitely better controlled. And let’s break the
loan-indebtedness-debt cancellation spiral in favor of intelligent,
balanced and socially sound tarification strategies.
Yes, let us decide, let us be concrete and let us impose. Let us
demand that a large share of infrastructure building programs be dedicated
to the maintenance of the networks, dams, and treatment plants.
To this end, let us figure out how to educate more men and women
prepared to carry out these daily tasks.
 Loïc
Fauchon of France has been president of the World Water Council since
March 2005
In this perspective, the
World Water Council is
ready, together with the
international community,
to immediately support the
creation of regional maintenance schools. For the world requires
each year tens of thousands
of technicians and managers that are capable of operating public
irrigation, distribution or sanitation services.
Yes, let us demand a fairer distribution of progress. Of all
progress, and especially technological progress, which, today, is reserved
to too few.
Desalinization and treatment of saline waters, pumping of deep
ground waters, transfer of water over greater distances, and even thoughts
on virtual water, every contribution of human intelligence must be shared.
While research and development programs are of course necessary
in Berkeley, Amsterdam, and Osaka, they are also even more greatly needed
in Bamako, Bucharest and Quito.
Yes, let us ensure the democratic obligation so that management
may match with decentralization. Proper water management requires
authority, legitimacy and honesty. Proper water management requires a
public authority that maintains the power to set rates and to determine
investments in any circumstances. Only then can a local community be
surrounded by public or private, but competent, managers.
 Herdsman
waters his cattle in Chad. Conflict, population displacements and
inadequate rainfall have resulted in a precarious food and water situation
in several parts of the country. 2005
Finally, let us provide security. Shortages are more frequent, natural
disasters are more numerous. This is a duty of public assistance. Let us
share our experiences, our prevention, relief and reconstruction
capacities to populations and to make risk management a new reality of
this century.
All of this - the right, the money, the knowledge, the
institutions, risks prevention - pave the way to water access.
We must fight for this goal, we must engage in a long and
difficult battle. Rest assured, this battle does not lead to war. On the
contrary, it is a battle to build peace, a battle to enhance solidarity, a
battle to strengthen cooperation. And to enable year after year, billions
of men and women to continue living where they were born, where they grew
up.
We must be aware that if we cannot have water, electricity,
health, education, these men and women will continue to embark in frail
vessels to cross the straits, these men and women will continue to cross
the deserts in unstable trucks, to end up running into walls and fences
built hastily and shamefully by the rich.
Yes, we definitely want walls of water rather than walls of
indifference and contempt.
Yes, we definitely want men, women and children in any situation
and from any continent to be born with an irrevocable equal right to
access water.
Let us leave on the side of the road the vain quarrels, the
sterile controversies and the old debates. Let us know how to listen to
the cry of thirsty children. Let us listen to the whisper of mothers
defeated by fatigue and humiliation.
Water, ladies and gentlemen, deserves bringing together our
capacities and intelligence. It deserves tending hands, gathering hearts,
and merging minds.
This 4th Forum is the opportunity for an open debate, for a
respectful dialogue to strengthen the idea that there is no development
without water. The World Water Council is ready for that.
Let us come together to move forward. Together, we will be
respected. If we are respected, we will be heard.
May I wish you all a beautiful and peaceful Forum, a Forum filled
with tolerance and solidarity. Thanks to your contribution, thanks to your
determination, this Forum, I am sure, will allow water to flow for a long
time, now and forever, in the direction of peace and prosperity.
Long live Mexico, and long live the cause of water!
Find out more
at the World Water Council:
www.worldwatercouncil.org
Reprinted by permission
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