World Water Week: DFID's Key Messages and Water Week Diary
13 August 2007 (Updated 16 August)
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What’s World Water Week?
World Water Week (held in Stockholm between 12 and 18 August) brings
together experts in water and sanitation from across the globe with 40
seminars and nine workshops under the overall theme of
 ‘Progress and
Prospects on water - striving for sustainability in a changing world’.
The event will explore the complex relationships between the economy,
government, infrastructure and livelihoods. It will also review progress
on water and sanitation and look to build partnerships for sustainable
development. |
Key Message 1: Managing Water Resources
Growth and climate change have pushed the need for effective
management of water resources much further up the agenda. Without
effective management of these resources, growth will be hindered, poor
people will suffer and reaching the Millennium Development Goal targets
will become even harder. DFID will continue to focus on fighting
poverty, coping with climate change and helping provide the right
support at the national and regional level.
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Key Message 2: Global Call to Action
DFID will work with the international community to invest more in
water and sanitation, use funds effectively and ensure the right systems
are in place to deliver. At the heart of
our Call for
Action (610 kb)
is one annual global report on water and sanitation, and
one high-level annual meeting to decide action agreed at the
IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings.
In each country there also needs to be one national water and sanitation
plan, and one coordinating group and one UN body for water and
sanitation identified at a national level. There will be a key meeting
in World Water Week to take forward the concept of a global annual
report.
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Key Message 3: Sanitation
Sanitation is essential for healthy, secure and dignified existence,
and sanitation and hygiene are fundamental to the achievement of all the MDGs. Yet the half the population of developing countries lack access to
basic sanitation. Inaction
is not an option. 2008 is the UN Year of sanitation and DFID will work
closely with its partners to support initiatives to reach one of the
most off-track of the Millennium Development Goal targets.
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World Water Week Diary
Keep up to date with the developments from World Water Week with our daily
diary from Stockholm, by Peregrine Swann, DFID's Senior Water Adviser.
Monday 13 August - Not a bad result for one day!
"It’s day two of Stockholm water week and I’m here with my colleagues Siobhan
Stanger, a water specialist who recently joined us from
DEFRA,
and Vera Oling Kintu. Vera’s a programme officer with us on secondment from DFID
Uganda.
Today kicked off with a high-level panel session and side events on water
management. But it’s a long day here - there are evening sessions on ensuring
local government finance for water and sanitation and on rainwater harvesting.
Early days of course, but it feels like we’ve made a fairly good start here -
especially in taking forward DFID’s Global Call to Action on water and
sanitation. In March, the World Bank side meeting on water agreed to take
forward DFID’s call for one annual report on water and one high-level annual
meeting. This morning in Stockholm it was agreed that the mapping exercise on
water, which is managed by the
EU
Water Initiative, will feed into the one annual report and will use the same
indicators and same data.
During a presentation of the
Africa
Working Group, the EU has also agreed to prepare a joint statement on
sanitation with the
African
Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) for the Commission for Sustainable
Development in 2008, the year of sanitation.
There was also strong agreement that
UN
Water should be the repository for all data on water and sanitation. By
acting as a ‘one-stop shop’, this should give us a much more coordinated basis
for the one annual report and will help the international community to access
vital (and authoritative) facts and figures about the sector.
So, all in, not a bad result for one day. Right - time to focus - I’m off to
make a speech to thank the Mayor of Stockholm for hosting the event. More
tomorrow."
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Tuesday 14 August - Hopes for progress on EU Water Initiative reform
"Well, I survived giving last night’s speech to the Mayor of Stockholm and it’s
now day three here at Stockholm Water Week. Today’s sessions have been very
varied, with workshops about making government effective to international
targets and national implementation.
 Image courtesy of Ann Cooper, DFID
There
were also presentations on slum upgrading to provide poor people with safe,
reliable and sustainable supplies of water, meeting the water and sanitation
needs of the world’s poorest people, and
monitoring systems in Africa. The evening events saw further presentations on
strengthening policy making partnerships and harmonising European member states'
approaches to water and sanitation research.
So, a lot going on. But, for me at least, today’s most interesting developments
included agreement at
the
Multi-Stakeholder Forum for the EU Water Initiative (EUWI) on reform of the
Initiative, with a particular emphasis on the role of working groups -
especially the regional groups.
I hope this will mean better communication and improved reporting across the
Initiative, which has been criticised in the past for being ineffective and
insufficiently accountable to its stakeholders. A review of the EU Water
Initiative, jointly funded by Germany and the UK, made recommendations this
February to the
EUWI
steering group. These included changes to its overall structure and strategy
and the setting of clear and measurable targets. Our hope is that this will lead
to a practical result and more effective regional implementation of the Water
Initiative.
This new reform process announced today in Stockholm will be taken forward
through
the
Council of the European Union, so watch this space. I’ll let you know how
things pan out tomorrow.
And so to bed."
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Wednesday 15 August - High fives for the Five Ones
"It’s day four here in Stockholm and there’s still lots of energy around a
packed and really varied agenda.
Today’s events included a joint session run by the
UN
Secretary General’s Advisory Board for Water and Sanitation and UN Water.
This lively session was chaired by Clarissa Brocklehurst,
UNICEF’s
water and sanitation supremo.
The event looked ahead to next year because
2008
is the International Year of Sanitation. We heard from the floor about the
plans of different countries and donors. And we highlighted proposals for the
joint statement on sanitation from the EU and the African Ministers' Council on
Water, which will be prepared for next year’s
Commission
for Sustainable Development.
The best bit for me though was the pretty enthusiastic discussion about DFID’s
Global Call to Action on water and sanitation. This calls for one water and
sanitation plan at the global level and one group to deliver it, to check
progress and agree on action. This part of the plan was agreed in Washington in
March at the World Bank/IMF Spring meeting side event on water. At the country
level the Global Call to Action calls for one water and sanitation plan and one
coordinating group and - in those countries where the UN is active - it should
determine which UN body leads on water and sanitation.
So, its official title is the Global Call to Action…but this five-point plan is
becoming universally known as ‘the Five Ones’. And it was great to hear people
talking about ‘Five Ones’.
It seems to me that, gradually, people are buying into the plan and feeling some
ownership of it. And that’s just what we want. Tackling the global crisis in
water and sanitation is a task of epic proportions. The global call to action is
exactly that - because we simply can’t deliver on our own.
Back tomorrow."
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Thursday 16 August - Wrapping up Water Week
 Image courtesy of Ann Cooper, DFID
"Today’s the last day and presentations have included the challenges of monitoring and
evaluation in the water sector and the political neglect of sanitation – so
plenty to get your teeth into.
Today also saw the working group session for the EU Water Initiative, where we
discussed the financing of sanitation programmes. This is crucial stuff of
course because sanitation remains one of the most off-track of the Millennium
Development Goal targets.
In my diary a couple of days ago I wrote that I was encouraged to see that
DFID’s ‘Five Ones’ (our Global Call to Action on water and sanitation) had
started to move into the common lexicon. And people are still talking about it.
There were many conversations about how to maximise the impact of the annual
report on water (one of the central pillars of the Call to Action), by making
the document itself as eye-catching, relevant and influential as possible.
Other than that I had a number of useful one-to-one meetings with colleagues
from the World Bank,
UN Habitat and the
Collaborative Council for Water and Sanitation.
And talking of our international partners, we’ve just heard that Letitia A Obeng,
from Ghana, will become new Chair of the
Global Water Partnership (GWP). The GWP works to support countries to manage
their water resources sustainably and Letitia, who takes up her duties at the
end of the year, joins the organisation from the World Bank.
That’s all for now, folks, but keep watching this space to see how the
lessons from World Water Week impact on the world's water and sanitation agenda
into the future."
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