Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at National Geographic on Monday on the occasion of World Water Day 2010. To watch her full speech at the US Department of State website, click here and choose “Remarks on World Water Day.”
World Water Day event focuses on growing thirst
“Next to oxygen, water is indisputably the most precious resource we have, and the shortage of freshwater is the biggest long-term problem facing the planet Earth. Even energy is a distant second–with energy, we have alternatives. With water there are none.”
This dire warning from Gil Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society, served as an introduction to the World Water Day event today at the National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Society and Water Advocates, a U.S. nonprofit that focuses on increasing U.S. support for water issues around the world, hosted the event with input from more than 20 other nongovernmental organizations.
Representatives from most of the organizations spoke about what they are doing to provide solutions to water and sanitation issues around the world, and a few common themes emerged.
Many of the representatives stressed the need for country-based initiatives, which make individual countries responsible for solutions to water problems, rather than multinational institutions or nongovernmental organizations.
Several speakers at the conference also talked about the need for more private investment in water and sanitation. Ed Cain from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation said that while U.S. foundations gave $250 million for water and sanitation issues in 2008, it was less than 1 percent of the total donated for the cause worldwide.
“While private philanthropy needs to do more, the major amount of resources needs to come from the public and private sectors,” Cain said.
The main representative of the public sector at the conference was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who described the Obama administration’s strategy toward water issues. She outlined 5 “streams of action” that the administration will be focusing on:
-Building capacity to deal with water issues at the local, national, and regional levels;
-Coordinating diplomatic efforts between the many international organizations that deal with water;
-Providing resources to water projects;
-Sharing science and technology developed by U.S. government agencies; and,
-Developing partnerships with non-governmental organizations.
“We spend a lot of time working on issues such as terrorism and arms control and nuclear proliferation. These are obviously important topics that deserve our attention. But the reality is that they are not problems most people deal with on a day-to-day basis. Water is different. When we demonstrate our concern for the issue, it speaks to individuals on a whole different level. Everyone knows the sensation of thirst firsthand,” said Clinton.
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia, also addressed the conference by video, sharing her country’s goal to provide safe drinking water to 50 percent and human-waste collection facilities to 40 percent of Liberia’s population by 2012. Johnson-Sirleaf was named a Goodwill Ambassador for Water, Sanitation, and Hygeine by WaterAid and the African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW).
The overall message of the conference was that much is being done now, but there’s still lots to do.
To learn more about the challenges of freshwater visit our freshwater page and freshwater news.
–James Robertson
To view the full article at National Geographic here – World Water Day event focuses on growing thirst
