Symposium Day 1: Development efforts to focus on action

She announced a plan of the Dutch Government to speed up the progresses towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals to halve poverty by 2015.

Ms. Huizinga-Heringa held the opening address of the Symposium Water for a Changing World: Enhancing Local knowledge and Capacity, organised on the occasion of UNESCO-IHE 50th anniversary.

In these 50 years, the Institute has educated more than 13,000 water professional from 162 countries.

Ms. Huizinga-Heringa stressed the importance of water and sanitation within the MDGs and expressed commitment to increase the support of The Netherlands to the South. “In this support, UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education plays a relevant role and we are very proud that the Institute is based in The Netherlands”.

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The director of UNESCO-IHE Richard Meganck acknowledged the efforts of “countless people who have contributed to make this Institute what it is in service to the Members States of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization”. The seminar, he mentioned, is confirmation of the role of science and public involvement in development and the essential role that skilled professionals play in improving the resources of any country.

“I have always defined development in a positive context, one implying progress in the quality of the human condition. In this context, there is no negative development but rather errors or mistakes – sometimes by design, sometimes due to gapped planning or the lack of citizen involvement among many other causes. Our role is to augment the positive based on solid science interpreted in ways that will bring the so-called beneficiary populations along with us”, he said.

Click here to see the full address

In this context, the international community has a responsibility to bring all efforts together and coordinate actions to ensure that the current unsustainable water situation is properly tackled.

Last century there was 13,000 m3 of water available per person per year. Today, that number has come to 6,000 m3 per person per year while population has increased 3 fold in the 20th century, as Andras Szöllösi-Nagy, director of the UNESCO Water Division pointed out.

But what are the key actions to make change happen? Lidia Brito, former Minister of Technology of Mozambique and current Professor at the Eduardo Mondlane University pointed a few elements:

• Plans and strategies have to be people-centred

• Addressed as a whole but implemented locally

• Give people capacity to choose their own development

• Don’t stop the process at the knowledge level, bring it to action

• People networks should move into institutional networks

• These networks should include civil society, schools, communities, businesses and media

• Africa needs research FOR Africa, not research about Africa. The latest does not make a difference

• Long-term investment and larger project; Fragmented programmes don’t make a difference

• Support South-South cooperation.

Within this framework, the 250 participants of the symposium will discuss and recommend in the coming days priorities and tools to implement actions that will make a difference in the management of water resources.