With close to 70 seminars and nine workshops scheduled, this year's World Water
Week (www.worldwaterweek.org) aims to top expectations once again. A record
number of participants – 2400 from some 130 countries – are expected to explore
a wide variety of exciting themes and topics at the Stockholm City Conference
Centre August 12-18, 2007. The theme of this year's conference is "Progress and
Prospects on Water: Striving for Sustainability in a Changing World." Plenary
sessions, panel debates, social events, technical tours and prize-giving
ceremonies will combine to provide the week's varied programme. Leading
professionals from business, government, water management, science,
inter-governmental organisations, NGOs, training institutes, United Nations
agencies will participate.Among the many top experts participating are Dr. R.K.
Pachauri, Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Ms. Sunita
Narain, Director, Centre for Science and Environment, India. Here are some key
themes for this year's event. Climate change: With the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change's report having been released during the first half of
2007, and media coverage of severe floods and droughts, the issue of
climate change has never been such a "hot" topic. To cover all aspects of the
challenges associated with water and climate change, World Water Week is
devoting an entire day to the topic, as well as additional activities during
the week. Seminars will consider specific issues such as adaptation
strategies that are being prepared in developed and developing countries,
vulnerability mapping and opportunities for innovation. Measuring progress:
Several important reports on the state of water resources and water supply and
sanitation services have been published since 2005. Similarly, reviews have
been conducted of progress towards achieving, by 2015¸ the Millennium
Development Goal targets for water and sanitation. The same is true of the
efforts to implement the Johannesburg Plan of Action for Integrated Water
Resources Management (IWRM) and Water Efficiency Plans (WEP). However,
this work has raised as many questions as it has answered. A number of seminars
at World Water Week will focus on this topic.Unsolved sanitation challenges:
Some 2.6 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation and diarrhoeal
diseases triggered by inadequate sanitation facilities and unsafe hygiene
behaviour kill millions of people annually, mostly children. Improved
sanitation and hygiene helps eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, promotes
universal primary education, builds gender equality, reduces child mortality,
improves maternal health and ensures environmental sustainability. This year's
World Water Week will explore sanitation and hygiene – the "orphan child" of
the water sector – in depth.Water for food and ecosystems: By 2020, world
cereal demand will have increased by 40% since the late 1990s. This should be
good news, except that the world only has a limited supply of water. Current
production methods are unsustainable, since they involve large-scale
groundwater overexploitation and widespread river depletion, which threatens
biodiversity and aquatic ecosystems. The key is to find ways to produce
more food using less water, and to ensure that biodiversity losses do not
threaten ecosystems. Such keys will be explored in Stockholm.Investing in
water: Investment in improved water resources management and water supply and
sanitation is often perceived merely as a cost. This perception holds sway even
when there are signs that such actions could bring considerable economic gains
– gains which are required for poverty alleviation. In Stockholm, the
macroeconomic perspective will be assayed. Better governance: Recognition has
been growing of the vital role that good governance plays within the water
sector. Indeed, it is now widely accepted by politicians around the world that
governance is a critical issue which must be addressed if unsustainable
development and poverty are to be tackled successfully. Focus in Stockholm will
be directed towards the governance-related issues of corruption, local urban
levels, the capacity for adaptation to better good governance. For more
information, visit www.worldwaterweek.org.__._,_.___
_________________________________________________________________
Sign in and get updated with all the action!
http://content.msn.co.in/Sports/FormulaOne/Default
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
[email protected]
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
