Water: Towards a Culture of Responsibility

Conclusion

CONCLUSION TOWARDS A CULTURE OF RESPONSIBILITY In these last ten years, people have become aware of how water supply relates to issues like health, environment, development and peace. People who work in the water sector have turned their attention to integrated resource management, the spread of water scarcity, the financing of access to water and sanitation for all, the right to water, and the local management of services. The 5th World Water Forum, which will take place in Istanbul in 2009, invites water specialists and policy makers to come together so that they can find a way to respond to global changes affecting the water sector: the population explosion, urban growth, changing lifestyles, climate change, the food crisis and land use. This meeting should remind us of what is glaringly obvious: what we most lack is not water resources, but the will to do something. More often than not, the resource exists, but what is missing is pipes! If we truly want it, access to water and sanitation for all will soon be a reality. Many examples can be cited showing that when political will and good governance have joined forces, the money required to direct water towards those who need it has always been found. The time has come to think again about theory and practice. Ten years ago, in Europe, we saw the beginnings of a new culture, a way of thinking that shows respect to a resource that has become scarcer and more fragile. Going beyond the invitation to “waste less and pollute less”, the emerging idea that water should be managed in a new, highly rational way by all who use it shaped the emergence of a new vision for water as part of an approach to sustainable development. This new culture does not mean the end of the culture of engineers – I am one, myself – who for so long have used their knowledge to increase supply in order to meet the growing needs of human activity. Nor can it turn its back on the sanitary movement that has worked so hard for the public health of our citizens. Historically, public health has been the central issue for our profession, to the point of having inspired its economic model, and so it remains in emerging and developing countries. A real change in culture will not be achieved by setting the old concerns against the new, but by integrating the new problem areas so as 179 to reconstruct the culture of the water industry, and to accept that there is no single answer. The truly rational approach consists in recognising the appropriateness of solutions adapted to a region and compatible with its resources, local expectations and the level of development. This is a positive debate around shared knowledge and demonstrates a collective will to establish a mature way of thinking that will take us into the future. The subject of water evokes so many strong feelings that this call for rational thinking may be frustrating to some people, but those who favour a romantic approach to water, promoting fantasy, ideology, confusion and untruths, are not serving the cause well. Lucidity and action are what is needed. By appealing to people’s reason, intelligence and ingenuity, as well as to their good will, which is indispensable, water can remain what it has always been in the history of humanity: a link between people, and a link between nature and mankind. The new culture of water will be one of responsibility. Not that there has been none in the past, but the breadth of the issues in the new century underlines and extends the responsibilities of everyone who plays a part. The responsibility of the international community, which cannot escape from the commitments it made to humanity as part of the Millennium Goals. The responsibility of those who govern to make water and sanitation top national priorities in the many regions where everyone still does not have access to these two essential services. The responsibility of public authorities who can neither exempt themselves from decisions and schedules which they have undertaken, nor hide the cost of these projects, nor free themselves from the obligation to establish systems of governance which are practical and lead to action. The responsibility of water and sanitation service operators, whether public or private. We operators have many responsibilities. We have at least a triple duty of efficiency, transparency and integrity. Society’s...