3^rd Euro-Arab Citites Forum

Dubai, 10-11 February 2008

Speech by Keith Whitmore, Chair of the Institutional Committee, Congress of Local and Regional authorities of the Council of Europe

Session 4 - Environment and Water

Let me begin by saying that I am honoured to address the Euro-Arab forum in the presence of over one hundred mayors from Europe and the Arab world.

I am pleased today to represent the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, a pan-European Organisation of 47 member states which stretches from Reykjavik to Ankara and from Lisbon to Vladivostok. We are a representative body of more than 200,000 local and regional communities, offering an opportunity for political cooperation, policy making and exchange of best practices.

The Congress is a pillar of the Council of Europe which exists to defend and extend human rights throughout Europe and is home to the European Convention on Human Rights. The issues we are addressing today are central to these values; we believe that a healthy environment and access to water and sanitation should be considered as fundamental human rights. The enjoyment of all the rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights starts with the right to life.

Water is indispensable to all forms of life, it is an ecological, economic and social asset that is a prerequisite for the sustainable development necessary to safeguard the needs of both present and future generations.

But in the space of a few decades we have also seen how water has come to the forefront of our preoccupations as a social and political issue. Our basic needs for a secure food supply and freedom from disease depend on it. Water, a source of inspiration, contemplation and reflection, can also be a source of conflict, destruction and disease.

Sustainability is not ecological romanticism: it is a matter of public health, safety and basic resources. These issues affect daily life in our towns, cities and regions. The future well-being of our planet depends upon us all working together to create a sustainable world where our finite natural resources are used wisely.

Water needs our help today. Water resources and the system of water management are undergoing a worldwide crisis marked by degrading water ecosystems, river pollution, a lack of infrastructures and climate change with its consequences: disastrous floods in some places and devastating droughts in others.

The Council of Europe has a long experience in water issues. It is at the origin of the European Charter on Water Resources – adopted in 1968 and revised in 2001. We in the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities have been assisting elected representatives in applying this important Charter ever since.

We have also been active in the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development which agreed on the Millennium Development Goals and on a Plan of Implementation, highlighting the importance of water in maintaining healthy ecosystems and in ensuring sustainable rural and urban development.  One of the key objectives set by the Summit was to reverse the loss of environmental resources and to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

These objectives are ambitious because the numbers are mind-boggling. More than one billion people today do not have a guaranteed access to drinking water – this is a blatant offence to human dignity, decent living and even to the most fundamental human right, the right to life.

To meet Millennium Development Goals, which are recognized by all international bodies, the Congress believes that we must act decisively and we need to foster a new culture of water, a culture of shared responsibilities and sustainable use of natural resources. We need to ensure that no-one underestimates the value of water.

The Congress is convinced that the water crisis is also a crisis of governance and that the solutions can be found through greater cooperation, exchange and sharing of responsibilities between all levels of governance. In Europe we are seeing that the process of European integration – at the national level but also at the level of regional and local authorities – is leading to closer cooperation and that water management can be improved through transfrontier cooperation and the creation of Euro-regions.

We in the Congress firmly support cooperation and exchange activities on water management between Europe and the Arab world. No-one knows better than this region the value of water and the Arab peoples have over three millennia’s worth of experience of making the most of limited water resources. We have so much to learn from each other.

Political leaders must look carefully at the issue of water, its quality, quantity, management and engineering. We believe that local and regional authorities throughout the world are well-placed to develop infrastructures and strategies to reduce water wastage, improve recycling of rainwater and raise awareness of the value of water and its scarcity.

We believe that, key to successful and sustainable water management, are initiatives which reinforce collaboration between public authorities and all stakeholders and which offer ways to inform and involve the people whom we represent. There can be no satisfactory policy regarding water and the environment without the involvement of local and regional authorities as real decision-makers.

Like many of you here, the Congress has been active in ensuring that local and regional authorities’ voice was heard in the World Water Forum of 2006. This role was recognised  in the Ministers’ Declaration. We are building on this for the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul in March 2009 where we will promote the issue of Public water and sewer services for sustainable development.

There are important geographical differences between the European continent and the Arab World but urbanisation is a global phenomenon. We all need to respond to the challenges and move towards more sustainable cities. The Masdar Initiative in Abu Dhabi, which will offer the region its first zero carbon, zero waste city, provides the entire world with a beacon of hope.

We, political leaders and elected representatives must look at the issue of water and commit ourselves with real political will and larger budgets.  We must ask ourselves how we can ensure that the budgets for environment and water take their proper place in national and local budget planning.

The task of all of us here today is to work together in order to foster a new water culture, a culture of sharing responsibilities where we coordinate and strengthen the efforts of all actors involved at local, regional and national levels to preserve and restore the planet's water resources.