World Water Forum
"Water will reposition itself among the priorities for security in the world"
A child fills his jerry cans with water in the Kisenyi slum, Kampala (Uganda) in 2019. According to the UN, only 30% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa has access to a safe source of drinking water.
Photothek via Getty Images - Ute Grabowsky
Text by: Géraud Bosman-Delzons Follow
6 mins
The World Water Forum opens its doors for a week in Dakar.
This is the most important meeting devoted to this resource.
It takes place only every three years and is held for the first time in sub-Saharan Africa.
Created in 1997 by the World Water Council, linked to large companies in this sector, it is therefore not part of the UN.
Explanations of the issues with Abdoulaye Sene, hydraulic engineer and executive secretary of the event.
Advertising
Read more
From our special correspondent in Dakar
RFI: The water crisis will become more acute as climate change increases. Why is global awareness taking so long?
Abdoulaye Sene:
Because, for a long time, we considered this resource to be unlimited.
We have seen how high individual consumption can be.
In some countries, such as the United States, per capita consumption can exceed 500 liters per person, while the average quantity deemed essential for humans is 50 liters per day and per person.
As drought strikes everywhere, great rivers are drying up and making big cities thirsty.
Water therefore takes on an extremely important dimension today in the concerns of the countries.
We realized that with the increase in the population, with a limited resource and a growing demand, we are inevitably heading towards a conflictual situation, if we do not put in place a modality and mechanisms of cooperative and united governance. .
With the increase in climate change, that of the population and the need to increase the productivity of agriculture, the main consumer, water will reposition itself among the top priorities for peace and security in the world.
This 9th edition of the World Water Forum aims to be a “Forum of responses”. But first, what will be the questions and the objectives
?
It is a question of questioning the importance of water security for the security of nations but above all for the well-being of populations.
The forum will also address the issue of water for rural development.
Agriculture is an extremely important issue, in Africa in particular.
In the 1970s [and until the 1990s, Ed], the Sahel experienced one of the worst droughts, dreadful for African livestock and food security.
Water is the best indicator of climate change and its consequences, which can also result in excess water, with temporary flooding.
We will therefore discuss how we must therefore secure this resource.
Through storage - on waterways, with dams or with the recovery of rainwater with cistern programs in the rural world - but also adaptation of agriculture through economical irrigation techniques in water.
With the scarcity of water resources, it often happens that the inadequacy of hydraulic structures is a source of conflict between herders and farmers.
The forum is often criticized for its lack of political relay at the national and international level so that effective measures are taken by States. In the meantime, the populations are waiting for concrete solutions to their problems. What answers can they expect from this meeting?
Previous editions of the forum have been criticized for this.
But there will be, at the Dakar meeting, a very high-level political segment with Heads of State, heads of major international institutions, notably those of financing, who will be present to launch concrete initiatives for action in the service of access to water.
The populations of Senegal, Africa and the world will therefore be able, at the end of this forum, to benefit from new programmes, new initiatives, new projects, which will enable them to improve access to water and sanitation, which are human rights, but also to productive water, for breeding, for agriculture.
This forum is organized by the World Water Council, which is an emanation of the private sector and multinationals, and the UN is only a simple partner. Shouldn't this capital subject of water be directly dealt with by the United Nations, as is the case, for example, for the climate, biodiversity and desertification?
Absolutely, and that is why Senegal intends to make the Forum a major contribution to the preparation of the second major [UN] world conference on water, in 2023. The first took place in 1977 in Mar del Plata. .
This reflects the will of the United Nations to take back control of this fundamental question, which today has a particular geopolitical dimension.
It is true that the World Water Council was at the origin of this forum.
But today it is opening up to public and academic institutions.
However, civil society actors contest the legitimacy of the World Water Forum and fear the privatization of this resource. On the sidelines of this forum, there will be, as in every edition, an alternative global water forum, led by NGOs, ecologists and scientists. How do you respond to their concerns
?
This is a point of view that I hear, that I respect, but I would like to emphasize that the Dakar forum will be inclusive.
We will have a multi-stakeholder dialogue with civil society which is widely represented in the forum process.
It is obvious that it is not for us who work to establish the reality of the human right to water to talk about the privatization of water.
We can talk about the privatization of water services.
But the question of water remains essentially for us a question of world, national heritage.
In any way, there can be no question for us in Senegal of organizing a debate which could imply that we are promoting the privatization of a commodity as irreplaceable, as essential, as vital as 'water.
of
From what I have read and heard, this forum may join ours.
We want a historic forum and a forum that translates into responses, commitments.
We expect more than a thousand participants, all categories combined.
The World Water Forum is a brand owned by this Council and the countries that host it in turn must pay usage fees. How is the Dakar forum financed and what are the economic benefits expected by the Senegalese State?
Yes, Senegal paid user fees.
He also collected compensation but above all support.
There are modes of participation that range from free for those with the most limited means (young people, rural people, civil society) to facilitated contributions for non-OECD countries and delegations.
The State of Senegal was able to count on the mobilization of its institutional partners.
We have also set up a sponsorship system to allow the various players to contribute.
There will also be, as has always been done in this kind of event, registrations and an exhibition.
All this will generate resources that will cover the organization of this forum.
A forum to provide concrete, daily answers to the populations who ask for them.
There are solutions that exist, they are not always applied in the field.
Water is an eminently political subject.
World Water Forum: organizers promise a "forum of solutions"
Charlotte Idrac
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Africa
Environment
our selection
Senegal
Water
Climate change