CARICOM Assistant Secretary-General calls for increased protection of the Caribbean region’s water

GREATER GEORGETOWN, Guyana – CARICOM Assistant Secretary-General, Dr Edward Greene made a strong call for the Caribbean Region and development partners to invest more in the water resources sector.

The Assistant Secretary-General Human and Social Development also called for the development of appropriate management mechanisms to build the capacity necessary for safeguarding the future of the Region by protecting its water resources.

Delivering the Keynote address at the High Level Symposium on Water Security at the United Nations Headquarters, New York, this morning (Thursday 5 February, 2009), Dr Greene linked water security to development and stated that a major challenge confronting the Region was how to manage and develop water to promote growth and alleviate poverty in a responsible manner, without undermining environmental resources.

Noting that the cost of achieving water security for developing countries was ‘phenomenal,’ Dr Greene stressed that meeting the challenge would not only require innovations in water resource management, development and governance; but also “a heavy injection of financial resources into our economic main streams – the kind that will see increased flows into the water resources sector and other related sectors.”

“The need to increase investments in drinking water supply and sanitation services especially in developing countries is an imperative for reducing poverty and to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” the Assistant Secretary-General asserted.

Dr Greene noted further that the experience of the Caribbean was a double-edged situational irony where the Region was “rich in renewable water resources with more than 30 per cent of the world’s total,” yet millions still had limited or no access to potable water.

He added that the irony is further compounded by the false notion that this resource was limitless and warned that “for water to sustain lives and for it to form part of our economic growth, we need to ensure that the systems and infrastructure are in place and well maintained; that we have strong institutions which are able to respond to the needs of society; and that we have adequate resources to develop our infrastructure.”

Convened by the World Water Organisation, this high-level symposium on water security brings together water and development experts, representatives of the international corporate, medical and academic communities and governments to identify threats and vulnerabilities and explore solutions for the protection and preservation of water resources, water infrastructure and systems worldwide.

One of the issues being explored at this three-day symposium is that of water terrorism. Commenting on this issue, Dr Greene underscored the need for the Region to police and protect its water resources from what he called non-state actors who might seek to harm the Region by harming this resource.

“If we fail to protect water resources and distribution systems, we run the risk of opening the door to non-state actors to wreak considerable damage to our resources and distribution systems, again impacting our socio-economic development,” Dr Greene remarked.

The symposium precedes the Fifth World Water Forum scheduled for Istanbul, Turkey in March 2009 where the international community will raise the importance, awareness and understanding of water issues and propose concrete solutions to address global challenges related to water security.

Dr Greene enumerated a slate of challenges with which the Forum would need to contend, chief of which include the impact of water on food security; the need to strengthen institutional capacity; the need for effective integrated water resources management strategies and the impact of climate change on water security.