Water

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10^th Anniversary of the Global Water Partnership

Remarks By:

Arjun Thapan
Chair, ADB Water Committee
Deputy Director General, Southeast Asia Department
Asian Development Bank

20 August 2006
Stockholm, Sweeden

Your Royal Highnesses, the Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, and Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, the indomitable Margaret Catley-Carlson, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen

It is not often that one is privileged to stand at a lectern such as this to congratulate a partnership as distinguished as the GWP. I am, therefore, delighted to be here on behalf of the Asian Development Bank to wish GWP many happy returns of the day. We have seen you blossom and grow into a persuasive voice for shaping and supporting the global water agenda. May you continue to do that, and more, in the years ahead.

I must confess that I thought it odd for ADB to sign a letter of cooperation with GWP. After all, we are part of the partnership, a member of the family as it were. But the truth is that even within families, we need alliances. So this is an alliance to advance our mutual Water goals in Asia and the Pacific. It was signed yesterday without fuss, ceremony, or circumstance. We look forward to a purposeful association with GWP in tackling some of Asia’s toughest water challenges.

Why is this association important to us? We have 700 million people in Asia still without access to safe water, and over 2 billion without access to proper sanitation. Our water resources are shrinking, and are being negatively impacted by rapid urbanization, pollution, and fierce competition for their use. The water-related MDGs are not likely to be achieved in large measure. We need to act. Now.

As we said in Mexico earlier this year, our Water Financing Program for 2006-2010 aims to:

• provide 200 million persons with safe water and sanitation, and 40 million persons with productive and efficient irrigation, and livelihoods
• reduce flood risk for 100 million persons
• and introduce integrated water resources management into 25 river basins across the continent.

We cannot get these results alone. We need GWP to help us mobilize financial resources, supplement our knowledge base, and enhance our understanding of community needs. Our joint work, we hope, will enrich GWP and allow the Asian experience to be considered and adapted elsewhere on our planet.

GWP has made significant contributions to the development of IWRM. This is an approach that will improve the governance of our water resources through formal and informal river basin organizations. Secondly, it will better protect our water resources through closer management by community-based river basin organizations and better laws. Finally, it will better manage the supply and demand of our water resources between competing users. We look forward to working with GWP in embedding IWRM in the 25 identified river basins.

Water services in urban Asia are struggling to cope with the rapid growth in towns and cities that is dramatically altering the continent’s landscape, often in frightening ways. The pressures on water resources are huge, and we have to improve efficiencies radically. ADB and GWP will facilitate the Water Operators’ Partnership that will help water service providers join hands, and learn from each other, to deliver vastly improved performance. A beginning has been made with the South East Asian Water Utilities Network. We hope that similar networks take root in South and Central Asia.

ADB and GWP also hope that the Asia Pacific Water Forum that was launched earlier this year, will help generate knowledge and good practice to improve the quality of our water resources management. Equally, we hope that it will bring together the region’s leaders to focus attention on solving our most pressing water and sanitation problems.

This is a new beginning for us. The moment is propitious. Tomorrow, ADB and GWP will meet with representatives of donor governments to introduce a new Water Financing Partnership Facility that will cofinance projects and help finance technical assistance projects under our Water Financing Program. In September, we have convened a conference in Manila to commence implementation of this Program. Our work will then have begun in right earnest.

Maggie, there is this 14 year old girl in a village in Surkhet District in the Mid- Western Development Region of Nepal who walks 12 kilometers each day to bring a large bucket of water on her head for her family. Her spine has been irreparably damaged, she has no time to go to school, and her future is uncertain, if not decidedly bleak. I would very much like ADB and GWP to work together to get water to her home, and to those of the many millions of her sisters and brothers all over Asia who deserve as good a tomorrow as any one of us gathered here today. We have much work to do. Let us make haste. Quickly.

Thank you very much.