WORLD WATER DAY 2011 WORLD WATER COUNCIL KIT

© Samuel Deleon

THEMATIC PUBLICATION

> Water for Cities - Responding to the Urban Challenge

TABLE OF CONTENTS



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Message from the President of the Council What is World Water Day? - About - Theme 2011: Water for Cities - Responding to the Urban Challenge

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- Tips and ideas



The Council and Water for Cities

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How can World Water Day be celebrated?

- Interviews with the Council Bureau Members - The Council and World Water Day 2011

Message From the Council President Dear Water Friends, On this 22nd of March, water has its world day. A day that gives us the opportunity to reflect on solutions to be applied in order to protect it better. An essential question in a world where, today, many threats loom over water: demographic growth, urban concentration, coastal pollution, development needs or even climate projections. Faced with increasing urbanisation, the world’s cities are confronted with new challenges: • Increasing demand for water supply and sanitation services—How to supply water and sanitation to a billion more inhabitants every ten to twelve years? • Overuse of water resources—How can very large urban areas res pond to overdrawing from their water resources? • Worsened pollution—How to keep a large portion of megacites from become actual ticking “sanitation” bombs? • Vulnerability to the risk of water-related catastrophes: How can cities protect themselves against rising waters or extended drought? We must answer these questions now. More than ever, our planet needs concrete and credible action. “The time for solutions” has come. This is the challenge to which France, Marseille and the World Water Council, together, will rise by organising the 6th World Water Forum between now and March 2012. These solutions will be useful and sustainable if the commitments are strong and long-term. During the last World Water Forum, the World Water Council launched the Istanbul Water Consensus, a true commitment signed by more than 600 municipalities throughout the world. On this World Water Day, we invite you to convince cities throughout the world to sign this Consensus and to, thus, support access to water and sanitation for all. With my best regards, Loïc Fauchon

WHAT IS WORLD WATER DAY? About The international observance of World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. The United Nations General Assembly designated 22 March of each year as the World Day for Water. This celebration started in 1993 in conformity with the recommendations of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development contained in chapter 18 (Fresh Water Resources) of Agenda 21. States were invited to devote the Day to implement the UN recommendations and set up concrete activities as deemed appropriate in the national context. (www.worldwaterday.org) The World Water Council strongly supports World Water Day and marks the day each year together with its large network of members.

2011: Water For Cities - Responding to the Urban Challenge The objective of World Water Day 2011 is to focus international attention on the impact of rapid urban population growth, industrialization and uncertainties caused by climate change, conflicts and natural disasters on urban water systems. This year theme, Water for cities: responding to the urban challenge, aims to spotlight and encourage governments, organizations, communities, and individuals to actively engage in addressing the challenge of urban water management. (http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/) This is the first time in human history that most of the world’s population lives in cities. There are now 3.3 billion city dwellers and the urban landscape continues to grow. 38% of the growth is represented by expanding slums, while the city populations are increasing faster than city infrastructure can adapt. The next few decades will witness an even sharper urban growth. In Africa and Asia, the urban population is expected to double between 2000 © Agung kuncahya bayuaji and 2030. By 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up an estimated 81% of all urban inhabitants. Supplying urban populations with clean water and ensuring the effective treatment and disposal of waste-water remained an enormous current and future challenge.

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How can World Water Day be Celebrated? Tips and ideas • Speak to a local decision-maker about the importance of water; • Pitch a story to a reporter on an interesting challenge in water management; • Make your organization’s employees aware about water consumption by having one day of limited water use. Analyse the experience in groups. • Organise a lecture by some of the organization’s experts in public schools or universities; • Raise awareness in a school for proper water use or health and hygiene; • Identify gaps in water/sanitation coverage, and or water resource problems, as well as the steps you can take to raise awareness and stimulate action; • Donate money to a water cause; • Offer your organization’s employees an afternoon off work to clean up the banks of a waterway or wetland area

© Vincent Peal

• Publicize and promote the work done by you or your organization to improve the water situation in the world; • Create banners with a strong message for World Water Day – put them up in your city; • Analyse the composition of your drinking water supply – act depending on the result; • Organize a photo exhibition on water issues;

• Run a quiz on water with your employees with sponsored prizes; • Organize slogan competitions for water – use the winning one in your outreach material; • Sponsor a film on water issues; • Install a water-saving device in your home (reducer on a faucet or showerhead or displacement device in the toilet tank).

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WATER FOR CITIES - What are the Solutions? Interviews with World Water Council Bureau Members We asked the Council Bureau members for their comments on water for cities and if they could give us one example of an existing solution for good urban water management. Here is what they replied.

“Providing water and sanitation to the growing urban populations of the developing world is certainly our main challenge today. By the year 2050, approximately 70% of the world’s population will be city dwellers. Financing sanitation infrastructure in particular is a necessary condition to improve water quality in rivers and lakes of these regions. The National Water Agency of Brazil has launched a very innovative program to allow the increase in sewage treatment in the country. Under this program, the municipality receives a subsidy from the central government in the amount up to 100% of the cost of the sewage treatment plant - STP. However, instead of receiving the subsidy upfront, the municipality receives it when the STP is in full operation. If the municipality does not have capital to invest in the project, the receivables guaranteed from the central government allow it to raise the funds in official banks at low interest rates. The advantage of this method is the improvement of the efficiency of the use of public money (no unfinished civil works), incentive to better technology and reduction of risk of corruption. Today, under this program approximately 50 municipalities have their STP in operation serving more than 6 million people. These success stories of solutions will help to move the water and sanitation agenda forward in the next 6th World Water Forum in Marseille 2012.“ Ben Braga, Council Bureau member, President of the IFC of the 6th World Water Forum and Professor at the University of Sao Paulo. “An example of a solution for good city water management is the innovative design and implementation of an early warning and real-time control system in Bangkok, Thailand. This megacity, with a dense pattern of urban living and considerable portion of slum areas, is very vulnerable to water-related disasters. This is why some very sophisticated modelling and communication technologies with operational strategies are combined to mitigate risks of all water-related disasters in and around the city area. The recently developed early warning and real-time control system has been effective in minimizing the effects of the disasters. The system utilizes different modelling and measuring equipment with its surveillance, control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and radio-linked, on-line and real-time warning and operating systems. In case of an approaching disaster event, the system would activate numerical weather prediction models together with hydraulic models and use their results to identify appropriate operational strategies for different control structures in advance of the event. It will also issue warnings to the general public by using big screen televisions placed at streets junctions, traffic screens at bus stations, radio and TV channels, sirens, a web site, Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and twitter. In order to make the system more effective, the authorities have made considerable efforts in empowering the public to understand the messages issued by the system and to act accordingly. Thus, the flood risk mitigation framework in Bangkok is nowadays concerned not only with protecting from floods but also with understanding flood risk, preparing for flood risk and knowing how to live with flood risk.” Andras Szollosi-Nagy, Council Bureau member and Rector UNESCO-IHE.

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“In our lifetime we are witnessing a drastic development in the human history of urban settlement. We are therefore in need of a fundamental understanding of how living creatures can survive sharing the most important resource we have: water. The concentration of people in one area demands solutions in terms of highly developed water-related technologies. However, if we want to provide sustainable access to safe water and basic sanitation for all, we need to go beyond technology. We need to spread a message among the 3.5 billion global urban citizens: “Let’s share and save water together” is what the World Water Council wishes to say. “ Eun-Kyung Park, Council Bureau member and President of Korea Water Forum.

“Climate, water and security debates are raising public anxiety about change while inadvertently denying key adaptive water investment means to cope with the impacts of projected extreme events. How we decide on measures to manage uncertainties and risks of extreme water events are central to the health of democratic political culture and individual freedom. Today citizens in democratic political cultures must collectively define and actively choose versus passively accept levels of hydrological risks from extremes of floods and droughts. All wealthy countries have managed to flatten the peaks and lows (floods and droughts) of hydrographs as a necessary preconditions to socio-economic growth through water investments. The development community should view measures to manage water related events as investments in socio-economic growth.” Jerry Delli Priscoli, Council Bureau member and Senior Advisor, Institute of Water Resources - US Army Corps of Engineers.

‘’When it comes to managing water in urban centers, the main problem is for local and national governments to cope with high rates of urbanization. Unplanned and poorly managed urbanization cause social and environmental problems in developing countries. There are many important constraints to urban water availability in rapidly growing mega-cities and one solution can be to ensure financing and proper water management to avoid scarcity. Despite these efforts, the provision of clean water and sanitation to large urban centers of developing countries will continue to be a major challenge in the 21st century.’’ Dogan Altinbilek, Council Bureau member and President of the International Hydropower Association.

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The Council and World Water Day 2011 Water Champion Cities meet in South Africa The Council will together with UN-Habitat, ICLEI, UCLG, the Secretariat of the 6th World Water Forum and the city of Durban organise a side event during the World Water Day celebrations in Cape Town. The purpose of this meeting is to highlight actions undertaken by ‘Water Champion Cities’ in the face of growing urbanization. It will bring together Mayors and Local Authorities representatives to also discuss how to strengthen the role of Champion cities and identify existing solutions for local authorities to tackle water challenges related to rapid urbanization. For more information contact Celine Dubreuil [email protected] © Anne-Claire Loftus

Water and Green Growth In the context of the recent global economic crisis, “Green Growth” is an idea that has emerged out of the Far East where economic development and urbanisation over the past several decades has come at a high environmental cost. Water could play a major role green growth from a variety of perspectives. During the World Water Day events in Cape Town the WWC in cooperation with the Korea Water Resources Corporation (K-water) will present a side event where green growth experts will come together with water experts detailing the project plan and initiate the debate. For more information contact Callum Clench: [email protected]

World Water Council Board of Governors Prior to the World Water Day, the Council will hold its first Board meeting in 2011 in Cape Town, South Africa. In conjunction with UN-Habitat’s celebration of the event, the Governors and Alternates will gather for a two-day meeting where issues such as the progress of the 6th World Water Forum and the candidatures for the 7th Forum will be discussed. As always, the Board will have in depth discussions about the progress of the working themes, partnership, membership evolution and finances. Right to water and sanitation The World Water Council will participate to a side event on the Right to Water and Sanitation organized by UN-Habitat and the South-African Department of Water Affairs. This session that will be held on South Africa’s Human Right Day will provide an opportunity for exploring the experience of the human rights-based approach to water and sanitation. Water and disasters

© Abdullah Abirt

The World Water Council will co-convene with the HLEP/UNSGAB, Japan Water Forum, ISDR, Korea Water Forum, and UN-Habitat a side-event on water and disasters.This seminar will aim at positioning Disaster Risk Reduction within the context of sustainable development towards achieving the MDGs, and at exploring strategies and financing preventive measures to reduce the impact of natural disasters.

Espace Gaymard - 2-4 Place d’Arvieux - 13002 Marseille - France Tel: +33 4 91 99 41 00 - Fax: +33 4 91 99 41 01 [email protected] http://www.worldwatercouncil.org

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