Governments aim to quench thirst for water education

Megha Kumar is a 23-year-old Indian student who came up with the winning slogan for the United Nations International Year of Water Cooperation, or IYWC, launched last month. Her catchy phrase – “Water, water everywhere, only if we share” – has set the tone for a year when the topic of water is on many official lips.

“I came up with the slogan because we’ll only have enough water for everyone if we make agreements and cooperate with one another, and the world has to understand that,” Kumar told University World News at the launch of the IYWC in Paris last month.

That ceremony followed the first International Water Summit that took place in Abu Dhabi in January, and it fed into World Water Day last week, on 22 March.

Through the rest of 2013, decision-makers will discuss water when they meet in Stockholm in September for World Water Week, and when they gather in Hungary in October for the Budapest Water Summit. Tajikistan will also host a high-level water conference before the end of the year.

At all of these events, young people and students like Kumar will have a significant role, according to the UN.

“Cooperation must start in the classroom,” said Irina Bokova, director general of UNESCO. “The challenges are complex, so solutions must be multi-faceted.”

The UN says that a third of the world’s people live in countries “with moderate to high water stress” and that 300 million in Sub-Saharan Africa live in water-scarce environments. It emphasises that with competition for water increasing, governments need to take steps to avoid conflict in this area.

Education and research crucial

Education and training are crucial to every water initiative, said Bokova.

She signed an agreement between UNESCO and the government of Kenya in February to establish a Regional Centre on Groundwater Resources Education, Training and Research in East Africa.

Among other goals, the centre aims to “generate and provide scientific and technical information and support the exchange of information in the various domains of groundwater knowledge and management”.

Joseph Nyagah, Kenya’s minister for cooperative development and marketing who signed the accord on behalf of his government, told University World News that the facility would be available to other countries and that the purpose is to “boost capacity” in water research and management.

“There are serious water issues in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Nyagah said at the IYWC launch. “Kenya is determined to foster the successful management of water.”

The continent, for instance, is no stranger to drought. For more than a year now, UNESCO experts have been working in affected countries in the Horn of Africa to “identify and to map groundwater resources for an aquifer that will provide at least 200,000 cubic metres of renewable water every year”.

In designating 2013 as the year of water cooperation, the UN says it is also calling on the global community to come together for freshwater, which has no borders.

“With 148 countries sharing at least one trans-boundary river basin and two-thirds of the world's 276 river basins being shared by two countries, cooperation is the key to preserving water resources and protecting the environment, but also to fostering and maintaining peaceful relations within and among communities,” according to UNESCO.

Many countries now see water as a priority for sustainable development. At the International Water Summit in Abu Dhabi, more than 30,000 participants assembled to examine the best policies for water management.

“Water is more important than oil for us in the United Arab Emirates,” said Crown Prince General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan. He and other UAE officials such as Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, chief executive officer of the Emirates renewable-energy company Masdar, reiterated this principle throughout the summit.

Like Africa, the Middle East suffers from the problem of desertification, which has caused water shortages in several states.

Searching for solutions

Students at Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Institute, which focuses on renewable energy, are among those learning solutions that include the desalination of seawater. This process now provides 1% of the world’s water needs but is predicted to increase to 14% in 12 years.

Other solutions include changing the current systems of agriculture (which uses 70% of fresh water), improving the harvesting of rainwater, making more effective use of groundwater, and recycling ‘used water’ – as is already happening in countries such as Singapore.

“Water is becoming a sector that’s more and more critical,” said Michel Jarraud, chair of UN-Water and secretary general of the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organisation.

“It’s very encouraging that governments recognise that water is an issue that has to be addressed and that education plays a central role,” he told University World News.

During the IYWC, students from Fukushima in Japan visited France to meet with their peers from French schools and from the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft, The Netherlands.

The latter provides training for people from developing countries and recently announced preparations for a “Global Campus for Water and Development”.

The students spoke about their experiences and drafted a youth declaration on water cooperation.

This declaration should form a basis for discussion in the months following World Water Day, while further food for thought will come from an exhibition titled “Water at the heart of science” which was co-produced by French research organisations and will be shown around the world at French cultural institutions.

France says it would like to see ‘global governance’ in water.

“Water is key for sustainable development,” said Pascal Canfin, deputy minister for development in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “We can’t feed nine billion people in 2050 without making changes, particularly to agricultural models that use too much water.”

Through cooperation agreements, the French government will help to support the research centre in Kenya, officials said.