Mes­sage from the Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al of Un­esco, Iri­na Boko­va, on the oc­ca­sion of World Day for Wa­ter-'Wa­ter for Cities: Re­spond­ing to the Ur­ban Chal­lenge'-to­day

As it has each year since the procla­ma­tion of World Day for Wa­ter by the Unit­ed Na­tions in 1992, Un­esco has once again called for a re­sponse to the im­mense chal­lenges posed by wa­ter man­age­ment to the en­tire glob­al com­mu­ni­ty. This day's theme, "Wa­ter for Cities: Re­spond­ing to the Ur­ban Chal­lenge," serves to re­mind us all that for the first time in the his­to­ry of hu­man­i­ty, most of the world's pop­u­la­tion is liv­ing in cities. Ur­ban sprawl con­tin­ues and slums, which con­tin­ue to ex­pand, rep­re­sent 38 per cent of this growth. To­day, they are home to one bil­lion peo­ple. This rise in the ur­ban pop­u­la­tion has out­stripped the de­vel­op­ment of wa­ter man­age­ment, treat­ment and san­i­ta­tion in­fra­struc­ture. The gap be­tween "haves" and "have-nots" is wider than ever, at a time when the shar­ing of re­sources and ac­cess to clean wa­ter are not on­ly min­i­mum re­quire­ments for com­mu­ni­ty life, but al­so for the re­spect of hu­man dig­ni­ty.

In most de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, which ac­count for the bulk of the world's ur­ban growth, waste wa­ter is not ad­e­quate­ly treat­ed and flows di­rect­ly in­to ground wa­ter, fur­ther pol­lut­ing this frag­ile re­source. Ur­ban ar­eas, with their high pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty, are great­ly ex­posed to dis­eases trans­mit­ted by poor-qual­i­ty wa­ter.

They are al­so more vul­ner­a­ble to nat­ur­al dis­as­ters in the ab­sence of mea­sures to man­age floods caused by glob­al warm­ing. In these in­stances, the lack of ac­cess to wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion weigh heav­i­ly on the eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment of poor city dwellers, who some­times pay up to 50 times more than their rich­er neigh­bours for a litre of wa­ter. As part of its mis­sion to as­sist mem­ber states in bet­ter un­der­stand­ing and re­spond­ing to wa­ter chal­lenges in ur­ban en­vi­ron­ments, Un­esco has im­ple­ment­ed an in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal sci­en­tif­ic pro­gramme de­vot­ed to wa­ter sci­ences, through its in­ter­na­tion­al hy­dro­log­i­cal pro­gramme. The Un­esco-IHE In­sti­tute for Wa­ter Ed­u­ca­tion has de­vel­oped a wide range of ac­tiv­i­ties to pro­mote sus­tain­able ur­ban wa­ter man­age­ment so­lu­tions.

Un­esco sup­ports the prin­ci­ple of "in­te­grat­ed ur­ban wa­ter man­age­ment" which ac­tu­al­ly takes in­to ac­count the di­verse wa­ter us­es and di­men­sions of ur­ban liv­ing. The chal­lenges of do­mes­tic and in­dus­tri­al con­sump­tion, hy­giene is­sues, flood risks, and so on, must be tak­en up as a whole if we are to ef­fec­tive­ly re­spond to each of them. Sus­tain­able hu­man de­vel­op­ment is not pos­si­ble with­out good qual­i­ty wa­ter ac­ces­si­ble to all. This is the re­al­i­ty faced by city dwellers, and through them, all of hu­man­i­ty. Sev­er­al coun­tries share 276 drainage basins and al­most as many aquifers through­out the world. All of these shared re­sources are nat­ur­al cross­roads of glob­al civil­i­sa­tion. If we fail to make wa­ter an in­stru­ment of peace, it might be to­mor­row a ma­jor source of con­flict. As we are cel­e­brat­ing 2011 as the In­ter­na­tion­al Year of Chem­istry, Un­esco has un­der­tak­en to dis­sem­i­nate to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, the pos­si­bil­i­ties of­fered by sci­ence to make the right to wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion, recog­nised in 2010 by the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and the Hu­man Rights Coun­cil, a re­al­i­ty for all. In re­it­er­at­ing our com­mit­ment to­day, I call on the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to join our ef­forts.

Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al of Un­esco, Iri­na Boko­va