World Water Week, (17-23Aug,2008)

Every 20 seconds, a mother mourns a dead child lost to diarrhoea – a completely preventable and utterly inexcusable cause of death. Investing in improved sanitation and hygiene not only saves lives and restores dignity – it helps eradicate poverty and hunger, promotes universal primary education, builds gender equality, improves maternal health and ensures environmental sustainability. Rivers, lakes, groundwater and coastal areas polluted form untreated waste result in unsafe drinking water and damaged ecosystems. But the problems can be solved. The 2008 World Water Week in Stockhome,Sweden will place special focus on sanitation, including special attention on water Sanitation.
Water and Sanitation in Asia
With two-thirds of the world’s population and half of them – close to two billion people – living without sustainable access to safe water and improved sanitation, the scale of sanitation and water issues in Asia is mind numbing. Events during the week, including Asia Water Day on Tuesday, Aug19 will focus on the region’s colossal water challenges and discuss the solutions that will shape the future of the world’s largest continent.
Transboundary Waters
Water security is the fundamental entry point for a nation’s development. More often than not, countries share the water bodies upon which they depend and must negotiate how benefits are divided amoung riparian nations. Generating and sharing benefits requires more than good will and political cooperation – huge investments involving considerable risk and social and environmental costs are often needed. A number of events will explore key areas of regional transboundary water management.
Climate and Water
Changes in water availability are what hit us first with an altered climate. Among the effects: too much or too little water; water at the wrong time or in the wrong place; rising sea levels; and floods in certain regions but drought in others. Adaptation is paramount and a matter of sheer survival for billions of people. The World Water Week has on an ongoing basis addressed the multiple relations between climate change and water. It will do so even more this August with world-leading experts taking part in a full slate of sessions.