Water Needs to be a Dedicated Sustainable Development Goal

By an IPS Correspondent Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 2 2014 (IPS) - Addressing delegates at the 24th World Water Week in Stockholm, the Executive Director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) Torgny Holmgren said water should be a dedicated Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) in the UN’s post-205 development agenda.

Water should also be integrated into other goals as well – such as energy, food security and climate change – as these areas likewise should be part of any water SDG, he added.

Holmgren said the UN Open Working Group has proposed a water and an energy SDG.

“However, nothing is secured until the negotiations are concluded next year. Therefore, we must still mobilise our communities over the next few months to promote these issues together,” he told delegates at the weeklong conference in the Swedish capital.

He pointed out that it is against this background the World Water Week next year will focus on ‘Water for Development’ as it celebrates its 25th anniversary and Silver Jubilee in 2015.

Speaking of the nexus between water and energy, Holgren said energy and water are very closely interconnected. “We need water for energy: for cooling, hydropower and biofuel production. And we need energy for water: to pump, treat and transport water.”

Energy and water are key to satisfy basic human needs; to produce food for a rapidly growing population, and to achieve sustainable economic development. Yet the challenges are immense, he said.

Still 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity and almost 2.0 billion lack access to safe drinking water.

The global demand for water is projected to grow by 55 per cent between 2000 and 2050. As a result, 45 per cent of the global population will be living under severe water stress. Similarly, the demand for electricity is expected to increase by 50 percent to 2035.

Accordingly there is an urgent need for an even closer cooperation between the energy and water communities in order to provide the solutions which will enable all to prosper, Holmgren said.

“Although there is an extensive interdependency between energy and water in all societies we find huge institutional, technical and economic asymmetries between the two sectors.”

The energy sector is to a large extent market-based and run by private, often big, companies acting on global, regional or national markets. The water sector, on the other hand, is dominated by public, small utilities or cooperatives acting within regulated markets at the local, municipal level.

Energy is priced on the market and there is a high price-awareness among customers. In the water sector, cost-recovery pricing is common, and there is a low customer awareness of water prices, he said.

“I guess most of us know the price of a liter or gallon of gas while very few of us know the price for one cubic meter of tap water.”

Although that the basic institutional conditions are vastly different, the question is whether or not the water sector gradually will resemble the energy sector in a number of areas in the future.

“Energy Efficiency is a central driving force for the remarkable developments we have witnessed in the energy sector. We use less and less energy per unit produced thanks to huge technological advancements,” he declared.