Amidst water managers
On August 22, 2005, participants from more than 100 countries gathered at the Swedish capital, Stockholm, to deliberate development of water resource infrastructure, water supply and sanitation, and pollution management. The occasion: the Stockholm Water Week. Organised by the Stockholm International Water Institute (siwi) since 1991, this annual event has become a common platform for experience-sharing among water professionals, decision-makers and activists from all over the world.
The opening ceremony witnessed rich deliberations on water management. Inaugurating the symposium, Lena Sommestad, the Swedish minister of environment, called for greater democracy to manage water in a sustainable manner. In her keynote address, Buyelwa Patience Sonjica, the South African minister for water affairs and forestry, emphasised that African countries require large infrastructure to store and distribute water. "But mere infrastructure development won't be enough,' retorted Mariela Garcia Vargas, a Columbian delegate. "The involvement of communities holds the key to sustainable water management,' she added. Garcia Vargas held up a women's group-run water treatment system in the Cali region of her country as an example of sustainable water management. Sunita Narain, director of the Delhi based Centre for Science and Environment (cse), this year's Stockholm Water Prize (See box: Water Prizes 2005) winner, cautioned: "If the hold of the high-level bureaucracy is not broken, spending on water resources will become unsustainable'.
Anxiety The symposium reached fever pitch when 1,400 people debated large water infrastructure projects. Not surprisingly, there was no consensus. Asit K Biswas, of the Mexico-based Third World Centre for Water Management, tried to strike one by suggesting, "A judicious mix of small and large hydro-infrastructure projects'.
How could the water week go by without discussions on water supply and sanitation in the context of the un's millennium development goals (mdgs)? And indeed, the tardy progress over the attainment of this mdg was cause for concern at the un water seminar
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