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Wetlands and forests at the core of the water debate 23 March 2006 The World Conservation Union (IUCN) welcomes the increasing attention paid to environmental concerns in water management. During the Ministerial Roundtables at the 4th World Water Forum this week in Mexico, ministers from around the world stressed the important role of forests, wetlands and soils in managing the world’s water resources. “Mountain forests are the water towers on which our society depends; restoring them makes perfect sense to support economic development and poverty alleviation”, said Carlos Manuel Rodriquez, Minster of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica. “When the Union started to engage with the water sector, engineers wondered what managing ecosystems had to do with dams, pipes and treatment plants. The 4th World Water Forum showed that social and environmental concerns are moving to the core of water management efforts,” said Dr. Ger Bergkamp, Head of the IUCN Water Programme. Over the last six days, several Forum sessions demonstrated the role of water management in meeting a range of societal objectives and the Millennium Development Goals. The Forum’s discussions showed that nature conservation, poverty reduction, disaster management, gender and many other issues are increasingly integrated into the way water is managed at the local and basin scale. “The tools and approaches that have been presented at the Forum, including the World Conservation Union’s experience of including all stakeholders in decision-making and assessing and implementing environmental flows, make water managers better equipped than ever to respond to societal demands,” said Dr. Bergkamp. Despite recent progress, water management in specific basins still faces major challenges in balancing the range of water uses. In many cases, the absence of political will and lack of capacity to engage stakeholders and invest in solutions mean that sustainable water management is still a distant dream. An important debate emerged at the Forum on the relationship between water and development. The recent World Bank paper “Water, growth and development” argues that investments in water infrastructure will automatically lead to development. During a series of debates organized by the Union, this central premise was questioned. “Overall, I think it is more likely that the dominant causality runs from income levels back to water resource development, or in other words that investments in water management follow when people have more money,” said Steve Hatfield-Dodds of CSIRO in Australia. His colleague Dr. Anthony Turton, Gibb-SERA Chair of IWRM (Integrated Water Resources Management), raised the point that one single approach does not work for the whole of the developing world. “Different countries will need a mix of investments in infrastructure and ‘soft’ infrastructure, such as capacities, knowledge and institutions. To say that investment in infrastructure leads to development does not do justice to the experience so far, or to the very different challenges developing countries face,” he said. The World Bank welcomed the opportunity to engage with practitioners and scientists during five debates, each with a regional focus, and said it would work with the World Conservation Union over the coming months to further develop its understanding of water and development. “It is great we can have this informal discourse. Many countries are now simply trying to survive, and we need to shift that to growth that is socially and environmentally sound. We are pleased to engage with the Union and others to find solutions to problems,” said Mr. David Grey, Senior Water Adviser of the World Bank. The willingness to engage and work together seemed to be a pervasive feature of the Forum. The spirit of cooperation and change are also visible in the implementation of environmental flows and the need to engage with all stakeholders to arrive at water management solutions. “We organized several sessions on the engagement with stakeholders and the implementation of improved flow regimes, and it was remarkable to see with which speed some countries are moving forward. In my view, it demonstrates an important change of attitude: water managers are now more then ever eager to engage, learn and find practical solutions in collaboration with others,” concluded John Dore of the World Conservation Union. For more information:
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