Water for Sustainable Development - Best Practices and the Next Generation

Excellencies,
Dear colleagues,

Thank you to the Asia-Pacific Water Forum and the City of Kumamoto for convening this Summit. I am pleased to participate.      

People in Kumamoto enjoy some of the cleanest, highest quality water in the world. I applaud the constant efforts by the Government of Japan to improve water quality throughout the country. Through collaboration with a number of actors, these efforts are accelerating progress towards achieving the water-related Sustainable Development Goals, and to promoting a resilient, inclusive and sustainable society in the Asia-Pacific region.

Yet, around the world, three in ten of the world’s population still lack access to safe drinking water at home.  Six in ten live without safely managed sanitation services. Millions of lives are lost each year as a result.

With just eight years to go to the deadline of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we are seriously off-track to achieve the sixth Sustainable Development Goal of clean water and sanitation for all.

 The COVID-19 pandemic has driven inequalities even deeper and is pushing us even further behind.

Excellencies,

Water is more than a goal. It is a human right, fundamental to human dignity. It is life itself. It is indivisible from all other human rights and indispensable to sustainable development.

Last year, the Human Rights Council adopted a historic resolution recognizing the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. A healthy environment – now and in the future – is the foundation for the enjoyment of many human rights, including water.

The double crises of climate change and the pandemic are having a particularly severe impact on people who face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, including women and children who live in poverty, minorities and indigenous peoples, older people, people with disabilities and migrants.

In recovering from the pandemic, Governments need to adopt strong, transformative measures to heighten the powerful protections that human-rights-based policies can provide.

They need to promote public health and public confidence in official guidance.

When policies are based on human rights, Governments can achieve the goal of creating greater social and economic resilience.

Reinvesting in economic and social rights such as water and sanitation - as well as in education, health and social protection - is key for building this resilience and fostering equality and sustainable growth.

Above all, we must invest in people themselves, valuing their contributions and empowering them as active participants in their own sustainable development. This is at the heart of the UN Secretary-General’s vision in Our Common Agenda, a renewed social contract anchored in human rights.

Dear colleagues,

The pandemic has reminded us that we live on a small planet, where none of us are isolated from the problems in our global community.

We must work together towards a more stable, equitable and sustainable future.

Next year, we gather for the most important water conference in a generation: the UN 2023 Water Conference. This will be a watershed moment not only for the water sector, but for everyone working in sustainable development, to agree on concrete actions for the future of our people, our planet and our prosperity. This Asia-Pacific Water Summit is an important marker on the road to next year’s conference. 

My Office is committed to supporting your efforts to make the human rights to water and sanitation a reality for everyone.

I wish you successful deliberations.

Thank you.