Toespraak Schultz van Haegen bij opening International Water Week

Toespraak | 05-11-2013

Your Royal Highness,
Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great honour for me to welcome you all to this International Water Week.
A week in which we will bring knowledge and expertise to the table from different continents, trades and walks of life.

To demonstrate why this is so important, I’d like to tell you the stories of three people:
an elderly lady from New York City,
a housewife from Indonesia,
and a young student from South Africa.

The first story is about Lorraine Gore, a ninety-year-old woman who lived in the Coney Island district of Brooklyn in New York City.

When Hurricane Sandy threatened to strike her neighbourhood just over a year ago, her friends urged her to leave.
She said no.
‘I’m tired,’ she told them, ‘I don’t want to go’.
Then the storm came, and Coney Island found itself under four feet of water.
When the flooding subsided, her friends went to look for her and found her in her apartment.
She hadn’t survived.
Lorraine Gore was one of Sandy’s three hundred victims in Cuba, Haiti and the United States, where the hurricane struck hardest.

Her tragic death reminds us that many cities in the world are located in vulnerable areas, like coasts and low-lying river deltas.
And that we have a responsibility to protect our communities and our economies.

To build resilient cities that can cope with rising sea levels and changing weather patterns.
To build defences like dykes and storm surge barriers where they are needed most.
To plan our urban areas in such a way that the most vulnerable places are not used for crowded neighbourhoods but for other functions instead.
And to make sure our disaster and evacuation plans save lives.

To that end, the Dutch water sector and the Dutch government are working closely with our friends and colleagues in the United States.
Sharing our knowledge to help build those resilient communities.
And we are eager to learn from their disaster management and rebuilding efforts.

Together, we can really make a difference.

My second story is about Tona, a forty-five year-old housewife.
She is a mother of three living in the Pluit district of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.

There is no piped water in her neighbourhood.
So every few days Tona has to queue to buy jerry cans of clean water from vendors, who sell it from trucks.
These vendors are a real ‘water mafia’, making Tona pay twenty to forty times more for her clean drinking water than the wealthiest residents of Jakarta pay for piped water.

So Tona spends the equivalent of 6 dollars every month on clean water.
That may not sound very expensive.
But for more than 100 million Indonesians like Tona, it takes three days of hard work to earn 6 dollars.

So Tona reminds us that many communities in the world still don’t have enough clean water or proper sanitation.
And that flood protection, water quality and water scarcity are interrelated problems.
Because Jakarta is on a vulnerable delta that suffers frequent flooding.

At the same time, the district where Tona lives is sinking, due to ground water extraction,
prompted in part by a lack of piped water.
She reminds us that we have a responsibility to share our riches, our knowledge and our experiences to help improve clean water supplies worldwide.

Because of people like Tona, the Dutch water sector is working in more than eighty countries around the world.
Not only in Indonesia, but in Thailand, Vietnam and Bangladesh as well.
And in Australia, Africa and Latin America.

We are eager to assist others in improving their water infrastructure, the quality of drinking water and the treatment of waste water.
And to learn from the experiences of others, so that we can improve our own knowledge too.

Again, together we can make a difference.

The third person I’d like to tell you about is Ludwick Marishane,
a twenty-one-year-old student from South Africa.
He grew up in a small village, where water was scarce.
Taking a bath was difficult and involved a lot of effort.
He began to hate it and thought: why can’t we invent something that will let us take a bath without water?
So at age seventeen he started researching.

He found out that five million South Africans do not have proper access to water and sanitation.

And that each year eight million people around the world go blind because they cannot wash their face every day.

Realising this made him determined to find a solution.
He studied the composition and other scientific details of lotions and creams and in the end invented a new formula.
He now has a patent for waterless bath gel.
It’s called DryBath and is now being used by people all over South Africa.

In 2011 Google named Ludwick one of the world’s brightest young minds.
In his TED talk he asks us:
‘I came up with this idea on a gravel road in a small village in South Africa, living on an allowance of barely 5 euros a week.
So what’s stopping you?’

This young student proves that simple and unusual thoughts can lead to great innovations.
And that great innovations can have a lasting impact on millions of people.
Ludwick urges us to think of new ways to tackle worldwide problems.
To invest in creativity, innovation and sustainability.

Here, again, we can make this difference together.

These three stories tell us why International Water Week is so important.
They show us that water is the most essential element for life on earth.

Water confronts us with the most important questions we and our children face:
how to ensure sufficient supplies of renewable energy, healthy food and clean water in the future.

But it’s also about the best and most innovative ways of treating waste water.
The importance of bringing sanitation to communities that still live without it.

And about making our growing cities sustainable and resilient in the face of climate change.

But to me, the heart of the matter is this: all these challenges are interconnected.
We can only solve them with solutions that are connected as well.

Not only through technical innovation and combining functions.
But also by smartly organising governance and financing to pave the way for creative and practical solutions.
A precondition that’s always been key in the Netherlands.

So I’m proud and honoured that my country is hosting this conference.
I can’t think of a better place to share integrated water solutions that lead to green economies.

But to me, this kind of cooperation is not enough.
That’s why I’m in favour of a special United Nations programme to enhance water safety around the world.
And to put water-related issues higher on the global political agenda.
If all the parties gathered here this week join forces and commit their expertise to this cause, we can really make a difference.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I hope that the stories of Lorraine, Tona and Ludwick will help us all to dedicate ourselves to new and innovative solutions.

And to improve water governance and financing within the water sector worldwide.

So let’s share as much knowledge as possible to help improve the lives of millions of people.

And to remind us that this conference is about a single goal:
enabling us and our children to live our lives in health, safety and prosperity.

I wish you all an enjoyable, productive and rewarding International Water Week.

Thank you very much.