Toespraak van minister Schultz van Haegen bij het High-Level Panel on Water and Sustainable Development (World Water Forum)

Toespraak | 14-04-2015

Your Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,

Today we are discussing a crucial topic: what position should water occupy in our future development plans? And, more importantly: why? To illustrate the urgency I feel, I want to introduce you to two ordinary citizens.

The first one is Mr Patrick Angkon, a sixty-seven year old man. He lives in a town close to the Malaysian city of Kuching. Two months ago his town was flooded after heavy rainfall and Mr Angkon only managed to rescue his sofa, his television and his refrigerator. There has been flooding in his neighbourhood in the past – but only in the last couple of years, after the town’s rapid expansion. Many new houses were built, but no new drainage system.
So it couldn’t cope with the heavy rainfall of the past few years.

Mr Angkon’s story shows us that adequate water infrastructure is crucial for urban and economic development. It can both prevent damage and foster local development. Often this is not a political priority. And I can say this as a politicians: politicians most of the time have other priorities than investing in water infrastructure – certainly when all the infrastructure is underground and you can’t see it. So that is a real problem and we should find ways to convince other leaders to do better. Because in the end Mr Angkon has all he had. And it is very important to prevent another catastrophe like this.

The second person I’d like to introduce is Berita. She’s a mother of five in a small village in Malawi. Two months ago she was at home asleep, together with her husband and five children, when water from the nearby river flooded the village.
Luckily, her husband woke her up and the family survived by climbing a tree.

For the next two weeks their village was literally an island. And the family’s cornfield – the source of their food and income – was under water.

Berita and her husband gave refuge to relatives who lost their homes in the floods – thirteen  people living together in a house with only one bedroom.

And there was another problem: Berita was nine-months pregnant. Luckily, her little baby girl was born healthy. But she was born under the threat of flooding, and she faces an urgent shortage of clean water and sanitation.

And, ladies and gentlemen, in the same week that Berita’s baby was born, the World Economic Forum convened in Switzerland.

And it was there that political and business leaders concluded – for the first time – that Water was the most serious risk facing the world. That, at the same time, water was essential for future development. That was, I feel, a major breakthrough. Yet it received very little media attention. Even in my own country – a nation that has been living and struggling with water for over eight hundred years – there was no public debate about this issue.

So the issue of water is still invisible. And we should discuss this here in this panel: what can we do about it? All of us here share the same sense of urgency about water-related issues, there’s still a lot of work to be done, outside of this conference room. Citizens, entrepreneurs, CEOs and political leaders also need persuading. And the stories of real people can help us do that. Because they show exactly what the new Sustainable Development Goals are all about.

At the moment, we are spending huge amounts of time and effort negotiating the number of goals and the exact wording of the targets and sub-targets. A process that can make us see these goals as ends in themselves. Clearly, they are not.
We need to remind ourselves why we need them.

And to do that you only have to think about the situation of Berita and Mr Angkon. Like all of us, they want to live in safety and prosperity. That is our goal. The creation of increasingly resilient communities that are prepared for possible disasters.

Ladies and gentlemen, water connects all these goals. Because without water there will be no development – no development at all!

That is why The Netherlands strongly supports a dedicated SDG on Water – and reduction of disaster risks through one of the other SDG is very important as well.

We should also resist the temptation to treat the SDGs as a checklist we can simply tick off. Instead, they should be translated into projects that help us reach them. And that is exactly what this World Water Forum is about – implementation. It is time to act.

First, by improving water governance worldwide. Second, improving water financing worldwide. And third, defining practical projects that will help us advance in a practical way.

So how does The Netherlands contributes to this? In all of this, the Netherlands is committed to play its part. We have experienced the urgency of water issues for more than eight hundred years. We have translated this into an approach that combines water security and urban and spatial development in one integrated program. Even in one law, which we decided on last year – the Delta Act. And third, a special government fund – which is funded through the year 2050. So in the coming years we invest in all this: water safety and security, spatial planning…

For us, a sense of urgency about water issues is crucial and we know that other delta countries feel the same way. At the UN Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Japan last month, my government proposed setting up a worldwide Delta coalition. In this Coalition we want to share solutions and projects with other river deltas and add value to each other’s safety and development programs. We want to share our knowledge, but more importantly, we want to get down to work. I’m delighted that six other countries have already joined this coalition: Colombia, France, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam. And I look forward to welcoming more of you into this coalition.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Without enough clean water and sanitation and without flood protection, Berita and Mr Angkon will not have a sustainable future. Here at the World Water Forum we may easily agree on that. And we should be happy that many political and business leaders agree. But there’s a lot of work to be done to persuade others, and to include the business world into our search for leadership, action and finance.

This panel is an excellent opportunity to share plans, to increase the sense of urgency, both in our own societies and worldwide. I look forward to hearing your ideas and your plans for action.

Because after the agreement on the SDGs in September, we should be prepared for action. But more than anything, we should be driven by the need to live in safety and prosperity.

Thank you.