The Earth Times/WATER SUMMIT: Bonn will shape Johannesburg agenda. By Brij Khindaria

GENEVA--In his inaugural address as the first President of a resurgent South Africa, Nelson Mandela voiced a pragmatic dream in these words, "Let there be work,bread, water and salt for all". This dream expressed after a quarter century in apartheid's prisons voices the aspirations of nearly four fifths of humanity in both developed and developing countries, who survive at various levels of poverty ranging from the slums of New York and Rio de Janeiro to the shanty towns of Africa and South Asia.

Mandela's words express the core of sustainable development, stripped of the jargon of diplomats and experts. At the center of this core lies water, the substance of life without which work, bread and salt are meaningless. American humorist Tom Robbins may have rightly speculated that, "Human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another!"

Yet, water is the one life-giving and life-sustaining element that humanity continues to neglect. The quality of air has become a cause celèbre, but water languishes. Even the organizers of the International Conference on Freshwater due in Bonn, 3-7 December 2001, do not dare to call it more than "A silent emergency."

Such timidity is surprising because this emergency kills 6,000 people a day compared with 8,000 killed by HIV/AIDS, but receives far less attention. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has raised HIV/AIDS, which affects about 40 million people worldwide, into an international health and security crisis. In 2001, he created a major international program to deal with it.

But there is a greater crisis rooted in the 1.3 billion people who lack safe drinking water and the 2.4 billion whose lives are at risk because of poor sanitation. WHO and UNICEF tell us that two million children die each year because of unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and lack of hygiene, compared with about 500,000 who die of HIV/AIDS. What more does it take to move this issue from the backbenches of "a silent emergency" to the drum beats of the front row?

The UN system is treating water issues as technical matters for hydrology experts and health consultants, whereas they should be top priority political matters. How the family of nations will manage its common water resources in coming decades requires summit level decisions quickly. Based upon our current knowledge, it is not fanciful to assert that nations might fight wars within this century to protect water sources. Water might become a precious commodity sold through pipelines and tankers, as oil is today. Is it politically acceptable anywhere, especially in developing countries, that there might soon be water export cartels and spot markets when the lives of millions of children are at stake?

The situation will be much worse as global population rises from the current 6 billion to over 7 billion in 2015 and nearly 8 billion in 2025. Yet only $16 billion was spent on new water and sanitation facilities in the last ten years, compared with $11 billion a year spent on ice cream and $105 spent on alcohol in Europe, and $17 billion spent on pet food in the US.

Water supply, sanitation and hygiene are more than "collective goods" provided by public utilities. They affect each person, each family and each household. Abundant water and sufficient sanitation are meaningless even when available at no cost if individuals and families do not use them efficiently and without wastage. In any case, water infrastructures do not come cheap. Some estimates place investments needed at $180 billion annually. So, as the world's population grows, so must the sense of responsibility regarding the management and use of water resources.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic will slow down only if individuals learn to behave more responsibly towards their own health and that of others. Similarly, the water emergency will become manageable only if households, enterprises and farmers learn to take more responsibility for water conservation. Industries, particularly electricity generators, and farmers are the biggest users of water. Major efforts should focus on improving industrial and farming methods. The technologies are available but the political will has been lacking so far at both the national and global levels.

The Bonn conference could help to make a difference if it focuses more on the politics than on the technicalities of water issues. An additional 1.6 billion people will need access to water and over two billion will need sufficient sanitation by 2015, when world poverty levels must be halved under targets set at the UN Millennium Assembly in 2000. That is unlikely without a bold push at Bonn to move out of silent emergency oratory to a more raucous one.

Water has been on the international circuit for decades and the subject of many conferences, especially in the last 10 years as part of the sustainable development agenda. However, progress has been slight. The Bonn conference is an input into the World Summit for Sustainable Development planned for September 2002 at Johannesburg. The Summit will review progress 10 years after the Earth Summit at Rio. The five-year review in 1997 was dismal.

Much of the responsibility for making the Johannesburg Summit more pragmatic and meaningful rests upon the Bonn conference.

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