Opening remarks by His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange, Chair of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB) on the occassion of the opening of the 10th meeting of UNSGAB in Japan
Tokyo, Japan, 26 May
Your Imperial Highness,
Vice Minister for Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism,
Vice Minister for the Environment;
Excellencies, Board members,
ladies and gentlemen,
Let me begin by thanking the Government of Japan for generously hosting our meetings here in Tokyo. Our Board has enjoyed a long and close friendship with Japan - one that was deepened further when His Imperial Highness accepted the role of Honorary President of the Board.
Our central mandate, the Hashimoto Action Plan, is, as you know, named after the late Ryutaro Hashimoto, our first Chairman and Japan's distinguished former prime minister. He led our Board with great skill and determination to speed up the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals' water and sanitation targets. As we push ahead to implement the Hashimoto Action Plan, we honour his legacy and look forward to continuing our valued friendship with this country.
I was last in Japan in December for the Asia-Pacific Water Summit in Beppu. At that Summit, forty-nine states demonstrated their commitment to the themes of water financing, water-related disaster management and water for development and ecosystems. It was an impressive and important act of water diplomacy.
In Beppu last year we also launched the International Year of Sanitation for this region. Since then, I have been delighted to see the Year of Sanitation flourishing around the world with education campaigns, people gathering for events in small communities and in capital cities, and pledges of financial support through mechanisms such as the Global Sanitation Fund.
In the Hashimoto Action Plan, the Board proposed an International Year of Sanitation. The aim was to boost the efforts to raise public awareness of the dreadful consequences of the sanitation crisis - human suffering, eroded dignity and degraded ecosystems - and what can be done about them. Public awareness, we believe, is essential, for it will force political leaders who simply do not know what it means to live without access to decent sanitation, to respond to the dismal fact that 2.6 billion people still lack access to sustainable hygienic solutions.
We have taken big strides in raising public awareness about sanitation. Now we must find ways to ensure that this increases access to safe sanitation at grassroots level. For we have only a few years to halve the number of people without access to safe sanitation, something we, the people of the United Nations, have committed ourselves to achieving.
We last gathered as a Board in Bogotá in November 2007. Allow me to highlight just some of the things we've been involved in as USGAB.
Shortly after we met in Bogotá, we officially launched the International Year of Sanitation in New York.
Then, in January, we were delighted to learn that the African Union had designated water and sanitation as the themes for its upcoming Summit. In Durban, at the African Conference on Sanitation, UNSGAB's message led to a breakthrough statement with sound basic principles on sanitation, now known as the eThekwini declaration. To help the African Union prepare for its Summit, our vice-Chair Ushi Eid, Michel Camdessus, Gerard Payen, Maria Mutagamba and I took part in the first African Water Week in Tunis, in March of this year.
This April, Ushi, Giorgio and I attended the Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly, where we urged countries to ratify the Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, a solid and useful framework for cooperation between riparian states on the use, management and protection of shared rivers and lakes.
Earlier this month, several of our members took part in the sixteenth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development in New York as keynote speakers and panel members, and we co-hosted several events. While in New York, we took the opportunity to visit the World Bank in Washington where we had an excellent discussion with the Bank's new president, Robert Zoellick, in particular about financing.
The coming months will continue at the same pace!
I understand that the EU is currently preparing an EU Agenda for Action on the MDGs. It will set 2010 as a target date for giving 275 million more people access to water - 70 million in Africa - and 400 million more people access to basic sanitation - 85 million of them living in Africa.
On June 14, the Zaragoza Expo on water and sustainable development will be launched in Spain. The African Union's Summit in Egypt will begin on June 24. And the G-8 leaders will gather this July in Japan, where we will be urging leaders to increase their commitment to water and sanitation. We will also participate in the World Water Week in Stockholm in August.
I have been invited to a UN High Level Meeting on Africa's Development Needs, to be held in New York on September 22. A few days later, on September 25, the Millennium Development Goal Summit will take place, where I will be participating as a keynote speaker on behalf of UNSGAB. Interestly enough in the session on health.
This Summit will give me a chance to provide input not only on reaching MDG 7 but also other targets with a crucial bearing on water and sanitation - MDG 2 on education, MDG 3 on gender equality and empowerment of woman, and MDG 5 on health. UNSGAB will also help to prepare the background documents for all roundtable sessions, to highlight the crosscutting effects of water and sanitation on almost all MDGs.
The UK, Japan, Tajikistan and the Netherlands are currently discussing the possibility of organising a special preparatory Side-event on Water and Sanitation on September 24, the day before the Summit, to which we will gladly contribute.
And, before we know it, the 2009 World Water Forum will be taking place in Istanbul.
It is most gratifying to see the water and sanitation agenda building up such international momentum. And yet keeping up with this momentum is a major challenge and stretches our limited resources!
My expectations for our tenth meeting are boldly optimistic. I believe we can make significant progress. One reason for my optimism is the fact that we are joined by three distinguished new Board members.
The first is Maria Mutagamba, Minister of Water for Uganda, and former President of the African Ministers' Council on Water. Maria is truly a superstar in the water world and has tirelessly promoted water issues in Africa. Welcome. The second is Omar Kabbaj, Moroccan diplomat and former president of the African Development Bank. Omar is one of the world's leading experts on financing development and government structures in Africa. Welcome.
The third is Roy Torkelson, Director at JPMorgan in New York City. Roy has extensive experience in financing structures for water management in the United States and has conducted numerous global studies. Welcome.
On behalf of all your fellow UNSGAB members, we are delighted to have you with us and we look forward to working closely with you.
It is now my great pleasure to formally introduce to you to Mr Kenzo Hiroki's designated successor as Secretary of the Board: Mr Francois Guerquin.
I will not review our agenda in detail, but I do want to note two especially critical dialogues that will be held tomorrow.
In the morning, we meet with representatives of several Japanese ministries. In the afternoon, we meet with African leaders and ministers to prepare for the upcoming TICAD IV, the G-8 and the African Union Summit, where I hope we can help prioritize the critical issues for water and sanitation.
In addition, I also urge the Hashimoto Action Plan working groups to use their time effectively to make concrete progress. I follow your work between the meetings with considerable interest and I hope you will be able to make great strides forward here in Tokyo.
I appreciate your attention. Thank you for coming mr Honorary President. And I should like to close by offering my sincere wishes for a productive session.
Thank you.