The triennial World Water Forum opened at the Dakar Arena in Diamniadio, on the outskirts of the Senegalese capital on Monday with an impassioned plea by President Macky Sall to end Africa’s thirst for this precious resource.
By Ibrahima Dione
Water, the source of life, is at the heart of the contemporary world’s challenges. Its intelligent management has become an imperative in a context of marked scarcity of the resource. The Dakar Forum on this issue is centered on the theme “Water security for peace and development.”
Speaking in the multipurpose hall of the Dakar Arena, for the launch of six days of discussions, President Macky Sall stressed that “water is, according to an old wisdom, at the beginning and end of life.”
However, the Senegalese head of state noted that the situation is not reassuring “if we judge by the indicators of the United Nations report on water published in March 2021.”
The report makes for dreary reading in that two out of five people in the world live in regions where water is scarce.
Women and girls spend more than 200 million hours a day searching for the precious resource.
The UN report also says, 2.1 billion people are forced to consume polluted water, while 80 percent of it is discharged into the environment without any treatment, endangering the health and lives of 4.5 billion people.
According to the report 90 percent of the 1,000 most devastating natural disasters since 1990 are water-related.
President Sall warns that if nothing is done the situation will get worse due to high population pressure, rapid urbanization and polluting industrial activities.
The 9th World Water Forum, the first in sub-Saharan Africa therefore presents an opportunity to sound the alarm on the gravity of the situation.
According to Sall who is the current chair of the African Union (AU), water issues must remain at the heart of the international agenda because “the lives and health of billions of people are at stake, but also the preservation of international peace and security.”
In his concluding remark, President Macky Sall explained that the magnitude of the challenges to be met gives meaning to the various themes of this edition of the largest global event related to water.
These include financing mechanisms and water governance, innovation in sanitation, the problem of drinking water in rural areas, scientific research to maximize the use of water and the reuse of wastewater.
ID/te/fss/as/APA