environment" "
What’s Europe’s attitude to water? While the 3rd World Forum on Water is currently being held in Kyoto (Japan) (until 22 March), the international Committee of the world contract on water and the world Coalition have organized the first alternative Forum at Florence from 21 to 22 March; it will be attended by over 650 delegates from NGOs in some fifty countries throughout the world, including many Europeans. The aim of the alternative Forum is to “oppose the current tendency to consider water as a resource to be left to the free regulation of the market”, hence merchandise, despite the 1.5 billion people in this world who have no access to drinking water. We publish below a reflection focusing on the EU aspects of the problem by Stefan Lunte , of Comece (Commission of the Episcopates of the European Union), an expert on environmental questions. Even if in a Europe rich in water reserves we don’t always realize it, water is a fundamental element for life. Water occupies a special place in all religions, also in Christianity. In the Old Testament, water is inseparable from the Creation (“The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters”, Gen 1:2); we know the miracles connected with water, water as a sign of salvation, but also of misfortune. The lack of water often becomes the image of personal or political misfortune (“Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck”, Psalm 69:1). In the New Testament too we know miracles linked to water, both as a sign of the salvation obtained through Christ, and of the cataclysm of the end of time. In our Christian liturgy, as in Christian rituals, water plays an extremely important role. In view of this great religious and real significance, it is no surprise therefore that water has an important role to play also at the public level, i.e. in politics. In Europe, water policy exists not only at the local or national level, but also at the level of the European Union. At the level of the EU, water is seen both as an economic resource, whose distribution and treatment needs to be organized on the basis of the principle of cost effectiveness, and as a resource that needs to be protected for the common good. From this ecological point of view, a basic EU Directive on water has existed since 2000. It defines qualitative standards for underground and surface water; the maintenance of these standards is ensured thanks to the collaboration of the states through which major rivers flow (for example the basins of the Rhine, the Moselle and the Scheld), irrespective of political frontiers and taking into account all the “stake-holders” (for example the representatives of industry and agriculture, and the NGOs working in the environmental sector). But the EU has also formulated a water policy that goes beyond its own frontiers. In the course of the world summit on the environment in Johannesburg, held in August 2002, the European Commission presented an ambitious water-management programme on behalf of its member states. Its aim is to achieve the “the millennium objective”: that of reducing by half the number of people in the world who have no access to clean drinking water by 2015. In addition to this and other millennium objectives at the health-care and environmental levels, another objective set at Johannesburg was that of reducing by half the population deprived of systems for the treatment of discharge water, again by 2015. In view of experiences developed in the field of integrated water management, the EU has concluded partnership agreements with developing countries, called “Water for Life”. For example, in Africa there are some sixty watercourses that flow through more than one country; their management could be significantly improved through collaboration between all the states through which a particular river runs. So it’s useful to draw on Europe’s experience in the field of this form of political cooperation. Water is increasingly at the centre of geostrategic considerations. Many think that the lack of water is destined to become one of the major causes of political and military conflicts. For this reason, it will play an ever more important role also in the planning of EU foreign and security policy.
