Speech by Commissioner Dimas on Progress on the EU Water Initiative - NY

Sommaire: April 21, 2005: Speech by Stavros Dimas, Member of the European Commission, responsible for Environment, on "Progress on the EU Water Initiative". EU Side Event at the CSD-13 (New York)

Dear Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen

First of all, I would like to welcome you all very much to this event.

Together with my colleagues from the European Union,

Mr. Serge Lepeltier, Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development of France,
Your Excellency Mr Adamantios Vassilakis, ambassador of Greece to the United Nations.

I will present to you the progress achieved and experiences gained with the EU's Water Initiative. We also have the pleasure to have with us a colleague from a partner country in Africa, Minister Maria Mutagamba from Uganda and Chair of the African Ministerial Council on Water.

But I would like to stress that this event is an interactive one - I hope that we can engage in a good discussion and I look forward to hearing your views.

We all know that water is central to sustainable development: solving water problems means progress across all pillars of sustainable development - economic, social and environmental. It is crucial to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals. No strategy for the reduction of poverty can ignore people's vital requirements for water and sanitation.

The main contribution of the EU to the achievement of the international water targets is the EU Water Initiative - 'Water for Life', which was launched in Johannesburg in 2002 along with partnership agreements between the EU and African countries and countries from Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia.

Since then, at the initiative of Greece, the EU Water Initiative has been extended to the Mediterranean - and under the stewardship of Spain and Portugal, to Latin America. All of us at this table have important stakes in the EU Water Initiative.

The starting point of the EU Water Initiative was that the water-related MDGs and WSSD targets cannot be achieved with conventional means. The business-as-usual approach failed to deliver during the water decade in the 1980s-1990s. Therefore, it was necessary to do something different. A more innovative approach was necessary.

The EU Water Initiative seeks to promote a new approach through which we can deliver in a more effective and efficient way. It requires the mobilisation of partners, water users and water industry, both in Europe and in partner countries, based on an open, multi-stakeholder process.

So, have we actually moved to deeds? The answer is a firm yes, even if much remains to be done. The EU stands by its commitments and alongside its partners to ensure that halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation becomes more than just target - but a reality!

Process-wise, we have been busy creating on the one hand a coherent and cost effective approach to the planning and delivery of our water related programmes and setting up on the other hand a multi-stakeholder process for implementing the Initiative.

We have put in place a dedicated organisation for the EU Water Initiative to meet our five key objectives - reinforcing political commitment, promoting better governance, improving coordination, encouraging regional cooperation, and catalyzing additional funding.

In addition to the regional components, the EU Water Initiative includes working groups on finance, as well as on the research contribution, to addressing problems of water management, and on monitoring and reporting.

The horizon of the EUWI is 2015. However, while a great deal of attention was paid over the first two years of the EUWI to setting in place the mechanisms that will ensure swift delivery, some important early results have also been achieved.

The most significant successes of the EUWI to date have been

(1) to develop a new approach to addressing the water challenge by pooling EU resources to increase efficiency;

(2) to take essential steps to mobilise a critical mass of funding for water;

(3) to convince partners that the water supply and sanitation objectives can only be met within the overall context of an integrated approach to water management at the basin level.

The EUWI has become emblematic of the EU's drive to pool resources to increase the efficiency of EU external action.

Through the EUWI, the EU has taken significant steps to move towards better coordination of assistance for water and sanitation, and considerable increases in efficiency. As the EU is the largest water donor in the world with more than €1.4 billion annually, this has the potential to generate remarkable results on the ground.

Through the EUWI, the EU has also been able to mobilise levels of funding capable of having a global impact: a major breakthrough in 2004 was the agreement, following proposals from the Commission, of the EU Council to establish the ACP-EU Water Facility, which could in a first phase be worth up to €500 million. Designed to have an important catalytic effect in generating additional funds for water and sanitation, it is innovative and responsive to demand.

By adopting this Facility, the EU sent a very strong signal to its partners on the significance of its commitment to addressing the water challenge. A first call for proposals under the Water Facility was launched in the fall of 2004. The response has been exceptional, with over 800 submissions from various state- and non-state actors, NGOs and Civil Society, worth more than €5 billion. The amount requested from the facility is some €2.75 billion, something that suggests that more than €2.25 billion of co-funding could be mobilised. Proposals are now in the process of being selected, with a view to getting projects up and running by summer 2005.

This is an impressive commitment for change. Moreover, this clearly makes the ACP-EU Water Facility a role model for future action.

Finally, the EUWI has clearly established that efforts to make progress on drinking water and sanitation must be achieved within the context of an integrated approach to water management (IWRM) at the basin level. IWRM at the basin level is at the centre of the implementation process of the EU Water Initiative and features prominently in work programmes developed for each of the regional components. It is not sustainable to solve short-term water needs by over abstracting groundwater or using river basins/wetlands as open drains.

In this context, the EU is keen to share with its partners its experience from the implementation of its Water Framework Directive (WFD). A joint process between the Water Framework Directive and the EU Water Initiative was successfully started in 2004, with an initial focus on the Mediterranean.

The Water Framework Directive is widely recognised as a breakthrough in water policy, with its focus on integrated water resources management. As part of this joint process, the most relevant principles and lessons learned from the implementation of the framework directive in Europe will be adapted to the EUWI in each region in response to demands from partner countries.

We should jointly pursue our efforts to continue to make concrete progress on the ground. It is my strong belief that the EU Water Initiative can make an important contribution to this process. Our discussion should help us see how to best take it further.

I look forward to a constructive and lively debate.

Ref: SP05-105EN
Source UE: Commission Européenne
UN forum:
Date: 21/4/2005

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