Remarks by Achim Steiner,
UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive
Director at Launch of Global Environment
Outlook(GEO) on Water Resources in Brazil
Report - Agencia Nacional de Aguas (ANA)—Brasilia
- 5 March 2007—Mr. Jose Machado, President
of the Agencia Nacional de Aguas and members
of his team, representatives of Brazil´s
Ministry of the Environment, distinguished
guests, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues
and friends.
We meet here to launch this important report
on the Brazil´s water resources and
how best to manage them over the coming
years and decades.
The significance of the report lies not
just in the findings and they way they are
applied. It also lies in the way this report
was compiled.
It has been a truly collaborative effort
bringing together so many partners from
the Ministry, ANA, UNEP´s office in
Brazil, UNEP´s regional unit of the
Division of Early Warning and Assessment
and countless Brazilian institutions and
specialists.
If we are to overcome the challenges facing
this planet and its people, there is no
room anymore for narrow self-interest or
single interest group solutions.
Partnership, mutual self-interest, cooperation
and collaboration are our allies—allies
that should and must operate across all
government ministries, agencies, the private
sector, the scientific community, civil
society, multilateral organizations and
individuals.
The inclusiveness of the GEO process, particularly
as evidenced and embraced in Brazil, is
a real beacon on our road to building knowledge
at the national and regional level--knowledge
upon which we can build the firm foundations
for capacity building and for well-targeted
action.
It is cooperation mirrored in Brazil´s
evolving water management initiatives such
as those on river basins, where the Federal
and state level to the private sector and
non- governmental organizations are represented.
Water is central to all life on Earth and
thus is central too to UNEP´s work.
You can find people today who, rather like
those who think milk comes from a carton,
are convinced that water comes from the
tap.
This report and others like the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, make it clear that
water comes from nature-- from forests and
other natural features that play their role
in managing the world´s watersheds.
How we manage our ecosystems and the services
they provide will ultimately determine our
ability to manage water supplies and our
chances of meeting the Millennium Development
Goals by 2015 and beyond.
Water is not a scarce resource in Brazil.
The report points out that at the present
level of demand, the country has enough
water to supply a population of up to 32
billion people or five times the current
global population.
It is a finding that is echoed in many
parts of the world—Africa has enough water
falling from the skies to supply the water
needs of 13 billion people.
Yet like Brazil and like many countries
and regions, it is the unevenness of water
supplies that is one challenge and the mismanagement
that is the other.
The report outlines clear directions on
how management might be improved. The imbalance
between water scarce regions and water rich
ones raises in some ways more complicated
questions.
One way forward may be water transfers
being looked at in Brazil and indeed in
other rapidly developing countries like
India.
But there is need for a precautionary approach
and for honest environmental impact assessments.
One thing we all too often learn, sometimes
when it is too late is that making narrow
economic and social choices can mask the
wider environmental and economic impacts
that may be hard if not impossible to reverse.
It is a similar argument for dams. Sometimes
they may seem the obvious and sensible way
of generating power and collecting water
supplies for irrigation and drinking water.
Wider costings may however lead to a different
conclusion. If we factor in the economic
losses as a result of say land and ecosystems
destroyed, impact on fisheries down stream
and emissions of greenhouse gases like methane
from submerged vegetation, then the risks
might out weight the rewards.
And there may be other options some of
which are smaller scale. In China and some
developed countries like Germany and Japan,
there has been a lot of investment in small-scale
water collection systems known as rainwater
harvesting.
Many million of people in China rely on
rainwater harvesting for drinking water
and back-up irrigation.
More efficient irrigation systems in themselves
can cut demand significantly and there are
the choices to be made in terms of the crops
or produce being produced.
Indeed this may have significance not just
for domestic water management but also for
future exports.
Consumers in developed and developing countries
are becoming increasingly interested in
the environmental footprint of goods and
products.
Take climate for example. Some consumers
are asking for, and supermarkets in Europe
are planning to supply, labels that explain
how much carbon was generated in getting
the crops to market.
Do not be surprised if water is next. The
world today grows twice as much food as
it did in the 1970s, keeping pace with population
growth. But to do that we take three times
more water from rivers and underground reserves.
Few realize how much water it takes to
get through the day. On average, we drink
no more than five litres. Even after washing
and flushing the toilet and hosing the car
Europeans get through only about 150litres
per head.
However, it takes it takes 2000 to 5000
litres of water to grow 1kg of rice. That
is more water than many households use in
a week. It takes 1000 litres, one tonne
of water, to grow 1kg of wheat and 500 litres
for 1kg of potatoes.
When you start feeding grain to livestock
for animal products such as meat and milk,
the numbers become yet more startling. It
takes 11,000 litres to grow the feed for
enough cow to make a hamburger; and 2000
to 4000 litres for that cow to fill its
udders with one litre of milk.
Every teaspoonful of sugar in your coffee
requires 50 cups of water to grow it. Which
is a lot, but not as much as the 140 litres
of water (or 1120 cups) needed to grow the
coffee.
I am clearly not advocating that we stop
growing rice or drinking coffee. But I am
suggesting that there may be more intelligent,
less water-consuming ways, of doing it ranging
from growing methods, matching crops with
different climates and the varieties chosen
in the first place.
For example there are some scientists who
have concluded that much of the rice the
world needs could be grown in dry rather
than the traditional wet paddy field conditions.
Ladies and gentlemen, the significance
of all this takes on extra significance
in 2007—a year in which climate change is
striking a chord everywhere.
I know that last week Brazil launched a
national climate assessment that spelt out
significant changes likely to occur across
biodiversity to water resources if the world
fails to act on this global threat.
The time to act is now, for as the recently
leaked third Working Group of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC) spells out
in bleakly honest terms, we may have far
less than a generation to act—we may have
less than two decades to avoid ´dangerous
climate change´´.
Water resources can be managed at a national
and regional level but that management will
be increasingly challenged and less reliable
in a climate changed world.
The spirit behind the GEO Water Resources
Brazil report was one of cooperation--—
combating climate change requires cooperation
at every level and common purpose among
all governments and all sectors of this
global society.
In any community and in all societies,
there are those that must shoulder the responsibility
more than others—there are those who by
virtue of their legacy and contribution
to the problem, or by virtue of their wealth,
must do more than other segments.
So it must be with our global community
of nations and climate change. Rich countries,
responsible for the lion´s share of
the greenhouse gas emissions, must rise
first and furthest to the challenge. But
that does not mean that others cannot show
leadership too and join in common cause
against a threat that is both global and
national.
Climate change was last week described
by Ban Ki moon, the UN Secretary-General
as being as dangerous as war. There is often
talk about water wars too.
A study by UNEP shows that there is cause
for optimism here. Over four thousand five
hundred years, few water wars have occurred
and when tensions have emerged, most parties
eventually cooperate.
Since 1948 only 37 incidents of acute conflicts
over water, such as those involving violence,
have occurred most of which have been in
the Middle East.
There is no reason for complacency. There
are still river basins without trans boundary
treaties and many more whose treaties most
be kept under constant review.
Underground water supplies, like the one
the stretches from southern Brazil to Argentina,
should also reflect modern trans boundary
management and cooperative trans boundary
agreements lest they also raise the specter
of water wars—out of sight should not mean
out of mind.
So there is much to do to ensure that future
water wars do not in fact occur. But if
the past is our guide, then we can cooperate
regionally and as an international community
on water.
If we can do that then there is a real
chance we can cooperate with equal success
on the over arching threat of climate change.
I sincerely believe that 2007 is the window
of opportunity, when we have a chance to
damp down the fire we have put under the
planet.
If political leadership can be shown by
all, then I am sure we will look back on
this year as a watershed when the science
of climate change was matched by a climate
of change in the willingness to act.
+ More
Statement by Steiner on the Publication
of a Paper on Montreal Protocol & Climate
Change
Statement by Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary
General and UN Environment Programme Executive
Director, on the Publication of the Scientific
Paper The Importance of the Montreal Protocol
in Protecting Climate Change - 5 March 2007I
- I welcome today's publication of research
underlining the important contribution to
combating climate change made by the parallel
push to reduce chemicals that damage the
ozone layerthe Earths protective shield.
The climate dimension of the Montreal Protocol
is a story that is not widely known, but
one that deserves more consideration by
the communities involved in ozone and climate
protection.
I believe the study, in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, underscores
the simple fact that well-devised action
to address one area of environmental concern
can have multiple environmental benefits
across numerous others.
It also highlights that calculating the
costs of environmental action, based on
narrow economic criteria, often fails to
capture the wider economic opportunities
and benefits that are likely to emerge.
The scientists from the Netherlands and
the United States have for the first time
in detail calculated the contribution to
climate protection from the phasing out
and reduction of chemicals like chloroflurocarbons
(CFCs).
The chemicals, once commonplace in products
like hair sprays and fridges, deplete the
thin layer of ozone gas that filters out
damaging levels of ultra violet light.
CFCs, along with a wide range of other
ozone depleting substances, are being successfully
phased out, reduced and controlled under
the 1987 Montreal Protocol established under
the auspices of UNEP. A Multilateral Fund
has been created to help developing countries
meet their compliance commitments with this
treaty.
The researchers point out that repair of
the ozone layer is not the only benefit
emerging from the Montreal treaty.
They calculate that, over the period 11000
to 2010, the level of reductions will also
equate in climate terms to the equivalent
of eight Gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a
year.
In comparison the Kyoto Protocolthe climate
emissions reductions treaty and widely understood
as a first step towards even bigger emission
reductions necessaryis scheduled to deliver
cuts in greenhouse gases equivalent to two
Gigatonnes annually over the same period.
Guus Velders of MNP, the Netherlands Environmental
Assessment Agency, and colleagues believe
the ozone layer protection treaty can contribute
even more to combating climate change.
Some of the chemicals, introduced as alternatives
to CFCs, contribute to climate change themselves,
while others contribute through chemical
byproducts during the the production process.
Such chemicals include HCFCs and HFCs.
The researchers suggest that a combination
of accelerated phase-out, the introduction
of further alternatives with low greenhouse
gas characteristics and relatively small
changes in industrial practises, could deliver
further climate benefits equivalent to somewhere
over one Gigatones of carbon dioxide.
When this climate dimension is taken into
consideration, the Montreal Protocol - which
is already considered to be a highly-effective
treaty that is achieving its objective is
even more cost-effective because of this
collateral climate benefit. This is a particularly
important message coming as it does during
2007, a year that marks both the 20th Anniversary
of the signing of the Montreal Protocol
and the 10th Anniversary of the signing
of the Kyoto Protocol.
I believe these kinds of findings should
spur governments, business, civil society
and individuals to look at the wider impacts
of their decisions including the costs and
the benefits.
Take health hazardous heavy metals like
mercury for example. Research indicates
that the biggest single contributor to new
sources of mercury in the global environment
and the food chain comes from the increased
burning of coal.
There is also some evidence that rising
temperatures in freshwaters like lakes is
causing old mercury, locked away in sediments,
to be mobilized and released back into the
environment.
Thus reducing emissions from coal-fired
power stations can not only contribute to
combating climate change but also contribute
directly and indirectly to reducing the
serious threats from mercury pollution.
I know and am sure that there are many,
many more example of these virtuous circles
positive cost benefit case studiesthat have
been brought into sharp focus by this new
research on the climate benefits of combating
damage to the ozone layer.
Notes to Editors
Web address of the paper The importance
of the Montreal Protocol in protecting the
climate, Guus J.M.Velders, Stephen O. Andersen,
John S Daniel, David W. Fahey, Mack McFarland.
http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/earthscience.php
MEDIA CONTACT : Anneke Oosterhuis, Press
Office (Netherlands Environmental Assessment
Agency), Bilthoven, the Netherlands;
Web address of Montreal Protocol
http:www.ozoneinfo@unep.org:
Nick Nuttall, UNEP Spokesperson
