World Water Week

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World Water Week is an annual event in Stockholm, Sweden. The organizer and host, the Stockholm International Water Institute, describes it as the leading annual global meeting place for capacity-building, partnership-building and follow-up on the implementation of international processes and programmes in water and development." World Water Week 2009 ran from August 16 to 22 with the theme "Accessing Water for the Common Good." It marked the first of a three-year-long World Water Week focus on "Water: Responding to Global Change." [1] World Water Week 2010 is scheduled for September 5 to 11 with the theme "The Water Quality Challenge - Prevention, Wise Use and Abatement".[1]

Sponsors and criticism

The sponsors of the 2009 World Water Week include Nestle, Black & Veatch, FEMSA Foundation and Sweco. [2]

"In 2007, the organisers of World Water Week faced heavy criticism and protest actions for allowing Nestle to sponsor the conference and for serving bottled water to the participants," wrote activist Olivier Hoedeman. In 2008, "the organisers have skipped the bottled water, but Nestle again features as the prime sponsor of the event. Swedish public television STV earlier this week reported on the controversy around Nestle's sponsorship, featuring an interview with America Vera Zavala of ATTAC Sweden. Zavala asks how the organisers of World Water Week could allow a corporation with such a problematic record and such clear interests in expanding unsustainable bottled water consumption to sponsor the conference." World Water Week's Anders Berntell responded by arguing "it is better to communicate with large firms than to exclude them." [3]

Water and climate change

The statement released at the end of World Water Week 2009 emphasized the inter-relation of water management and climate change issues, looking forward to the COP15 meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2009 in Denmark. "The importance of water must be properly and adequately reflected within the COP-15 agreement, and in processes beyond COP-15," read the World Water Week statement. "Water is a key medium through which climate change impacts will be felt." The statement also stressed the importance of water resources to efforts to adapt to a changing climate, and called for "an initial mobilization of finance to assist vulnerable, low income countries already affected by climate change, followed by the establishment of a well-resourced mechanism for funding adaptation as part of ongoing climate negotiations." [4]

Contact information

Website: worldwaterweek.org

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

References

  1. "World Water Week," Stockholm International Water Institute website, accessed August 2009.
  2. "Sponsors," World Water Week website, accessed August 2009.
  3. Olivier Hoedeman, "Controversy around Nestle sponsoring World Water Week 2008," Water justice reports from World Water Week, August 20, 2008.
  4. "Stockholm Statement," World Water Week, August 21, 2009.

External resources

External articles

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