UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday delivered an urgent call for the world to modify and safeguard water resources to avert conflict and ensure future global prosperity.
Water is"the most precious common good," and"needs to be at the center of the global political agenda," Guterres said at the end of a three-day UN conference that experts said held a measure of promise.
NGOs, governments and the private sector offered nearly 700 commitments before and during the three days of the UN gathering that drew some 10,000 participants. Pledges ranged from the construction of toilets to the restoration of 300,000 kilometers of degraded rivers and massive areas of wetlands.Less than a third of the commitments have funding said Charles Iceland of the World Resources Institute think tank, adding that about a third"are going to have substantial impact.
He said he was"pleasantly surprised," in part, at the variety of institutions and organizations now talking about water. Without a dedicated UN agency or global treaty,"water has no home here at the UN," said Henk Ovink, water envoy of the Netherlands, which was a coorganizer of the conference.
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