Crown Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands was one of the 2,500 dignitaries at the annual World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, which began on Monday. At the first meeting, the Crown Prince gave a speech about the dangers of sanitation, health and other water related issues.
“Sanitation is one of the biggest scandals of all times. It’s something that we have to put on our radar screen,” insisted Crown Prince Willem-Alexander.
He said some “7,500 people die every day due to this lack of sanitation,” pointing out that “the situation is the same as seven years ago.”
The Dutch Crown Prince even compared the listening dignitaries and renouned professors at the meeting to the athletes at the Olympics.
“I see similarities between these athletes and yourselves. You show the same commitment and willpower. And the Olympic Dream is also your dream: ‘to strive for a bright future of mankind’”, he said.
“Speaking of the Games, did you know that Beijing has invested more than eight billion US dollars in sewers and waste water treatment?”, the Crown Prince asked.
World Water Week is a discussion about ways to improve sanitation around the world, especially in poorer nations. The dignitaries at World Water Week include British professor John Anthony Allan, winner of the 2008 Stockholm Water Prize.
But the Dutch Crown Prince, who chairs the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, was one who had a lot to say about the issue.
Willem-Alexander talked about the massive improvements made in Asia and Latin America over sanitation, but said there was still ”a long way to go” and underlined the need to break taboos about sanitation.
Willem-Alexander noted improvements in Africa, although ‘the increase cannot keep pace with population growth. More people means more waste. It’s that simple,” he said in his opening remarks.
“I have spent this crucial year travelling all over the world”, the Prince said. “We are getting a lot of positive responses to our call for action. Governments and organisations are recognising sanitation issues and are showing their commitment to dealing with them by placing the subject high on the political agenda.”
He listed some of the remarkable results, and a less tangible and so perhaps more difficult, challenge: “The year has made great strides in breaking the sanitation taboo by bringing unmentionable subjects like toilets and feces out of the shadows and into the open. UNSGAB will continue to ‘call a spade a spade’ – or perhaps I should say ‘a toilet a toilet’”
Almost half of the world’s population lacks proper toilet facilities, a situation that can have dire consequences on public health and which poses a challenge to resolve since water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource.
Climate change, soaring population numbers and the rapid economic development of Asia and Africa have all put a strain on the world’s water supply.
Twenty percent of the planet’s population face water shortages, a figure that is expected to hit 30 percent by 2025, according to the United Nations which has declared 2008 the International Year of Sanitation.
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