Three royal princes were among the hundreds dignitaries to gather in Istanbul, Turkey for the World Water Forum. 
These royals were Prince Albert II of Monaco, Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, and Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito.
Held every three years, this summit is dedicated to finding ways to perserve and maintain global water resources. This year, the forum focused on climate change, the increasing demands for water and sanitation.
The sanitation issue was right up Crown Prince Willem-Alexander’s alley. As a Chairman of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board for Water and Sanitation, the Crown Prince gave a speech on the topic Tuesday at Istanbul’s Ciargan Palace.
Willem-Alexander opened his speech by mentioning the world economic crisis, and how it was not a reason to allow 40% of the world’s poor to continue to live in their conditions.
“It is precisely because of the financial crisis that I am also concerned about the world’s poorest people. How hard will they be hit? Achieving the Millennium Development Goals is already proving difficult. We need to work even harder to fulfil our promise. Will the world simply give up because it is harder now? I say, no, we must not give up.”
The Crown Prince then brought up how much clean water is needed in developing countries and the funds are lacking.
“We know that water and proper sanitation have direct effects on health, education, food production and poverty alleviation, but also are directly correlated to economic development. So how do we expect to achieve the MDGs [Millenium Development Goals] without decent water supplies and sanitation? The answer is, ladies and gentlemen, we can’t. We need far more money. We need to increase and/or leverage the investment.”
He went on to encourage governments and banks to find ways to fund the resources needed for clean water.
“Rather than fold our tents and throw up our hands, the challenge is for all of us to work together and become more innovative and creative. We must encourage individual countries to develop their debt markets, change their policies towards the local authorities’ responsibilities and provide them with the legal and administrative tools and training to develop, finance and manage their own infrastructure.”
“We all agree that the current financial crisis is unprecedented in our life times and calls for strong, collective measures to secure our economies and safeguard our social systems. However, the unanimous commitment made by world leaders in 2000 to fighting world poverty and achieving the millennium development goal targets by 2015 still needs to be followed up seriously and given the highest priority.”
A day earlier, Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito gave his keynote speech at the forum. It was then he cited the need for the global community to make efforts to prevent global warming as it is closely related to water-related issues in the world.
He then stressed the significance of the participants discussing global water issues freely and conveying their achievements to the world.
Naruhito has long been interested in issues involving water. This is his third time attending the World Water Forum.
