Water on the Menu in Stockholm This Week

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, August 22, 2005 (ENS) - Young water scientists from 27 countries arrived in Stockholm Sunday to compete for top honors in the International Stockholm Junior Water Prize competition. Held during the annual World Water Week in Stockholm, the competition is one of the many activities that enhance a growing understanding of how to make the most of increasingly scarce water resources.

The Stockholm Junior Water Prize is given annually for an outstanding water project by a young person or a small group of young people. With this prize, the competition seeks to inspire young people to a continue their engagement in water and related subjects.

The Junior Water Prize winner receives a US$5,000 award and a blue crystal sculpture in the shape of a water droplet. HRH Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden will present the prize on Tuesday during a ceremony in Stockholm.

The participating countries are Argentina, Australia, Benin, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, USA and Vietnam.

From South Africa, Pontso Moletsane, Motobele Motshodi and Sechaba Ramabenyane have entered an electrically operated automatic watering system. Their Nocturnal Hydro Minimizer inserts four electrodes into the ground to detect the moisture levels that determine when the water tap should be activated. It ensures that gardens are only watered when the soil has lost the amount of moisture needed by plants, saving limited water resources.

In many circumstances, water hyacinths are considered weeds, choking waterways and reducing fish populations, but they can take up arsenic, reducing its poisonous concentration in drinking water. (Photo credit unknown)

From Vietnam, Nguyen Thi Thu Trang devised a clay and paper treatment for Bay Mau Lake in Hanoi's Thong Nhat Park. The polluted lake serves as a catchment tank for rainwater, a reservoir for intake of wastewater, a wastewater treatment pond, and also as a recreation area. He found a clay-paper fiber mixture would serve as a the biological treatment of wastewater at the inlets, while lotus and water lilies could be planted to help clean the water.

The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) administers the Stockholm Junior Water Prize competition on behalf of the Stockholm Water Foundation, and the competition is sponsored globally by ITT Industries.

A life-giving stream runs through an English valley. (Photo courtesy FreeFoto)

The discussions will cover climate, corruption, financing, gender equity, large-scale infrastructure, sanitation, and water pollution.

A core activity of the annual World Water Week in Stockholm is the Stockholm Water Symposium with the theme Drainage Basin Management - Hard and Soft Solutions in Regional Development.

The soft path is based in human interaction. The Central American Handwashing Initiative is a good example. Partnerships among government departments, nongovernmental organizations, women’s groups, the private sector and the media contributed to effective hygiene promotion and behavioral changes that helped combat diarrheal disease and create public awareness.

The hard path is based in technology and economics. Improved water storage capacity, for instance, makes national economies more resilient to rainfall variability and boosts economic growth. In Kenya, improved resilience to the effects of floods and droughts could make its GDP grow annually at a rate of at least five to six percent – the amount needed in order to start effectively reducing poverty – rather than the current 2.4 percent annual growth rate.

These two primary ways of meeting future water and sanitation development needs – the soft path and the hard path - can both yield results separately and in combination.

Drought has many parts of India, Africa, China and North America in its grip. (Photo credit unknown)

In the plenary sessions and workshops, discussions will focus on three areas:

• Water resources development, conveyance, allocation and environmental flow
  
• Water supply and sanitation to cater for household requirements
  
• Water management, including pollution abatement, in industrial and food producing sectors

The 2005 Stockholm Water Prize best represents the multifaceted nature of the events, when India’s Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Sunita Narain accept the 15th jubilee award and US$150,000 on August 25 from His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

CSE presented a workshop on Sunday entitled "The Political Economy of Defecation: Tales of water and excreta" that featured Narain and other CSE experts sharing their experiences dealing with water and excreta management in cities.

The Delhi based group said there is an "emerging imperative for new ecosystem based approaches" in the field of water and sanitation in the context of poverty eradication and of sustainable development.

Slums in New Delhi. Poverty-stricken people have built huts near a big water pipe. 1996. (Photo by G. Bizzarri courtesy FAO)

CSE studies for individual cities in India such as Delhi, Chennai, and Bangalore suggest the need of new and innovative solutions to these old problems, they said.

The solutions are all built on the ecosystem principle of "closed loop." On one hand rainwater harvesting can augment water resources by recharging aquifers, and on the other hand, treated and recycled waste water can also be used to augment groundwater aquifers.

Today Narain and other CSE speakers present a workshop on rainwater harvesting as a tool to manage water sustainably. The CSE group maintains this technique has a "universal relevance."

The workshop highlights the partnership between Centre for Science and Environment and the Regional Land Management Unit within World Agroforestry Centre, two NGOs working in two different continents, Asia and Africa, that have been collaborating on rainwater harvesting for the past two years.

With more than 60 organizations and programs convening workshops, seminars and side events, the international consensus coming out of the World Water Week is intended to inform decisionmaking, both internationally and nationally.