By MARINA GROSSI, president of the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (CEBDS)
Brazil has always lived in a culture of water abundance, greatly encouraged by the fact that we hold 13% of the world's fresh water, poorly distributed among its geographic regions. This is compounded by poor management, which generates impressive figures with an overall average waste of treated water distribution of approximately 37%. Only 42.6% of sewage is treated in the country and there is a low level of forest coverage in the river basins, which affects the regulation of the input.
Even with these figures, and with the constant problems of scarcity in the Northeast Region, the attention of various sectors of society and the media was only drawn to the crisis in the Southeast in 2014 and 2015, and currently also in the Federal District. Although much alarm was raised, today the agenda has weakened, just when it should be a central theme, since water will be the resource most affected by climate change. The UN estimates that, by 2030, the deficit between demand and supply should reach 40%.
On the major global agendas, we have the Paris Agreement for the Climate Agenda and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the socio-environmental agenda. Water becomes an important connection, having not only a specific SDG, number 6 (water and sanitation for all), but also impacting 13 of the other 17, including poverty, health, employment, food, and nature protection.
Brazil has a great and unique opportunity to host the main global event on the subject, the 8th World Water Forum (WWF), which will take place in Brasília in 2018. We can be the main protagonists and proposers of an agenda that takes advantage of the arrival of great experts to seek practical solutions for water, through new technologies, economies of scale for existing ones, and public policies.
In Brazil, the 8th FMA created the Sustainability Focus Group, led by CEBDS and WWF Global (World Wildlife Fund), aiming to link its agenda to that of the Paris Agreement and respective SDGs, increasing the engagement of the business sector, while also listening to society. To fulfill this mission, some pre-events were held, such as the Business Engagement Water Forum, an action of the Sustainability Focus Group, and the recent Global Water Summit 2017, in partnership between CEBDS, Coca-Cola Brasil and the 8th FMA.
These events sought to understand the main challenges for the global and regional water agenda, for companies and society, and for the results expected from the 8th WFW. These meetings were very enlightening, because they showed that, despite the apparent lack of consensus among the various stakeholders in the agenda, the points raised by companies and civil society were common and indicate the need to increase intersectoral dialogue and the protagonism of collective actions over individual ones, breaking down barriers that prevent the construction of joint solutions.
Communication and the quality of information must be improved so that the real problem can be identified and lead to greater empowerment and social participation in the control and monitoring of the management of these resources. This will not be possible without the inclusion of youth, women, traditional and indigenous populations in the major discussions as part of the solution.
Collective participation and medium- and long-term commitments will also not be enough unless the results of actions, such as the 8th FMA, are oriented towards practical and immediate actions and solutions, preventing social problems and conflicts of interest from gaining scale, prioritizing good management. We need to share solutions and technologies that already exist, encouraging companies to put their know-how at the service of other organizations and society in general, making efforts to highlight good work, without neglecting innovation.
Other sensitive agendas also deserve to be considered, given the necessary sense of urgency and value for society regarding the use of water resources, such as pricing or the creation of a global summit of high-level leaders within the United Nations. The 8th WFG is an opportunity for the country that holds most of the world's water to stand out and lead an agenda that, in a short time, will be a social and economic factor as critical as, if not more so than, climate change.
**Article originally published in Correio Braziliense, this Monday (17/07).
