World Water Week: Focus on Latin America and the Caribbean

Name: World Water Week: Focus on Latin America and the Caribbean
Start: 2016-08-29T0:00:00-04:00
End: 2016-08-31T0:00:00-04:00
Location: Estocolmo

In the framework of the 2016 World Water Week, activities will take place focused on the challenges of managing the water resources of Latin America and the Caribbean

Event date:

August 29, 2016 - August 29, 2016

Despite the noteworthy advances achieved in past years, 34 million Latin Americans still do not have access to improved sources of water, while 106 million do not receive adequate sanitary services. This brings forward a series of challenges that the governments of the region, with the support of cooperation organizations and other entities, must face in coming years to guarantee access to quality and sustainable water and sanitation services for all Latin Americans.

In this respect, during the World Water Week, to be held in Stockholm, a series of activities will take place, related to the water sector in the region:

Water and Sanitation as a Business: Opportunities and Limitations. Offering better water and sanitation services is an opportunity for private companies. The market is huge: 2.4 billion people (close to 40 percent of the world population) lack access to basic sanitation -toilets or latrines-, and more than 700 million do not have improved sources of water, The private sector could play an essential role in supplying these services.
The Circular Economy of Water: Recycling of Residual Waters. The contemporary lineal economic model needs to be modified to alleviate the increasing pressures experienced by water resources. The transition toward a circular model of the economy is promising, as it would replace scarcity with abundance and would reduce the resources that are necessary for the water infrastructure. It would also help preserve the environment and the resources, and as the circular economy requires more labor, it would generate long term employment creation.
Toward a Green Infrastructure. Green infrastructure is a way to address the management of water, which protects, restores, and imitates its natural cycle. It implies the restoration of wetlands and other solutions based on nature, instead of building grey, new, and costly infrastructure. The rivers, streams, wetlands, floodplains, and forests, offer critical services such as clean water and protection from floods which should be considered essential components of our water infrastructure.
Implement the SDOs Related to Water: An inter-regional Dialogue. The year 2015 was the year of the concretion of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Between 1990 and 2012, 2.3 billion people throughout the world have obtained access to improved sources of water, and almost 2 billion to improved sanitation. However, more than 700 million people, mostly in Asia and Africa south of the Sahara lack improved sources of water, and close to 2.5 billion lack improved sanitation facilities. The current challenge for developing countries is to commit themselves with a new series of Sustainable Development Objectives (SDO), and water is central to this challenge.

In its objective of consolidating the implementation of the approach to the Comprehensive Management of Water Resources in the region, CAF, Development Bank of Latin America, will participate in the seminar "La Economía Circular del Agua: Reutilización de Aguas Residuales" The Circular Economy: Recycling of Residual Waters), and in the forum "Implementar los ODS Relacionados al Agua: un Diálogo Interregional" (Implementing the SDOs Related to Water: An Inter-Regional Dialogue) jointly with the Inter American Development Bank and other relevant institutions in the sector.