Léo Heller, new UN rapporteur for water: “My priority is to find concrete solutions to concrete problems”

Léo Heller, new UN rapporteur for water: "My priority is to find concrete solutions to concrete problems"

07/04/2015

For the new UN rapporteur for water, Léo Heller, the time has come to take action and accelerate the process that will ensure humanity universal access to quality water.

"In fact, the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation is a recent definition, approved in 2010 and ratified in 2013”, Explains Léo Heller, who made his first intervention outside his country, Brazil, at the UN-Water Annual Conference, held in Zaragoza between the 15 and the 17 last January.

At the Conference, although the goals for 2015 were focused on access to drinking water and basic sanitation services, sustainability criteria must now be incorporated into the new goals. In fact, 2015 World Water Day will focus on the theme "water and sustainable development".

According to the estimates of the last report of the Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) of the WHO and UNICEF, in December of 2015 there would still be 547 millions of people without access to improved drinking water (protected from external contamination) and there would still be 2.400 million people without access to an improved sanitation facility (without contact with human excreta).

In this regard, in Zaragoza it has been emphasized that we must not leave the poorest to the end. The objective must be to reach the most disadvantaged and reduce inequalities.

For Heller, the concept has been assumed very late and believes that countries have to be given time to assimilate and use it. "Before there was much talk about universalization, about the process to reach it in a more theoretical way. It is time to move on to practice, to action on the ground, to really take into account the most vulnerable populations, to accelerate the process so that we can all have access to drinking water and sanitation."

In today's world, we have not yet learned to value water as an essential resource for human life. Nor have we learned to manage it as a scarce resource.

The goal for 2015 was to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to drinking water and basic sanitation services. It could not be achieved, but it would be possible to do so for 2030 (date set by the UN General Assembly to achieve water objectives) if developing countries invest at least 1% of GDP in infrastructure, something that Josefina Maestu, director of the United Nations Office for the Decade of Water, said in his speech. That 1% would serve to achieve efficient universal access with better management, reduce the environmental impact of natural disasters, eliminate toxic spills (80% of them are disposed of without purification) and improve ecosystems.

There are different ways for the UN to get governments involved in achieving those purposes. "Discussions about the new sustainable development goals are one of them. How to introduce in this area the disparities between the different social groups"Explains Heller, for whom the experience of the Millennium Development Goals has been interesting. "We see which countries comply, which try and which do not. National policies are necessary to bring human rights to reality as such, but they are not the only ones".

The realities are different in each country and for each government: “The times in which the advances occur are also different", Clarifies the new rapporteur. The situation of the most disadvantaged countries is more worrisome, but that does not mean that the situation of the developed countries is solved. "In fact, in some there is a risk of regression"He says. Detroit is an example of this, the process of deindustrialization that is suffering has made a high percentage of the population have been disconnected from the service because they had no ability to pay and the rates began to skyrocket.

"Situations like that also deserve our attention. My priority will not be a place, but to look for concrete solutions to very concrete and widespread problems. For example, that financial access of the population to drinking water" Today, 770 millions of people do not have it. 2.500 lack adequate sanitation. Quality is also imposed as a great challenge for the urbanized areas of poor countries and as an element of improvement in some of the developed ones. "You have to look for affordable models and technological solutions that produce real equity between north and south", Concludes Heller.

Source: UN.org