Europe’s leaders unite to fight water scarcity and depletion

by (author unknown), Blue Gold, European Water Partnership Blog on Feb 06, 2008

Slovenia, Europe’s current presidency, has issued a statement backing the European Water Partnership’s efforts to create a European Water Stewardship Council and launch a water awareness program. The statement reads:


The Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning of the Republic of

Slovenia welcomes the water stewardship and accompanying water

awareness programme (Aquawareness) initiated by the European Water

Partnership (EWP). These programmes promote principles of advanced

sustainable water management, following the Commission’s

Communication on water scarcity and droughts.


Engaging global actors in strategic partnerships, water stewardship aims

to become the most widely adopted sustainable water instrument crossing

public, private and sectoral barriers. It will establish a set of common

values shared by stakeholders including consumers, industry, agriculture,

financiers, cities and government, to modernize and achieve profound

changes in behaviour and practices.


Fully supporting this action, the Ministry of Environment and Spatial

Planning of the Republic of Slovenia is participating in the high level

debate organised by the European Water Partnership in cooperation with

the European Parliament in February 2008 and beyond. The Ministry of

Environment and Spatial Planning of the Republic of Slovenia encourages

all stakeholders particularly the private sector to actively engage in the

programme.


The principles of water stewardship recognize that the challenges of

sustainability require voluntary schemes at a global level, in addition to

existing legal frameworks.


The European Parliament represented by the rapporteur Dr. Richard

Seeber wishes to react to the communication of the European Commission

with a broad based initiative report which looks at the key strategic

challenges. For this purpose the European Parliament started a

cooperation with the European Water Partnership and organizes a first

high level debate which will discuss the direction of the initiative report.

This high level debate will take place on Wednesday, 13th February 2008

starting at 5pm in the European Parliament, rue Wiertz 60, B-1047

Brussels, Belgium.


Contact persons:

For the Slovene Presidency

Mrs. Darija Dolenc

Head of Public Relations Service

Tel: 00 386 1 478 7493

Fax: 00 386 1 478 7415

E-mail:


For EWP

Ms. Agnes Biesiekierska

Project Manager

Tel: 0032 2 735 06 81

Fax: 0032 2 735 06 82

Email: