World Water Day 2011: Waste water is a liquid asset

Published on: 17/03/2011

Waste water is a liquid asset was the slogan that came up in a discussion on World Water Day 2011 during the last day of the international conference 'Sustainable Water Management in Cities in Zaragoza. On 17 December 2010 participants discussed WWD 2011 messages that UN-HABITAT had tabled. Participants gave their inputs to the messages by writing their comments on posters that were displayed for days in the corridors of the venue.

Here is a summary of the comments and inputs:

• Proposed slogan for the messages under the sanitation and pollution theme: waste water is a liquid asset.
• Education and capacity building were missing in the WWD 2011 messages provided by UN-HABITAT.
• There need to be concrete messages for what people can do at household level.
• We need fewer and simpler messages.
• Create the messages in such a way that they provide the solution.
• The word ‘local government’ is not reflected in the messages – they are the ones that have to make things happen at the local level.
• Financing needs to go to local governments, not central governments.

More inputs received on the messages will be made available in the conference highlights booklet.

UN-HABITAT is the lead UN agency for this year’s World Water Day that has as theme Water for Cities: Responding to the Urban Challenge, see their site http://www.worldwaterday2011.org/