Impressions of the Third World Water Forum

Sunday, March 23rd

This is the last day of the Third World Water Forum. We plan to walk the philosopher’s path and the temples alongside it in the morning before heading off for the closing ceremony. First of all we visited some nice gardens adjacent the Nanzenji Temple. The temple complex has different buildings and served as a detached palace for Emperor Kameyama, who converted it to a Zen temple. We admire the famous sliding door paintings of tigers in a bamboo environment. Time flies when you are having fun. At 11.30 we realize that we cannot finish the philosopher’s path and so we decide to have a nice breakfast with noodle soup and coffee.

The closing ceremony is wonderful. The crown prince and princess of Japan are attending the event. The forum included over 24.000 participants from 182 countries. It made us aware that the problems of developing countries should be a priority and that collecting and sharing knowledge is of utmost importance. We therefore need to strengthen partnership between Northern and Southern parts of the globe to ensure for all humanity basic principles of water, as it is essential to all life on earth. Also stakeholders’ participation in all kind of forms is necessary.

This forum not only confirms the importance of actions but also to deliver upon the goals set in the past and present to ensure sustainable development.

Water Forum Flag in Kamo Gawa-river

It is up to all participants to play an important role, to determine where we are heading and how. Global Water Partnership will try to have water also on the agenda of the G8. In fact water should be on every community agenda.

Water remains a long-term issue. Therefore a new World Water Forum will be planned. Several countries have shown interest in hosting the Fourth Forum, including Mexico, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil and others. The selection of the host country will be made in June this year.

During the ceremony also three community projects were awarded with the Grand Prize of the Global Water Partnership for a total amount of $ 50.000,-. The winners were China, Nicaragua, and Uganda.

With a cracking of a sake barrel and a traditional Japanese drum performance the Water Forum came to an end and so is our report of this third World Water Forum. We hope you enjoyed it. We did certainly.

Closing statement Hasjimoto