UN meeting stresses key role of water management in tackling challenges of climate change

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday hosted a meeting on the links between water management and disaster risk reduction, stressing that floods, droughts and cyclones have caused more than 1 trillion U.S. dollars in damages and affected over 4 billion people since 1990.

"The poor and most vulnerable have suffered first and worst," Ban at the second meeting convened here as part of the UN High-Level Water and Sanitation Days 2015, a set of coordinated events taking place on Nov. 18-20 at UN Headquarters in New York.

"Issues of water and disaster resilience are so intimately related that it is impossible to think of one without the other," Ban said. "Yet too often we do, by thinking in silos and responding in fragmented ways. It is time to close these conceptual and operational gaps."

The events coincide with the final meeting of the secretary-general's Special Advisory Board on the issue.

The Wednesday meeting came just 12 days before the opening of the UN climate change conference, widely known as COP21, in Paris.

World leaders are expected to strive to develop a plan to mitigate global warming and its concomitant effects, which scientists say will include more devastating droughts, catastrophic flooding and destructive cyclones.

Ban highlighted the vital role that water management and disaster risk reduction play in ensuring food security, increased access to energy, and in tackling the challenges of rapid urbanization.

"Investments in climate resilience and disaster risk reduction can also help combat climate change, save lives and avoid the destruction of vital infrastructure," he said.

The secretary-general appealed for global commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the framework accord adopted in March at the Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, in Sendai, Japan, in which water management and disaster risk reduction are fully integrated.

"Member states have put in place a set of goals and targets that encourage cross-sectoral thinking in both the understanding of risks and our approach to managing them," he said. "They encourage whole of society efforts that engage science, civil society and the business community to work in partnership."

"Let us build on the Sendai Framework of Action and Agenda 2030. Let us make the most of the climate change conference that opens in Paris in just 12 days," he said.

"Solutions exist. We have the tools. Our challenge is to connect the dots and work in an integrated manner towards the goals we share," he added. Enditem