Here in Panama we are surrounded by water. You see it whether your sunning yourself on an island beach, jogging along the Causeway, or watching ships navigate through the Canal. It is hard to imagine that some 77 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean alone are deprived of access to potable water!

Tackling The Water Crisis

We take the supply of water for granted, and have been doing so for a long time. But now at the beginning of the third millennium it is critical, especially with regard to the inequities in water distribution in the Latin American and Caribbean region, that we change the way we manage water. We have to become better informed and share our experiences about the present water crisis. Above all, we have an obligation to preserve this resource and ensure that we transmit the knowledge needed for its management to our children - our future water consumers and environmental decision-makers. As Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations so aptly said “The centrality of freshwater in our lives cannot be overestimated.”

An important step forward in this regard was taken in Panama City last month, when the city hosted the Second Water Fair of Central America and the Caribbean. The week long Fair, held on November 24-30, at the Hotel Panama, is a biannual regional event that aims at promoting a new water culture and ethics through an ongoing dialogue of information exchange, knowledge and experiences between the various parties and consumers of water in order to achieve sustainable and integrated water resources management. The Fair was organized by the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC), Executive Secretary of the Water Fair in coordination with the National Environment Authority of the Republic of Panama (ANAM).

Improving Water Management

*The 2003 Water Fair brought to center stage the water-related progress attained in the implementation of the UN-Millennium Development Goals¨, said Emilio Sempris, Director of CATHALAC, ¨

*The Fair promoted integrated water resources management through stakeholder involvement at all levels of society of the Central American and the Caribbean region.” 

Sempris said that an alarming number of people lack access to this resource which is so intimately linked to health, poverty and inequality. In the last decade alone, the illnesses caused by the lack of potable water have resulted in the death of more children in the world than have all the armed conflicts since World War II. 

Some 300 participants, many experts in the field of water, from Central America and the Caribbean, South America and North America, attended the Fair. In addition, the public was invited to join in most of the sessions, especially important for those concerned with preserving our natural resources as well as those interested in ecology and education. It certainly was a wonderful learning experience about one of the great challenges facing humanity.