This
is a UNED FORUM summary of stakeholder background papers, created for
the preparatory process only. Please read in conjunction with the full
papers submitted by the stakeholder groups.
Context
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Local Government
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Trade Unions
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Business
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NGOs & Women
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Water
Services should contribute to economic, social and human
development of people – not just technical perfection or cost
efficiency.
Action
requires a bottom-up approach, multi-stakeholder partnerships,
integrated water resources & services planning
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Emphasis
on Workplace assessments to improve water uses in production and
personal consumption of workers.
Focus on
social and employment assessments to tackle poverty and prepare
for multistakeholder transition planning.
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Goal
is water security where every person has enough affordable clean
water and ecosystems are protected or enhanced.
Investment
is identified as the most direct route.
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Conditions
of access must be acceptable and affordable to local people and
conform to environmental objectives
Water has
a particularly strong gender dimension
Integrated
global resource allocation means poorer countries and communities
have most difficulty establishing a claim to water
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Water–
poverty nexus fundamental
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Water-energy
&
Poverty-Employment as RIO+10
nexus themes
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Water-poverty
nexus is a priority
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Water –
poverty nexus fundamental (Rio + 10)
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Finance
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Local Government
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Trade Unions
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Business & Industry
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NGOs and Women
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Top- down
privatisation ® problems of equity, governance and security.
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Private
sector investment requires strong, efficient, transparent
government, sound economic framework, independent
regulatory regime and an orderly stable society.
Risk
management needs addressing.
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Top-down
imposition of privatised water services is unacceptable. Must
always critically assess local needs and situation first.
Understand
and support the existing informal private sector.
Regulatory
control of private sector is essential.
Regulations
to be developed through participatory, transparent, gender
balanced mechanisms.
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Focus on
making better use of available resources.
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Rehabilitate
existing structures rather than new investments and use
cost-saving technologies.
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Financial
inflows must respect national sustainable development strategies.
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Centralised
‘western’ model of water supply and sanitation are costly to
maintain. Instead priority should be to employ a wider selection
of technologies and locally affordable approaches.
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Investment
priorities are: -
Distribution
systems.
Efficient
irrigation services.
Clean up
of contaminated waters.
Protect
surface waters.
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Priority
is to deliver water and sanitation services to poor and landless
Focus
must re-orientate to micro-scale projects and local level of
management
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Full cost
recovery supported, but must be both collective and individual and
structured to allow basic needs to be met.
Waste and
pollution must bear an economic cost
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A social
tariff policy to promote access to water services and finance
investment and operating costs
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Gradual
and transparent transition to full cost recovery for all countries
by 2015 and structured to protect the poor
Full cost
pricing to improve efficiency, provide resources to reinvest,
encourage demand management and promote pollution control and
prevention
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Greater
water efficiency might be achieved by full cost recovery but the
price must relate to nature of consumption and be structured to
protect the poor
Bear
costs collectively
Full cost
transparency, classification of water price and to account for
environmental costs
Socio-economic
implications of full cost recovery must be debated in public
Locally
experience impact of demand management tools need to be assessed
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Flexible
funding arrangements which encourage community involvement
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Supports
participatory approach as a principle for investment
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Defining
and monitoring use of financial resources must be participatory
Emphasis
on transparency, democratic and gender balanced mechanisms
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Donors
must invest in appropriate technologies for long-term
sustainability (e.g. solar pumps, rainwater harvesting).
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Donors
should assist countries with IWRM strategy
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Donors
must make access to water a development priority
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Debt
cancellation necessary to release funds. Governments must honour
existing agreements (e.g. 20/20 initiative)
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Governments
should facilitate access to credit and encourage micro-credit
development for investment at the community level
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Private
profits should be limited due to monopolistic and social aspect of
service.
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Understand
financial flows and introduce financial instruments to support
transition
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Institutional
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Local Government
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Trade Unions
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Business
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NGOs
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Accountability
and transparency must be guaranteed by a public authority or
recognised indigenous authority.
Regulations
must define and protect socio-cultural and ecological values.
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Whether
under private or public control, water must always retain the
character of a public service.
Public
authorities must maintain accountability for water services and
management.
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Regulatory
frameworks and dispute settlement procedures that encourage good
governance will thereby promote private sector activity.
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Private
control of water must be regulated.
Regulations
must be developed in a participatory, gender balanced, transparent
way
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Participatory
management is key.
Participation
requires full information,
Civic
rights and new institutional mechanisms
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Involve
workers in monitoring and reporting of workplace activities and in
implementation.
Stakeholder
engagement at all levels.
International
Water Code as means of establishing consensus on water
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Cooperation
and participation are key
Review
local points of entry for participatory decision-making
Participation
should be iterative
Participation
requires full, free and equal access to information and decision
making
A
legislative framework for river basin management could formalise
civil society participation.
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Need to
demonstrate to workers that the transition to sustainable
development will improve their socio-economic security.
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Improve
awareness of the value of water resources and their use for
sustainable development.
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Access to
water is a fundamental human right
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Access to
water is a fundamental human right
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Local
capacity building for local authorities and communities
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Local
decision- making and control
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Local
capacity building
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Where
water is scarce, government to formalise and clarify property
rights for water
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Need for
more equitable systems of land tenure to guarantee for local
access, particularly for women.
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Need for
high level political commitment to respond to locally developed
needs and priorities
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Need for
high level political commitment to respond to locally developed
needs and priorities
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Formulate
and implement sub-national and national and regional IWRM
strategies
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Continue
with Agenda 21 recommendations for each country to adopt a
national water policy
National
governments must develop a clear strategy to guide selection of
water related projects
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Institutional
reform to reflect crosscutting nature of water from the social, to
economic to technical.
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Institutions
must be accessible by local agents; working together with local
agents to define consumption patterns
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Capacity
building needs time, resources, support and skilled facilitators
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Make
transition plans for change
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Use
workplace and TU capacity to educate for public awareness. Engage
with workers to change
workplace production and personal consumption.
Use
public health and sanitation links with Occuppational health
structures and springboards to workplace action
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Improve
coordinatation of policy making by global institutions.
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Coordinate
national and international policies and take water impacts into
account.
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Establish
a standing committee of ILO to deal with water (alongside
electricity & gas)
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Infrastructure
development is critical for inclusion/exclusion and ensuring
equitable allocation.
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Operational
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Local Government
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Trade Unions
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Business
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NGOs
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Demand
Management, including efficiency and conservation is key.
Use local
economic instruments (tariffs, charges) to transform water users
into economic actors.
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Joint
worker/trade union Workplace Assessments of water uses in the
production of goods and services.
Assess
water used in production or delivery of materials, labour and
resources to workplace.
Assess
workers personal and domestic uses of water as they relate to
performing their work.
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Use local
economic instruments (tariffs, charges) to transform water users
into economic actors
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Service
providers must unlock water needs and demand at local level.
Socio-economic
impacts of demand management tools need to be assessed.
Community
managed programmes often best at defining and meeting own needs.
Urgent
political will to address demand management of aquifers used in
food production.
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Allocation
decided on basis of watershed boundaries.
Watershed
plans can be nested within one another to achieve a complementary
management schemes for large systems.
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Inter-sectoral
allocation must prioritise access to water for basic needs, over
broader economic interests.
Food
production leading to groundwater depletion needs urgent political
will to address problem.
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Integrated
Water Resources Management (IWRM) – coordinated land and water
planning to maximise social and economic welfare equitably without
compromising ecosystems.
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Develop
national and sub-national IWRM strategies.
Supports
the IWRM initiatives taken by the Global Water Partnership
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Primary
goal of river basin management and restoration is to enable rivers
and watersheds perform ecological functions and benefit those who
rely on them for basic needs.
Integrate
IWRM into National Strategies for Sustainable Development.
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Supply
management is important in coming years of water stress and
climate change.
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Recognition
that human activities cause many of the worlds floods and droughts
affecting water supplies
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Indicators
are useful to monitor progress – must be sensitive to gender,
ethnicity and place of residence.
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Review
locally experienced water impacts of global production and
consumption patterns.
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Prior
impact assessments of water resource management projects or
large-scale economic development on river basin. Credit Export
Agencies in particular
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Technical
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Local Government
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Trade Unions
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Business
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NGOs & Women
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Emphasis
on appropriate, small scale technologies
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Capacity
building to supply technical skills, goods and services and a
trainable workforce.
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Learn
from local experiences and scale up successful micro-projects
based on traditional and new technologies.
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Measure
innovation and technology transfer against social and employment
indicators
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De-materialisation
and use efficiency.
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Public
policy must adopt technologies that assist poor people access
water for basic needs.
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Foster
local competition to deliver low cost technologies to farmer or
for community water supply and sanitation.
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Simple
soil and water conservation practices work. Including
afforestation.
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Partnerships
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Local Government
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Trade Unions
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Business
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NGOs & Women
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Local Government initiate dialogue between
local stakeholders – e.g. The new ICLEI Water Campaign.
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New
workplace culture of cooperation. Industrial relations as a tool
for sustainable development
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New
partnerships are key to creating investment.
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Participation
and cooperation are key.
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Increase
opportunities to share experience and expertise
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Adopt
Workplace Assessments as means of developing partnerships among
employers/trade unions and with surrounding communities, as means
of evaluating progress
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Donors: should build government
capacity; underpin basic human needs, support ecosystems and
public health. Foreign aid should focus on capacity building and
projects that can be replicated.
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Stakeholders &
government: cooperate to develop
policies and include landless, women, indigenous people in the
policy making process.
Educate
on importance and meaning of participatory water resources
management.
Develop
frameworks for participation and multi-stakeholder processes.
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Build on
LA 21 processes where they exist.
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Governments:
Use
inspectors and inspections systems to promote voluntary measures
as means of strengthening target-setting, through regulation and
standards
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Governments:
Create competitive transparent level playing field; impartial
regulators; rules based trade system.
Provide
seed funds and guarantees for World Bank or EBRD loans.
Education.
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Information Sharing: NGOs & Womens groups
to collate information on small scale water projects. Document
impact of large-scale projects. Connect micro to the macro.
All
sectors should work together to increase dissemination of
research.
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International Private:
Develop
standardised concession agreements to reduce risk.
Foster
financing partnerships linked to environmental goals.
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Regional networks:
Environment
and development NGOs should network to work together on policy,
monitoring and good practice
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Domestic private:
NGOs can
articulate local needs.
Direct
investments in services, micro-industries and manufacturing,
repairs.
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NGOs & Business: Private sector can work with
NGOs to uncover the local needs to inform design of systems and
technologies.
Also
partners for service delivery.
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Promote
OECD guidelines for Multinationals
Water
code as means of promoting partnerships
Voluntary
approaches must strengthen regulation and standards
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International Joint Venture: between multinationals, international financial institutions and NGOs
to inform on local context.
Public-private
partnerships.
Promote
eco-efficiency and voluntary initiatives.
Tripartite
pubic-private-community partnerships.
Build-Operate-Transfer
partnerships.
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Governance:
Greater
integration between local, national and international levels.
Impact is local but driven by national and international
processes.
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ILO & tri-partite
constituencies:
Should be
involved in addressing social and employment implications
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UNEP:
Could
create centralised technology and good practice database and map
information on populations without access.
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International Cooperation
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Local Government
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Trade Unions
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Business
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NGOs & Women
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More
coordination between global institutions to tackle social impacts
of globalisation. e.g. ILO, WTO, IMF, World Bank. UNCTAD, UNDP
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Institutional
coordination to prevent fragmented approach
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Integrated
Action in relevant public policy areas, particularly integrate all
the agreements on poverty and water since 1992
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Integrated
policy making. Governments must ratify all related MEAs, in
particular RAMSAR, CBD and Kyoto Protocol
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Develop
system of enforceability for the multilateral environmental
agreements
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Regional
cooperation is essential to mobilise political and financial
commitment
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Energy-Water
&
Poverty-Employment
as nexus themes for Rio + 10
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Water-Poverty
Nexus prioritised as a theme for Rio + 10.
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Precautionary
principle must be invoked now
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Link
water policy with social policies through WTO and ILO (e.g.
sanitation) to become integral to trade related activities
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Assess
progress on Ch.18, Agenda 21
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Trade
unions propose Global Code of Conduct
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Global
Code of Conduct and Enforcement Strategy for water management and
pricing
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