'World Water Week' in Stockholm from Sunday

New Delhi, Aug 16 (UNI) Development experts are to gather for the 'World Water Week' in Stockholm, Sweden on Sunday to create a strategy for reducing poverty, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and gender inequality by bringing water and sanitation to billions in the Third World.

Representatives of businesses, governments, water management sector, inter-governmental organisations, NGOs, research and training institutions and United Nations agencies will be attending the event at the Stockholm City Conference Centre, according to its organiser the Stockholm International Water Institute.

The week-long conference will see plenary sessions, panel debates, workshops, seminars, side events, technical tours, social events and prize ceremonies.

The theme of the 'World Water Week' is 'Beyond the River:Sharing Benefits and Responsibilities'.

With societies becoming more urban, how benefits from water are generated, distributed and shared will help determine the overall welfare of both people and the planet in this century, says the SIWI, a development NGO.

The participants will also explore the prospects for co-operation over shared waters, how land use affects water quality and water quantity and what can be done to cope with weather and climate-related disasters.

'''Sharing benefits' is a future-oriented approach in water and development, because it means looking at water from the perspective of what can be derived from it, for whom and by whom, and not the water per se,''says Anders Berntell, Executive Director of SIWI.

''The World Water Week this year will explore the links between benefits, costs and responsibilities, for instance, in physical planning and infrastructure design, including water and sanitation services and pollution abatement,'' Mr Berntell said.

According to Prof. Jan Lundqvist of SIWI, the chair of Scientific Programme Committee at the event, the land is the source and the sink for society's needs and wants and it mirrors human ingenuity as well as ignorance.

''Natural resources use and waste disposal are intimately linked to human existence and must be managed more effectively,'' he said.

The Stockholm meeting will look at natural disasters and society's vulnerability to the forces of nature.

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