Add Your Voice to the Global Discussion on Water

The United Nations (UN; New York) with support from other organizations is facilitating a discussion on a vision for the future. Make sure soon that your voice is heard and your opinion is counted; the ability to contribute to discussion items will end in the next few weeks. This global vision will be enacted in 2015 after the scheduled completion of the Millennium Development Goals.

To help shape the post-2015 agenda, the UN asks everyone in the global community to contribute to a vision for The World We Want 2015. The discussion centers around 11 thematic consultations, which includes water.

Currently, one focus of the water discussion is wastewater & water quality, a topic being co-organized by AquaFed (Paris), UN-HABITAT (Nairobi, Kenya), UN Environment Programme (Nairobi, Kenya), International Water Association (London), and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Paris). The Water Environment Federation (WEF; Alexandria, Va.) encourages everyone to join the conversation, especially on this topic.

Discussion organizers anticipate that the water goal will have three components: access to drinking water and sanitation, water resource management and use, and control of wastewater pollution, according to Jack Moss, AquaFed senior water advisor.

AquaFed encourages people to read its working paper Post-2015 Global Goals — Towards a wastewater sub-goal of the Goal on Water — Options for indicators, targets and sub-goal and share comments in the related discussion, Moss said. Everyone is welcome to participate in the wastewater and water quality discussion.

• Read The Wastewater and Water Quality Framing Paper and submit comments about the paper.
• Submit comments on the graphic titled, Nitrogen effluents from wastewater: Baseline, 2000 and 2050.
• Participate in a topic discussion.
• Continue the discussion on social media by using #wastewater2015 on Twitter or the following WaterPost2015 on Facebook.
• Read the papers Week 5 Framing Paper: Economic Opportunities in Wastewater-OECD, UN-Water Policy Brief on Water Quality, and Sick Water — UNEP, UN-Habitat.

Moss also encourages everyone to vote for “access to clean water and sanitation” in the UN My World global survey.