No Freshwater Security Without Major Shift in Thinking: Ten-Year Message from the Stockholm Water Symposia

Abstract

"The water issue is by no means an issue only for experts. It constitutes nothing less than a major question of human survival and is closely related to both the eradication of poverty and the need to secure health as well as adequate food supplies...While the water that moves through a landscape mirrors the integrated result of a whole set of parallel societal activities, it constitutes at the same time the life-sustaining bloodstream of the biosphere. The neglect, through past policy making, of the water cycle implications of human activities is difficult to understand. The water issue is by no means an issue only for experts. It constitutes nothing less than a major question of human survival, closely related to eradication of poverty, and the need to secure health as well as adequate food supplies...This publication gives an integrated overview of the conclusions arrived at in the Stockholm Water Symposia 1991-1999."