Page 8 - NYY Muscat Call 2022 April 24

openness and welcoming of new solutions need to go together with enhanced resource flows
6
and other enabling conditions for entrepreneurship and innovation put in place.
Our fourth action centres on joining forces in an inclusive effort cross-border to support

and leverage viable solutions to the systems crisis. Training and resource mobilisation
should feed capacity building including openness to diversity and for complementary

competencies to come together and spur synergies in realising new opportunities.

III: CONCRETE SOLUTIONS, UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES

3.1 Why Water

Water arguably constitutes one of the world’s most valuable resources. Its usage takes
multiple shapes – drinking, agricultural, industrial, sanitation, etc. With industrialisation,

urbanisation and the population explosion, humanity has come to exert vast influences on the
world’s water resources. Dams already in place or planned to be constructed in multiple

rivers put an end to the replenishment of fish stocks and leave huge previously fertile lands

dry. Oceans and lakes are polluted, subjected to acidification and loss of oxygen. Meanwhile,
more than a billion people lack basic water access, two billion lack safe and clean drinking

water at home, while some four billion live without safely managed sanitation. Floods and
other water-related disasters, exacerbated by Climate, account for an estimated 70% of all
7
deaths linked to natural hazards. Working out a response may seem daunting. Yet, solutions
are at hand.

Here, we take stock of concrete solutions that have already been developed and proven

effective under various conditions. Their potential for scaling and replication may well be

stifled for what reasonably cannot be depicted as any sensible reason at all.

6 Stressed at the event by Her Excellency, Stella Kloth, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the
Sultanate of Oman.

7 Dr. Santucci, presentation on October 18, 2022.

www.waterandhumanity.com 8