Earlier in the week, Guterres described water as humanity’s “lifeblood” and said its “vampiric over-consumption” had “broken the water cycle” and caused more natural disasters.
NGOs, governments and the private sector offered nearly 700 commitments before and during the three-day UN gathering, which attracted nearly 10,000 participants. The pledges ranged from building toilets to restoring 300,000 km (186,400 mi) of dammed rivers and large areas of wetlands.
Charles Iceland of the World Resources Institute think tank said less than a third of the commitments have funding, adding that about a third are “going to make a substantial impact.”
Still, “these voluntary commitments are a good start,” he told AFP, referring specifically to a Germany-led project on managing the Niger River basin that touches nine countries in Africa.
‘pleasant surprise’
“This is probably the part of the world that is most fragile, and where we are starting to see real violent conflicts over water between different groups,” he said.
But globally, the water issue is “a huge problem and one conference is not going to do it,” Iceland said in a plea for annual conferences on water.