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" World Water Forum: there is necessity to move from solutions to answers "

The coming World Water Forum, co-organized by the World Water Council, the Senegalese Government and the City of Dakar is not an ordinary Forum.
In view of the profound and multiple difficulties that the world is experiencing, it must provide answers to the international community as to global challenges regarding water and sanitation.
This is our duty.
It is now urgent to provide concrete responses to populations, to meet their needs, because technical solutions are available, and we know them. Previous Forums have highlighted them.
Billions of human beings are watching us because they also know that these solutions exist and information is now accessible to all, very quickly and everywhere.
What Governments, local authorities and populations expect are concrete answers to their current and daily problems. They do not need readymade recipes but "good practices", examples of successful projects, customary adaptations in particular contexts.
In each of the four themes of the Forum there is scope to show these answers. In terms of finan
cing, political and administrative organisation, cooperation, securing the resource, local initiatives, let us show the many advances that have been made and implemented on the ground.
We need to show, "dissect" processes and projects, analyse advantages and drawbacks, communicate results, make recommendations and share our experience to make others benefit from it and save time.
There will be particular attention to urgent implementation of responses in a rural setting because for the first time in a Forum, this theme has been identified as a priority.
In order to reverse the announced global trend of uncontrolled growth of mega-cities, which is not unavoidable, and to curb rural exodus leading to desertification, our collective efforts will have to focus on the concrete improvement in access to water, sanitation, health, nutrition and education. Meeting these 5 basic needs of humanity in the same territory is possible, reproducible and adaptable in many parts of the world.
The Dakar 9th World Water Forum is a unique opportunity to concretely implement the international solidarity of the great family of water, sharing our responses for the future of humanity.

Loïc FAUCHON
President of the World Water Council

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